I owe you all a lot of explanations and precisions, so please make yourself at ease, load your favorite vape and prepare for a long read!
You need to put things back in context to understand my reaction. Did I over react? Possibly. But if you re-read my previous post, the most important point was that I clearly said "as is", therefore referring to the pre-production version. Was it justified? When you will have the full context in picture, I think you will agree... Did I behave badly towards
@Just Justin in the process? Definitely! And I'm sorry man.
I could tell you that (if it's not obvious already) I'm absolutely not a native English speaker, and I tend to express myself in a rather cold-sounding manner when using your language. But even if it's true and it can be a bit misleading as to what my tone really is (or rather what my real intent is), that would be a lame excuse.
So what is this context I've been talking about? It's simple: two things that share a lot in common. Similar designs, similar problems... and then comes the Elo and I got a striking deja-vu feeling when unboxing it and examining it closely. Then the other day I saw history about to repeat itself somehow, and I had to do something quick! So yes it was excessive, probably. A fair warning though, as I wasn't sure if they would really fix the issues that *to me* are important.
Silicone Candy Kush and the Sneaky Air Leak meet Stress Relief
The first vaporizer I owned was the Ascent. I was lured by the advertized "glass on glass vapor path" and the precise digital active temperature control. Reviewers were raving about its taste, I even recall reading it compared to the Vapolution 2, which for some is the taste king.
But as you should know, the Ascent has glass on glass that is true, but it's surrounded by silicone everywhere! Pretty much like in the Elo. There is silicone around the bowl, silicone above the bowl, and a huge piece called the buddy rim sitting right under your nose. The Elo lacks the buddy rim but it has approximately the two same other pieces and also a silicone mouthpiece.
The company making the Ascent acknowledged at some point that they had to improve the silicone curing process and bring it in house to better manage it. I don't know if my model was from before that event, but like a lot of users who came complaining in the thread over time, I was literally shocked when I opened my box and smelled the damn thing! That intense and foul rubberish stench... and I had just paid so much for that?
People told me "calm down... new device... robot fart... you need to burn-in son" and you know the story. It took ages to come down to an acceptable level, endlessly blowing air through the empty device until my head spun. I had to perform the same procedure with all my vapes with the exception of the two wooden ones that had a neutral smell out of the box. For the 7 different FlowerMates I had afterward, I spent on average 2h per device doing blank max temperature burn-ins, that's a lot of time. So believe me, I know exactly how to deal with new device smells.
When I got my Elo, I thoroughly washed all removable pieces, all the chips, all silicone parts, cleaned the metal grill, cleaned the internal tunnel, with ISO for the device and ISO then soap for the parts. The silicone had some smell but it has a rather neutral color and is soft, not like the solid black one used in the Ascent. I'm not overly concerned by the silicone parts in the Elo, they need some curing but the smell seems to diminish relatively quickly.
That being said, I never realized that my Ascent had a persistent silicone subtle taste mixing in, until I had some devices with an even better taste and no silicone. At that point it became painfully obvious to me, and now every time I come back to the Ascent, I can clearly taste it. I'm not saying it will be the same in the Elo, the silicone is surely a different formulation. There is a silicone insulation ring in my FlowerMate 5's for instance and I never smelled it, so it's perfectly possible to find a neutral medical grade silicone. I will not touch the hot topic of plasticizers use in silicone, there is another thread for that and we shall not discuss materials safety here, I'll just stick to what they impart to the olfactory sense.
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Soon after, we collectively identified and pinpointed a design flaw in the Ascent: the buddy rim could slightly warp and create a gap where fresh air coming from the electronics upper section could be sucked in, diluting the vapor in the process and creating a poor vapor/air ratio. Having paid so much for the device I was devastated this time.
Note that a lot of FC members had strictly no problem with the fact that you inhaled air that came from the innards where the battery cells and circuit boards are. Some even tried to persuade me it was perfectly safe and that we spent our days breathing air that was in contact with electronics everywhere. Yes, perhaps, but why take the risk if you can avoid it? The concept of having a fully isolated vapor path is a no brainer to me... to each his own...
But I said we shall not venture into safety concerns, and it turned out the main issue was the vapor dilution as it made the device output very wispy... little fart of vapor at best. We found a number of different approaches to fix the leak thankfully (the one I chose turned ironically to introduce even more silicone into the vapor path!) But there is one lesson to learn here: two telescoping tubes don't create any sealed nor air-tight conduct.
It was the two telescoping glass stems that created the issue in the Ascent. When I participated to the Herbstick Deluxe beta test alongside other FC members, I found that the retractable mouthpiece had also two telescoping tubes and it created a dilution source too (again coming partly from the device internals) In the FlowerMate 8 once again the two telescoping stems created a suboptimal situation where you had to clear a larger volume in order to create adequate pressure... and you saw me coming: in the Elo we also have two telescoping tubes and a small gap leading to the plastic air tunnel... where in turn the tolerances between the edges of the two plastic halves composing the top housing... lead to the device internals.
In all cases I cited, if you forget the "air over electronics" aspect, it doesn't matter where this fresh air can be sucked in, it is always detrimental to the vapor/air ratio. This ratio has strictly no impact on the effect: in all cases you get the same amount of active molecules. But when it's diluted the exhale is just less visible and hence often feels "wispy" yet medicates you properly. I don't know to what extent this is a problem with the Elo and whether it can be fixed or improved (
@Vape Dr. custom mouthpiece?), but it should be noted.
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To end this first chapter explaining half of the context, let's talk about the last Ascent flaw, which turned to be a nightmare for the company, with numerous reported failures, many FC members having to return sometimes up to 3 or 4 devices after every one stopped heating or charging... The Ascent has its bowl in a swiveling bottom lid, it's a nice concept but it creates a moving part. The bowl requires two wire pairs to work, one for power and one for the temp sensor. These wires pass through the hinge to reach the electronics section above (and they also got the wire pair from the charger port going through)
Every time you have a moving part and wires involved, you need to implement some kind of stress relief. The Ascent had none and over time, if you opened the lid the full 180° swing you risked to break some wires at the solder junction. This created several types of failures. The Elo also has its heater in a moving part, and when I dismantled it I saw that not only it had no stress relief but worse, the heater holder (dunno how to call it), the end of that moving part that is, could easily pinch and shear the wires when closing.
I reported the issue and apparently it should be handled in some way now. Even if it could and surely would have created some long term reliability issue, this didn't qualify as a show stopper for me, and it's not the reason of my negative recommendation. We will touch that aspect in the second part coming next about the context.
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![:\](/i/s/hmm.gif "Hmm :\")
Can't soak the plastics away 
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