Discontinued The Grasshopper

[MoltenTiger]

They did promise a lot, but they have partially delivered. Mostly it’s pretty good, next Tuesday marks 3 months I’ve had my new unit, their latest iteration. It’s also 230+ days since HL have had my RMA'd units.

Anyway, the new unit is not running beyond 210 C but it seems to reach it, and being limited to perfectly even, golden ABV is okay for me*. I have given up cloud chasing now, with a Sublimator, that thing is truly magic, and it’s serious intensity of heat proves that short of an aerogel insulated contraption, there is no real way to defeat the desktop vape.
I am really appreciating the hopper for immediate, spontaneous and/or unplanned seshes, if I'm out and about, or when I get home from work whilst waiting for the Sub to heat up, flavour town is just a click away. It’s not only the fast heat up, but as it’s ultra portable, bong friendly, and stealthy it’s the perfect vape for me.

There’s no doubt that product design is HL's best work. And it really is very nice for a first go.
It’s extremely unfortunate how this has played out, in some regards. It’s also not that bad. I really think they should never have low-balled it. This is rightfully a more premium product when working. Similar capital and fewer sales would have made great differences. Perhaps.

It’s a bad look when one thing is said and another thing is done, I bought a brand new vape on Sunday, with “same day shipping”, which I was even needlessly told via comment reply on Instagram (after I'd purchased, unbeknownst to him). Well, I’m still waiting for it to be processed a work week later.

I’m still in the midst of sorting out a warranty via a FC DM convo, which time-wise has been no better than HL.

I’ve been down two hoppers for almost a year, stranded on their 3rd trip back across the planet after over 2 years of combined, but nearly solid use.

As a product category, the people that are generating these life-changing products are innovators, enthusiasts, genuine humans. Rarely business types. And where that’s the case, I believe the product is literally garbage. People with the best interest at heart, people with harmless ECS stimulation on their minds who generously commit their time to sharing that world-changing necessity are as passionate as ever, and I will support that. I will endure whatever it is that’s required to live the life I have now. You know, smoking just isn’t healthy and I’ve come to realise that as each day goes buy, the value health holds exponentially rises. Stay healthy, stay humble, prioritise healthiness. I believe understanding is healthy and I don’t think it’s hard to realise that even valuable things have challenges associated and, if we are all chill about it and help each other out, we can move forward with grace and ease.

The hopper project deserves to exist and deserves some support until anyone else can realise a better project. It’s pretty easy to be chill about this project after hopping for a few months, it’s very easy not to be chill about it when you haven’t. Good luck to those of us with hoppers, and good luck to those without. Also good luck for those inbetween facing this end of the warranty backlog.


*The Golden ABV I have compared with a TUBOx running @ 210 C and it checks out. Compared to the ABV from say the VapCap or Sub, 100% convection leaves evenly, thoroughly and consistently baked goods but causes the least discolouration. I have experienced darker ABV from hoppers, I'd say I’ve used hoppers that hit 215, 220+, 230, 235, 239, 240 and 240+ Celsius, funnily enough they’ve all either been broken, or broke within a few months.

Taking the golden ABV and Sublimating it, to see what was missing, will extract a small cloud, and it is noticeably part-spectrum and stoney, but weak and mediocre. Once when trying this out, the ABV combusted in the Sub! It was so dry to begin with, I misjudged the dial and breached the fine line of combustion, but it happened about 30 seconds into the hit, basically the end. It reminded me, cloud chasing is joyously retarded and the massive cloud that was now pouring out of a bowl (which had already been vaped at least 6 times) was disgusting, pointless and degraded the experience. The smoke isn’t worth it, and neither is it worth worrying about dark chocolate ABV with a good, efficient and well insulated 100% convection vape. Golden ABV is fine, as long as the effect is still strong. That's a matter of opinion, but I no longer really care about light ABV.

The Sub still really outclasses the Hopper, even when the hopper is running at 239 C and basically burning the herb, the Sub has a heavier effect due to being even faster, basically instant, to heat and forcibly extract oil.

Back before the Hopper, there was strong opinion that any pen vape was useless with the design restraints making it impossible to solve, it’d burn, or it wouldn’t vape at all. The GH packs so much into such a tiny space in order to make the impossible slightly less impractical. Understanding what it is and the forces involved explains why there is no product competition and there is no true final product. But, it’s closer than most vapour-ware.

