Just got the EasyVape V2. Here's my review:
First, off the entire unit is beautifully packaged. It comes in two boxes, each of which have full, wrap-around cardboard top/front panels with embedded magnets that hold the lids closed. Really a high-quality touch. The larger box contains the unit, the whip and glass parts, the remote control, and instructions.
The smaller box contains bags, and the fittings for inflating and using bags, in lieu of the whip.
The next thing I noticed and really, really liked is the length of the power cord. It must be close to 20 feet. This is a wonderful thing to provide. It is yet another sign that the makers really wanted to make people happy with this unit.
The smaller box contains vapor bags, and three technical looking parts, presumably for connecting the bags to the unit and also for consuming the vapor from the bag. The quality of all of these parts is surprisingly good. They are very heavy and well-machined.
The first piece contains a ridge with a heavy rubber ring used to connect to the bag. It's simple to install a bag and that fitting contains a heavy, spring-loaded valve designed to seal the bag contents whenever you disconnect either the inflating piece or the mouth piece.
The next step is to load the inflating piece with legal herb. There is a stainless steel tamper with a retaining screen and the herb drops into a solid stainless chamber. It all seems very well machined. Once loaded, the inflation piece snaps onto the bag piece. When it clicks into place, it automatically opens the valve to the bag, so that it can be inflated.
The unit fan has three speeds. I haven't tried all of them yet, so I can't comment on speed versus volume of vapor, but I'll come back after I've had a chance.
Once the bag is inflated, you simply take it off of the vaporizer and remove the inflation piece. Doing this closes the valve and keeps the vapor in the bag. It's easy to turn off the fan and remove the bag without loosing a bit of bag pressure. Nice!
Next, the mouth piece snaps into place and does so without opening the bag valve. Now your bag is ready for passing! To take a puff, you simply depress the mouthpiece, which opens the valve to the bag, and draw. The diameter of all of the bag pieces is so nice and large, that it's really easy to use this system.
KI plugged the unit in and the display immediately lights up. Every button has a blue surround illuminated by LED, and the main panel contains a green set of numbers for displaying the setpoint and a red set for displaying the actual temperature. Below the temperature is an indicator to display how much power is flowing through the heating element. Lots of feedback and you can definitely see if the setpoint is being achieved.
The unit is longer than the first version of the Easy Vape. That additional depth seems to be needed for the fan that this unit now comes equipped with.
Whenever the unit is powered off, the LED surrounding illumination around all the buttons remains on and the numeric displays, both green and red, do a sort of marquee effect. The heater tube remains lit by blue LED, also. It's funny that the display is actually doing more when the unit is off than when it is on.
I think it's just for effect, so it looks interesting when not in use. If you want it dark, though, you have to unplug it, otherwise the light show will continue.
I dialed a setting of 300 deg. F. The interface is really intuitive so I didn't have to read anything first. Within about 4 minutes the unit had reached the desired temperature. It did not overshoot by a single degree, nor did it drop a single degree when in use. I was really impressed.
It seems that there is a temperature sensor in the throat of the heating element. I think the reading is taken right at the point of discharge from the unit, because the inner tube looks like a thermistor sensor to me. I might be wrong, but if that's the sensor, and those reading are close to accurate, this machine is capable of pretty impressive performance.
My unit came with a poker chip grinder, which I used to grind some legal herbs. I placed them into the whip, connected the whip to the heating tube and drew. I was surprised by the volume of vapor I obtained. I have acquaintances with vaporizers and had resigned myself to believing that their performance was substantially less than smoking, but the health benefits were the trade-off. I never imagined that a vaporizer would actually out-perform other means of ingestion.
This unit makes lots and lots of vapor from even a small amount of herbs. After a few puffs, I checked the herb and noticed that the surface seemed to be darker than the rest. I thought that I might be burning it a little. I dropped the setting to 330 degrees. It continued to produce the same amount of vapor, but the surface of the sample wasn't getting darker than the rest of the contents.
I stirred and then gently re-tamped the sample and that also seemed to boost the amount of vapor being produced. I was really inundated by vapor. Way beyond my expectations.
The remote control is also simple and intuitive to operate. I haven't used this unit enough to not want to be sitting right in front of it watching all the nifty, cool light activity going on. Perhaps when I grow up a little more I might appreciate the remote more.
All in all I can highly recommend this unit. The heater tube and the metal inner tube it contains (maybe the temperature sensor I mentioned above?) do rattle a little when the unit is moved around. It feels like the element of a large, sodium vapor light bulb when you move that around. It doesn't feel defective, but it does feel fragile. It's probably a good thing, because when you feel and hear how it rattles, it makes you take extra care when taking the unit out or putting it away.
I know that this unit uses the same parts as the Easy Vape original, except for the blower, now included, so I think anyone with a reasonable amount of brains and patience should be able to repair anything that breaks. There is a 5 year warranty, which is as surprisingly long as the power cord.
If you're about to spring for a Volcano or other high-end fan powered unit, this one is definitely a worthy alternative. The fact that it's convertible puts it ahead of the Volcano in my book, and I think it would be really hard to find anything that can outperform the Easy Vape V2.
There's currently a pile of these listed on eBay with a Buy-It-Now of $129. I bought mine from the same seller for $99 because he also lists a few as standard auctions with this starting price. Quite the bargain for what I got. He also threw in a free poker-chip grinder.
I received mine in Wisconsin from LA in 2 days by priority mail.
Enjoy!
