So glazed ceramic does not/should not impart taste...thats why most quality plates are made like that...stainless steel however, does - good example is the PAX where you can literally taste the metal with every pull...
The comparison that the pax2 has better flavour than the vapbong is theoretically not possible but fuck theory right? So I went and tried it and yea, no way that pax2 has better flavour - it literally destroys 50% of the taste and adds the metalic taste (this is a fully cleaned pax2, almost as new)
After reading the latest review from JollyGreenGiant I am ~70% sure that his unit is defective somehow - maybe the glaze is not everywhere or something? I got absolutely no pottery skills so not sure how this works except that you cover it and put it in oven...
I have literally licked the "testicle" after cleaning it and it has no taste...Then I put my tongue in the downstem after cleaning it and took a good lick and also no taste.(i smell and taste everything, and categorize and memorise different strains based on smell/taste).
Then we did another test, we took clean ceramic glazed plates and licked them - no taste, as it should be.
Then we took pieces of bread and smeared them on clean plates to see if any flavour would be changed - nothing - then we put the bread in the "testicle" and smeared it in then ate it - no taste added.
Then we left the "testicle" on the vapbong for an hour for it to heat soak from the heater then repeated the tests (thinking it must be high temps that impart the additional flavour) and still no additional tastes were noticed by us that can mask the flower flavour... I was the only one to taste the "hot air" (maybe thats from kanthal? but doesnt taste metallic at all)
We did some more testing with different flower (lavender, peppermint, diff strains of weed) with and without water to try to find what it is that makes people taste the additional flavour and pulled the air without anything in the ball (do not recommend this to anyone - not good to inhale heated air a lot in a short period of time, really dries out throat and the rest of the gang)
Only thing that I noticed as said above is that the hot air seems to have some taste (so weak that any flower we put totally destroyed that "hot air taste" and we couldn't taste it with flower inside).
Last thing we did was test it against a Firefly2+ and the FF wins hands down (vapbong with and without water cannot compare with the purity of FF2+ => literally tastes like it smells if you got the technique down). Dynavap was also in the tests but really not worth mentioning (first hit on IH gives pretty good taste but nothing close to the Vapbong)
I have the unit for a year now, am in no way a fan-boy that would defend it to justify buying it - I simply don't care about money spent as long as I am satisfied with the purchase. (and I am hard to satisfy and do much research before buying because i dont like the feel of dissapointment)
Something is fishy here - I respect other peoples opinions and experiences and did not even think to doubt the review until I saw the comparisons to other vapes.
This, as well as any unit right now is not perfect in my opinion (to have all the best characteristics in each category of all the vapes available) but for a stay-at-home desktop unit I have not seen many units that can compete with it.
Next stop - herborizer TI (cant get hot rod where I am or that would replace it probably) and testing vs vapbong