Ok ... so after having 2 different hoppers (one SS brand new, and one Ti from
@biohacker) ... and used them for combined a few weeks anyways, I feel I can give a proper review.
First of all, they are fantastic devices when they work (as has been said by many). They are also very versatile and work well as an out-and-about portable as well as a heavy hitting home vaporizer (and also the in-between as a hard-hitting portable if using something like a small 14mm hydratube or even something more simple for cooling).
As a home vape, when used through water or even waterless through a water tool, it can easily finish a chamber in 1-5 hits depending on the size of chamber, lungs, etc. It can hit hard and fast. Very efficient and instantaneous. Flavor in my opinion is on-par with that of other high quality vapes such as the EVO. Can produce very dense clouds.
As a portable, I used starting at 3 and moving to 4 and it works wonderfully. You have to be careful as it can get quite hot on the mouthpiece and the vapor coming out, but it's quite ok if you manage it through length and strength of your draw. I do find the Ti has a bit of an edge here as well with the mouthpiece not being as hot. The ability for it to be pretty much instantly ready, and then pocketable after a hit is great. I was in Toronto this past week, and it was nice to take a few hits sometimes between locations such as leaving the museum and the 2 minute walk to the bus w/ my kids. It's very discrete, and since the bus was there pretty much immediately, I was able to put it back in my pocket to finish after (which I did after the bus and subway between the subway terminal and walking into the restaurant). So as a portable, it hits quite hard, and is very convenient in a lot of ways.
Now on to the not so good stuff ....
1. Loading and emptying is a bit of a pain. I miss the convenience of the Mighty/Crafty capsules!
... I don't know what I would do without
@Ratchett 's awesome funnel. Thanks
@Ratchett! I also love the leather case and the spiral stand
2. Questionable reliability and erratic behavior leading to high maintenance is a big problem. I sent my SS after about 1 week of use ... it always had a hot back-end. When I got the Ti, I realized that it was also under-performing a little so sent it in. My Ti, worked wonderfully for about a week+, and then started to have some issues. Sometimes not seeming to get hot enough, rough power button on back ... just not smooth. Sometimes the back-end would get hot, or the whole thing a bit. This deteriorated to where I'd say it was performing at about 40% over my vacation. It would at this point have the rapid flashing blue lights and going to flashing red before even finishing a bowl on a fresh battery. The irony is, that at 40% performance, using at 4-5 as portable and at 5 at home w/ single session per battery, it was still what I primarily used over my Mighty and Crafty that I also had with me. The convenience is outstanding, and the performance at 40% even is still quite good
... not what it can be though! Wasn't able to milk my little bubbler up but still gave nice clouds and had quite acceptable, but could be better, performance as portable. It was maybe at 60+% at the start of the week and down to 40% by the end. I tried all kinds of things, rotating knob, rotating switch, cleaning everything, cleaning everything again, nothing worked. Yesterday when I got home used some Cdn Tire version of blu-tac and rotated my back clicker switch, and it seems to be working about 80-90% now!!!
... the switch seems to have smoothed out though ... maybe it fell into the correct "groove"? Who knows. Anyway ... like I was saying ... questionable reliability and erratic behavior leading to high maintenance!
Now about warranty ... good and bad ... overall a pretty decent experience, but they messed one critical thing up which kinda' soured the whole experience. I sent my hopper in, and it took 2 business days to get there. $25 CAD approximately. Pretty good! Would have expected 5 days, but 2 is bonus! (I'm really in the middle of nowhere so things take 2 days just to get to Toronto) They had it for 3 days for replacement of back-end and testing before it was shipped. So far at this point they are 1 week + a day from my door to on my way back to me. Since I indicated the problem with the lengthy untrackable shipping, and I had only had a week or so use of my hopper and it was already back for repair, Caroline had graciously offered to ship it back UPS instead of USPS. Unfortunately I guess they made a mistake and sent
@biohacker 's back to him UPS and mine back USPS; so .... I guess this means that the first part took 6 business days and now I can expect to wait 10 business days or more to get it back. Should have been gone <2 weeks, now it will be gone likely 3 or more
So ... that's a lot of good and a lot of bad ... I do feel that they can get these erratic performance and reliability issues sorted out eventually; I truly hope so anyways. I think a lot of the problems are with maintaining solid conductivity in the back end and making that back-end robust. Would be interesting to test the performance of a degraded one without a back end (ie. short the negative battery terminal to the case). I do think that instructions and support for removing the oven screen will be required in order to minimize warranty claims which when too frequent will lose you customers (lifetime warranty or not ... it's the inconvenience). Light users might not need to remove this screen, but even if I only use as a portable and when out of Town, I can see the need to remove and clean under there at least a couple times a year (although a week out of town equals 1/2oz of cannabis vaped through it or so .... so .... even used as a portable/travel vape for me it will see quite a bit of usage)
I could go on more ... but I think that about covers it!