 

[seaofgreens]

@Hogni I get that info from where they are talking about RMA from this:

"The rate at which the backlog of warranty is being serviced is primarily limited to the number of techs we can afford to employ. We are working to make the process faster and ensure they have the available parts needed to fix units. To be fair to everyone we always try to service units in the order they were received."

The next paragraph form that says:
Here is a quick breakdown of what devices are shipping now.


Stainless Hoppers - Currently servicing March-April Orders due to the parts supply shortage. Expect to be moving faster on these units in the next 30 days.
Titanium Hoppers - Almost entirely caught up.
Color Hoppers - Depends on the color. Generally serving April-Current.
HT Hoppers - 2 to 3 days ship time when available.

Now... you can take that to mean only new devices, but considering they are just talking about warranty units, followed by where they are at... How can I not assume they are also discussing the supposed status of their RMA's?

I would also have said the wait for RMA's wasn't as bad if they didn't keep sending me these e-mails telling me how they were up to February-March RMA's last month, and this month's update said Ti RMA's were "Nearly" all caught up...

When you are sitting there reading that and your unit has been there for well past that time... What are we supposed to do/think? Then you hop on reddit, and boom, every single complainer/whiner that e-mails them has had their unit shipped out within a week... I'm fairly certain that if you don't e-mail them, they will let your unit stay there forever, hoping you just forgot about it...

At the very least, just stop sending e-mails with such misleading/false information.

 

[Baron23]

The hopper project deserves to exist

This is were our views differ, my friend.

I look at it as a retail product, not a project or engineering initiative.

Peace.

 

[Vaporific]

At this point I am stunned by the fact that some people take their updates seriously.

Where is that guy who loves them and drops by their factory?

The July-August update was all over the place - cautiously optimistic in some areas, not terribly encouraging in others and, overall, cryptic at best. You need to be a fly on the wall to truly understand what's going on there, or lack thereof. However, I still love my Hopper as it gets closer to be sent in for RMA. Ugh.

 

[kbrown5523]

First try of my returned hoppers and the first one combusted my herb on the third toke. I started at 3.5, had one at 4 with noticeably too much vape spilling out of the holes and then at 5 it instantly incinerated my load in a flash. It's scary when it happens.

When this happened to me before it didn't matter if I turned it down to 2, if would do this at ANY temp. At this time I don't feel comfortable using or testing it any further.

I still have one more hopper that I'm about to try out and I think if I get good clouds at 4 I won't turn it up any higher and see if that makes any difference. At this point I want a REPLACEMENT.

I have the worst headache and taste in my mouth now.

 

[Cheesequake]

My latest replacement back end has started acting up. Flashing blue all the time now and pretty weak hits unless I do the back and forth on the dial a few times. I'm not even going to send it in this time. Just going to let it collect dust until HL goes out of business or fixes their shit.

 

[newVaper420]

First try of my returned hoppers and the first one combusted my herb on the third toke. I started at 3.5, had one at 4 with noticeably too much vape spilling out of the holes and then at 5 it instantly incinerated my load in a flash. It's scary when it happens.

When this happened to me before it didn't matter if I turned it down to 2, if would do this at ANY temp. At this time I don't feel comfortable using or testing it any further.

I still have one more hopper that I'm about to try out and I think if I get good clouds at 4 I won't turn it up any higher and see if that makes any difference. At this point I want a REPLACEMENT.

I have the worst headache and taste in my mouth now.

Did your unit get insanely hot? That’s what happened to me. I couldn’t use it anymore. Sent it back. They told me 3 months to get it back. I wrote. A long note. They didn’t respond. Lol

 

[kbrown5523]

Did your unit get insanely hot? That’s what happened to me. I couldn’t use it anymore. Sent it back. They told me 3 months to get it back. I wrote. A long note. They didn’t respond. Lol

Yes, it did get insanely hot. Both of my hoppers did it before which had them in rma hell for months, got them back and they were running really cold, like not useable cold and so I sent them back again for a little over a month only to get them back with the one doing this on the FIRST load. I sent them the pics and said I expect a replacement. Even if it's just the body if that's the problem. They've had enough chances to "fix" it and it's dangerous the way it is.

 

[Hammahead]

First try of my returned hoppers and the first one combusted my herb on the third toke. I started at 3.5, had one at 4 with noticeably too much vape spilling out of the holes and then at 5 it instantly incinerated my load in a flash. It's scary when it happens.

This sounds scary all right... forgive me my voracity for sensationalism but the picture links don't work for me, any advice how to fix this? Tried the thing with quoting the post but that also only led to some "not working" icon.

