I gotta say guys, you have written off the d-nail wicking surface on the sapphire halo altogether and somehow assumed that the more complex, engineered wik feature is less useful for our needs than polished vitreous sapphire with no explanation. On the face of it, this comparison of the surface of the sapphire seems doubtful; a thinner film of oil being spread about in the capillary channels contacting more available hot surface area of the nail = more efficient vaporization than a polished surface without capillaries - the wik surface has additional hot surface area because the sides of the capillary channels are additionally present as well as the floor. Now let's take a moment to clarify that I am not saying that this means the Liger or Halo are worse or better than one another. There are so many differences in the designs (crucially these differences relate to the way the nail is heated!) aside from this one!
With my technical background, I hate to see a purpose made manufacturing technique and functional design (the sapphire wik surface) that draws on bleeding edge research and even more bleeding edge manufacturing dismissed out of hand in favor of an existing manufacturing technique from another application (polished vitreous sapphire is already used in aerospace applications).
Obviously, I will be owning both products in the not too distant future and will be able to contribute my thoughts on comparing them more broadly so will reserve judgement overall on any overall comparison of sapphire to sapphire until then.
What I'm asking is this: Can you really propose to know precisely what contribution the difference in wicking dish surface on the Halo is making vs the polished surface on the liger sapphire insert (after all, there are many different design features and the Liger and D-nail halos both use very different methods of heating the nail and distributing heat across it, as well as very different shapes and functions in other aspects - how do you presume to have teased these apart?)? This is a very dubious claim, without carrying out a systematic comparative scientific study! We are talking about a material (sapphire) that is typically only used in limited high tech applications here (and more to the point, the wik surface design being compared does not exist to my knowledge in any other sapphire application) - this is not conventional nor widely understood knowledge!
You guys obviously appreciate now I am buying a liger with Sapphire and will own both sapphire nails soon. I am no shill. I am paying large amounts of money to try both and obviously I haven't made up my mind which one is better to use. I am just saying that as a person from a scientific/engineering/technical background, it is important to reserve such specific and technical claims for those who can give us systematic studies to conclusively show that these claims regarding the new technology are accurate.
Please, any name calling or accusations of 'shill' (sadly this has happened too many times in this particular thread) will lead to the offenders being immediately reported and permanently ignored - I do not direct this at my friends Chase and MrBonsai who are perfect gentlemen and don't behave like this IME!
I am not saying anything negative about the Liger sapphire or even saying that one sapphire nail is better than the other yet, just saying that some specific claims here go beyond what can be conclusively demonstrated. Obviously I'll get the chance to look at each products function more closely myself soon enough and give my thoughts then. Before that, aside from the technical points I make above, I won't enter into comparison of the two products more broadly.