I had a chance to test drive the Pax 2 this afternoon, for two full sessions. I had a bit of a rocky start, but it didn't take me long to find the device's sweet spots. My initial observations (subject to change, natch)...
1. It works better with a full oven and a finer grind. My first bowl, medium grind, .14 g's, didn't work as well as the second when I packed .20 into the bowl and made sure it was fairly finely ground. That configuration netted me large vapor even at one petal, initially...less herb that's less ground required petal three before I got good hits. I was left with pretty dark brown ABV when I could no longer get any vapor from four petals...but I was also able to pull a couple large hits from each load through the E Nano, so like a lot of portables, the Pax 2 isn't quite extracting fully.
2. The taste is fine. For a conduction vape, it's pretty damned good. It doesn't degrade much in the back half, even at four petals (to my taste, anyway). Even if you don't use the cool-down feature, the Pax 2 isn't cooking the crap out of your weed the way other conductive vapes tend to (like the INH05, which I love, but don't leave it turned on!). The cool down feature itself works very well, and so does turning it off and restarting it an hour later...I finished my second session after a one hour interval, and the flavor was fine. So it is definitely a "session" vape, but you aren't completely locked into one session.
3. The draw is fine. It's average-restrictive for a vape...nothing uncomfortable. (I haven't tried the raised mouthpiece...the flat works very well.) The Pax does a nice thing...it tells you via LED when you draw too fast and overwhelm the heater. (I was doing this consistently at petal 4 until I slowed down my draw...if you do it correctly you can keep the lights green.) I find it about as restrictive as the FF, and way less than the Solo.
4. I don't know how many hits I took, but I only used half the battery. Pretty impressive....seemed like I got a lot of use in half a charge.
5. I have a Simon version. My wife was thrilled.
Overall, for a conduction vape, it's very impressive. It can't match the flavor of the FF, or convection in general, but that's an unfair comparison, and it really has surprisingly good flavor throughout a session. Now let's see how it holds up over time and heavy use...that's the real test, as we know all too well.
Here it is next to various other devices, and my Sigg bottle in matching turquoise.