I purchased a Silver Surfer a couple of months ago and I am not really sure why this is not talked about more often. I was looking for a desktop unit, purity and efficiency being big factors for me, I considered ball modding my flowerpot that has stored away for years but upon remembering how I didn't enjoy the form factor at all, decided to go a different route. Considered the DBV and VB1.5 but I preferred the idea of the SSV having a downward facing wand so that material does not fall into the oven.
I used it with no mods for a few weeks, then ordered the 3mm ball heater cover. After another week and some research I learned that there was also a 6mm version with different cover as well so ended up getting that to experiment as well.
So, the unmodded SSV is an incredible session vape, it has zero draw restriction and effortlessly gives out medium density clouds that are very flavorful. There is a lack of harshness that I found the flowerpot to have, i suspect the lack of metal in the heater plays a part in this, there is definitely something special about all ceramic or all glass heating. It mimicks the experience of a joint nicely.
What it loses out in relation to modding it is that it is not incredibly efficient, the heater is not so powerful and the air only travels a small distance touching the heating element , so it can be overwhelmed. This gives the need to raise the temperature to close to max (about 3 o'clock for me).
With the 3mm balls, there is much greater draw restriction, to the point I did not enjoy that factor. However the heat can be turned down a lot (11 o'clock) and the vapor is much more dense, efficient, and consistent. Since the heat is so dialed down and no points of air superheated, seems much smoother all the while.
With the 6mm balls, there is very open airflow like the unmodded version. However the performance is midway between unmodded and the 3mm ball cover.
The ball heater covers are very different from each other and in my opinion none of them are optimized in terms of design. The 3mm ball version is very narrow and is filled up with balls the whole length of the ceramic heating rod, while the 6mm version is fatter and is only filled in the portion of the heating rod that glows red hot. This is backwards in my opinion as the 6mm version would benefit from the extra heat from a taller pillar of balls while the 3mm version would benefit from a shorter pillar of balls in order to improve airflow.
I have been using the 6mm heater cover with 6mm balls plugging the bottom and front holes and then filling it with 3mm balls so that the red hot part of the ceramic rod is covered by 3mm balls. This provides the best results with good air flow and powerful clouds.
I wonder if anyone has experimented with 4mm or 5mm balls and with which cover?
If I were to guess I would say probably the 4mm balls would provide the best performance but I don't have any to experiment with and am not sure if ordering more bags of 4mm and 5mm balls will leave me with a better experience. It would make sense for elev8 to change the product lineup as none of the solutions feel definitive right now.
Besides all the experimentation, I can only say I am very demanding of vaporizers and I will not be looking elsewhere any time soon. This is an end game desktop solution. I am running it though a recycler with a whip coming out of the mouthpiece of the recycler. Very glad I chose the silver surfer.