 

[newVaper420]

Yes, it did get insanely hot. Both of my hoppers did it before which had them in rma hell for months, got them back and they were running really cold, like not useable cold and so I sent them back again for a little over a month only to get them back with the one doing this on the FIRST load. I sent them the pics and said I expect a replacement. Even if it's just the body if that's the problem. They've had enough chances to "fix" it and it's dangerous the way it is.

Holy shit. Your story is almost identical to mine. They had mine since February. Got it in July. Had 3 days. Day 3 no more heat up and could not vape anything. Just instant blue light. They sent me replacement body. I tried that. 3 days later. Combusted load and was scorchingly hot. Definitely very dangerous. :-(

So I sent both bodies back and the rest of the stuff. And now they told me 3 months LOL :-)

 

[MoltenTiger]

This is were our views differ, my friend.

I look at it as a retail product, not a project or engineering initiative.

Peace.

Very fair. But why not both. I'm high as shit now thanks to my pen bought retail.

It's a very nice vape. Certainly happy with it beyond most I've got, had or tried. Especially when I'm across state. It's not been out that long, HL might as well stick around until some other people tackle a similar product. I doubt they'll have an easier time. All the recent portable vape launches have sounded iffy to me, and they're not even close to a viable alternative on their best day to a hopper.

It's the best retail product in its category, but indeed that means nothing. In terms of a weed device for a frequent habit, it's done me extremely well. Current RMA status is terrible - but only because the product has potential

 

[seriousTone]

Very fair. But why not both. I'm high as shit now thanks to my pen bought retail.

It's a very nice vape. Certainly happy with it beyond most I've got, had or tried. Especially when I'm across state. It's not been out that long, HL might as well stick around until some other people tackle a similar product. I doubt they'll have an easier time. All the recent portable vape launches have sounded iffy to me, and they're not even close to a viable alternative on their best day to a hopper.

It's the best retail product in its category, but indeed that means nothing. In terms of a weed device for a frequent habit, it's done me extremely well. Current RMA status is terrible - but only because the product has potential

That’s how it seems to me. I certainly haven’t seen another portable vape that is as fast, efficient and portable as the grasshopper - besides the mflb honestly. But that has its own cons and I still not as stealthy because it doesn’t look like a regular pen.

Owner of 6 different vapes and most are redundant. The grasshopper is where it’s at, in my opinion. I’d happily get rid of most all my vapes for a working hopper.

 

[nonbeliever]

That’s how it seems to me. I certainly haven’t seen another portable vape that is as fast, efficient and portable as the grasshopper - besides the mflb honestly. But that has its own cons and I still not as stealthy because it doesn’t look like a regular pen.

Owner of 6 different vapes and most are redundant. The grasshopper is where it’s at, in my opinion. I’d happily get rid of most all my vapes for a working hopper.

Yep. And that there is the rub. Having a working hopper. For me it’s been the two month tease almost constantly since I got my original early bird SS and Ti. Works for a few months then off for RMA. Even two down at once several times.

When it’s working, it’s amazing. Then there is the rest of the time. Kind of like summer in Seattle. Lol

 

[mario]

Well. The spare body I ordered came. And it was fantastic. Until today when randomly I just get a quick red blip and then it turns off.

When it works. It is the hardest hitting vape ever. But I’m kind of sad that I can’t get a functioning one. Just like everyone else I guess.

 

[Rel2018]

Mine stopped working too.
No vapor and green abv.
2.5 months old.

Now it just left me confused.

So where do I find a reliable, powerful, fast, tasty, easy to use with a bong, and if possible a pen ?

I can handle the disappointment but what’s next ? Fierce ? ( which was supposed to be released in June...)
G-pen ? Crafty ? Any of these compare ?

Should i learn how to make wax and how to use atomizer ? Would it be worth it if I get 30 g a month ?

Help please

 

[Hjalmark]

That’s how it seems to me. I certainly haven’t seen another portable vape that is as fast, efficient and portable as the grasshopper - besides the mflb honestly. But that has its own cons and I still not as stealthy because it doesn’t look like a regular pen.

Owner of 6 different vapes and most are redundant. The grasshopper is where it’s at, in my opinion. I’d happily get rid of most all my vapes for a working hopper.

would like to see a hopper with a "quick release" battery compartment but I wait for the reliability first

 

[newVaper420]

Sadly, as I expected, those bodies failed above.

The problem is, it can’t be the best if it never works. I’ll take second best if it works reliably all the time.

