Yeah you will want a vape like the TM, that is essentially a glass pipe, chillum stem one hitter bat, that is your chamber and pathway, can use a WPA, great through hooks and dry glass or water, plenty of aftermarket stems too for cooling etc... You load the bud and then stick that into the TM, hold down the button, it vibrates and you take your hit, let go keep inhaling to clear... It has a dial on the bottom with a full temp range, I temp-step each hit, starting very low dry, really nice, can turn up higher to finish quicker which is useful through water, it even has a mode that will keep the button held down for you as well. Pretty simple build, much more so than mighty, much more control, more pure and more power, all around a better experience and more traditional smoking pipe like (mighty would be more like loading and puffing on a joint, a session that is cooking creating the vapor for you... Arizer Solo 3 would be a better option for that since it uses the glass stems imo)
Comparing with carts, yeah it always feels like you never know what you're getting, something's missing, depending on the quality of the oil it will probably not be full spectrum, you don't need to know all the differences of concentrate, but you should know there are plenty out there that just don't give you everything and are amped up with THC but missing everything else... Other stuff is more expensive and tricky to work with, I've been dabbing a lot at home with nice recyclers now and small amounts temperature control, really simple and pure, because I haven't been getting great bud... But I would always rely on vaping bud more previously, carts were just a necessity out and about and stealth, there are some vapes that can be quite mobile this way like firewood9 (can be considered similar to TM2 in practical use and is also on sale so cheaper, it is sleeker more portable, except it is more conduction on demand, still a full temp range and the same replaceable batteries, it is designed to be used as a chamber you load like the mighty, or the ceramic chambers can be separate so you can have plenty pre-packed ready to go depending which version of the FW9 you buy, it is convertible) plugins at home can be useful and more effective especially through water, but potentially more involved too...
Balls in a heater are used to add mass, and a complicated air flow pattern to heat the air for strong convection heating (you need high surface area in the heater for good convection to maintain heat while you are inhaling the heat through the herbs to vaporize... Conduction heating requires much less power and is more old school tech with the session style devices) however balls in a stem, are disrupting the airflow with hot vapor after the fact, to create a path that is complex and offers obstruction to cool the hot vapor with colder glass, of course back to back it will get hot too, they are not all created equal they're a lot of different designs, there are also spikes etc to do this, but what does the most for cooling is actually right angled bends, that's why good hooks can be very effective, and dry glass, check out donuts and Swiss Fab for other complicated glass vapor paths that are really nice for dry vapor cooling actually
