Okay, so I got my IOLITE about one week ago and will give my reviews on it to the best of my ability. The unit seems to work well, providing an adequate amount of vapor. The unit seems to reach to operating temperature in a short amount of time, about 1 minute at most. When I pack the IOLITE, I fill the bowl to its capacity, approx .5g of ground product. I don't over pack it to allow a good heat dispersion. I don't really use the extended mouth piece as I find it unnecessary, although others might prefer to use the extender. This is how my bowl cycle goes:
1. Once I pack the bowl with the ground product about .5g, I flick the switch to on position
2. Once I hear the rush of butane, I click on the pilot switch which will usually ignite and am able to see the orange heating element.
3. After about 1minute (from a cold start), the orange element and butane sound stop, and I steadily and slowly draw vapor for about 10-14 seconds, then exhale.
4. At the end of the 10-14 seconds, the IOLITE thermostat kicks back on and reheats for about 5 seconds or so.
5. Once it stops reheating, I then take a second inhale, and repeat this process over and over.
6. From a .5g packed bowl, it seems i'm able to take around 10 cycles, maybe a little more, before the herb is spent.
7. Once the bowl has been "spent", I switch the unit off and empty the spent material out right away.
My biggest question/ gripe with the IOLITE:
1. The efficiency of the butane mechanism is very poor!
My butane scource I use are either of the two products, Vector (x5 refined), or the Colibri butane. With the above vaporizing scenario, I am only able to hit the IOLITE in this fashion for 4 fully packed bowls. At that time, I HAVE to refill the unit. As we speak, I'm reading the IOLITE reviews thread and am on page 14 out of 50. According to what I have read so far from the representative himself, the IOLITE butane system with a full fuel tank will last 2 hours. I cannot get anywhere near close to this performance. In actuality, the IOLITE probably runs about 30min at most on a full tank. This 30min time frame is based on the fact that it takes me about 8min for me to vaporize a .5g bowl.
The only thing I can think of is that I need to release any trapped air? that might be left in the fuel system before I reload a fresh tank of butane? I would think brand new, the IOLITE wouldn't have ANY trapped air in the system, but I could be wrong? I would expect any trapped air in the system would reduce the performance, however when the IOLITE Rep is claiming 2 hours of use on a full tank, and I can only get 30min, something isn't right.
Other then the fuel efficiency, I am quite happy with the IOLITE unit thus far. I am concerned about how often I can use this to be considered "normal use". My gut feeling is that this unit should NOT be your main source of vape, but used primarily in travel situations only. Because of this, I am going to be ordering the Vriptech Heat Wand system as this seems to be the best route to go.
Any responses regarding the Butane Fuel Efficiency would be excellent. Thank you for taking the time in reading my lengthy review.
