The 8 feels like a transitional vape between the 7 and 9.
I kinda feel this way too, but I don't want to be too harsh on the new design until it actually gets into people's hands. Some of my thoughts:
I actually kinda like the hodgepodge nature of it. Feels kinda sci-fi, not quite as artful as the Nomad but I could see it in the same vein. With that said I love the neat lines of my FW7 and that would certainly have more appeal. I could see this being a compromise between style and ease of manufacture, though. Given the FW7 availability difficulties, I imagined FW8 would put more emphasis on this.
I dig the fused stem. If those become available a la carte I might pick one up for my 7. I also agree w/ others that the FW7 stem conversion kit will likely still be sold. The fused stem offers an improved stock experience without sacrificing (IMO) the extensibility of the "dynavap-compat" stem system. (Total aside but the sliding stem is lowkey a killer feature of the FW7 and I'm glad it's being carried forward)
Love the pod system in theory. Curious to see what people's experience is like. Wondering what loading/unloading is like. I usually use carts when out of the house, but even inside the house I love the convenience of portables and would 100% use pods/capsules even if I'm 20ft from my grinder lol.
The battery is a bit clumsy and as others have mentioned, difficulty of replacement is a downside. However I'm fully onboard with moving away from bare 18650's, they're not dangerous if you're careful but were never intended as a consumer-grade resource.
Maybe a future revision to make the 18650's easier to swap in their sleds (no soldering) would be the best of both worlds? The biggest concern w/ the FW7 involved pulling out and slotting in 18650s every time you ran the battery down -- using the FW7 necessitates directly handling 18650s. If it had onboard charging, the battery danger would still exist but would also accomodate a usage mode that doesn't require the user to handle the batteries.
I think the FW8's wooden battery sled, with its onboard charging and swappability, is a really cool idea. I wonder if swapping 18650s from the sleds could be made easier. The intention being not to swap them whenever they need to charge, but just swap them (without needing to solder a powerful battery) at the end of their life. I realize there are technical concerns regarding strength of contact (and of course Marc's personal risk tolerance); just a thought as a layman. In any case, if I wanted to take a FW8 on the go and knew I'd need more than one charge, 2 sleds + a USBC powerbank sounds better to me than throwing some 18650s in my backpack.
Final thought, I notice the mouthpiece side doesn't appear to have a sliding wood housing. I have to admit I love how easy it is to swap between stock stem and WPA, FW7 feels utterly unique in that regard, but I think the update is probably for the best. Those little carved rails do stick occasionally and I'm always afraid that one day they'll just seize up.
Since I'm fortunate enough to own a FW7, I'll probably skip this edition (at least until I get to see how it performs out in the wild). If the FW7 didn't exist or I didn't have one, I think I'd be drooling over this. Based solely on pictures this iteration seems to have some good and some bad, but it clearly has the same soul as the FW7 and I expect will be an elite vape just like the 7 is.
EDIT: oh my god, one more thing. The biggest irritation with my FW7 (and it is admittedly minor) is how easy it is to accidentally leak herb into the battery compartment when loading the oven. I also always check the battery life after unloading the oven because swapping batteries with a full oven can also make a mess. FW8 bypassing this entirely is actually a pretty big convenience.
I hope I'm wrong - just looking at Jill's pics from a page ago