I have another trip to San Francisco is October. I’m not even gonna try to bring the Hopper. I’ll take my chances bringing my Mighty. LOL

Edit: the other problem I have a big issue with is they are selling faulty components. Selling faulty bodies is real ridiculous. They should have never done that

 

[Cheesequake]

The problem is, it can’t be the best if it never works. I’ll take second best if it works reliably all the time.

This is what I've finally settled on unfortunately. It's definitely not the best because it doesn't fuckin work lol.

 

[seriousTone]

Hahaha ^

 

[elykpeace]

Mine still working!

Kinda bummed people still have issues with this catch22

Has anyone opened one up? I've seen it talked about. But maybe we can better diagnose what's going on if it's out in the open. Temps too high?.. I feel like the spring inside my backend if not alined right causes misfire and sends power elsewhere ... Idk . I'm planning on figuring out what's wrong when it breaks but if it ain't broke don't break it so until then I can just be bummed with you guys and feel guilty mines working well

 

[Baron23]

Just to try to be completely fair...my OG Ti Bronze GH worked wonderfully for 18 months before giving up the ghost. Run it all day long at 4.2 on the temp dial and get beautiful and even AVB without ever a hint of combustion even at 5 on the temp.

Now, I'm not going to go over the various cock-ups for the RMA, posted that earlier and its not new news (LOL).

My two GH do now work....but not as strongly as before the repair and if put on level 5 I get flickering blue when hitting (if just a tad lower than 5, the blinking goes away...go figure). AVB...meh. Yes, I can extract with it but is it as strong of an extractor as prior....no, it is not.

So, here is my question....how the frak can Hopper be claiming to have improved their test lab capability yet still be putting out GH and repairs with inconsistent heating performance? How does that happen?

We have some people with combustion, some people with cold running GHs, and some that's just right (sounds like Goldilocks, eh? sigh).

The product is either not testable sufficient to ensure consistent performance or they are just fucking it up.

I don't know which but either is rather sad at this point.

I used to have complete confidence in my GH but no longer feel that way. Yeah, it works but...not like before.

Cheers

 

[Rel2018]

Well. The spare body I ordered came. And it was fantastic. Until today when randomly I just get a quick red blip and then it turns off.

When it works. It is the hardest hitting vape ever. But I’m kind of sad that I can’t get a functioning one. Just like everyone else I guess.

@mario - Is it still milking now ?

I have a couple questions if anyone can help:

1. Just received the nitro charger - how do I know if the batteries are faulty ?

2. Did anyone try an iso bath and had their hopper fixed ? ( mine is giving almost no vapor at all )

As mentioned above, I just received the nitro and some glass with 14mm female, hopefully I didn’t order those for nothing

Thanks

 

[btka]

ok my gh is hold by the customs... and I got mail from tbe customs today..

they claim::

1.) that the price declared on the package is not right., therefore they searched for hopper vapes in the intenet and found a vendor and found out they selling new hoppers for 225 euros (they also attached a screenshot). but I bought only a replacement body which costed 90 dollars and not a new hopper. whave to send them paybal bill and so on.

2.) hopperlabs declared on the package that they send me a vaporizer part. BTW IN EU COUNTRIES IT IS FORBIDDEN TO IMPORT FROM ABROAD E-Cig RELATED STUFF AND IF THE PACKAGE DECLARES THAT A VAPORIZER IS IN THE PACKAGE, THE CUSTOMS IMMIDEATELY THINK IT IS S7METHING E CIG RELATED... HAPPEND ALSO WITH THE NEWVAPE FP (BECAUSE THE NAME NEWVAPE ON THE PACKAGE MADE THEM THNK IT IS SOMETHING E CIG RELATED) So NowmI also have the to tell it is not e cig relatedmand that you can not use it for e-liquids and so on... what should I tell them. My plan is to tell them it is a herbal aromatherapy device and you can only use it with herbs and not e-liquids and that it is not a e-cig which it the truth...

 

[Kermitt]

... it is a herbal aromatherapy device and you can only use it with herbs!

That should be perfectly enough to justify it. Been to customs so many times and never had any problems.
I always bring old invoices for previous shipments cleared through customs. Then the customs officers will be happy, because they will be able to calculate everything more easily and will not have to search.

 

[Hogni]

@Kermitt if there wouldn't have come he new EU regulations on e-cig/vape (?) related stuff in the meantime.

@btka I'd say the same. But you have to aware that they'll say "Herbs? Ok, tobacco also are herbs!" Then you could get in trouble getting your device.