If you could send a disposable vape from today back in time to 2014, most of the people who see it would have absolutely no idea what they were looking at. If you want to know why, look no further than Gizmodo’s roundup of the best e-cigarettes from a little over a decade ago. Their top pick in 2012 was a disposable vape called the NJOY King, which was a tiny little device designed to look and feel as much like a tobacco cigarette as possible. The NJOY King was typical of the mainstream vaping products at that time in its cigarette-like appearance. It would last a real smoker a day at the absolute most, and it cost around $8.
Today, that same amount of money will buy a disposable vape that lasts days or weeks. It’ll also taste better and will be infinitely more satisfying. Meanwhile, the people who have successfully switched from smoking to vaping now number in the tens of millions. That’s not a coincidence.
So, what are the differences that have made the disposable vapes of today so much more successful than the ones available a decade ago? Join us on this trip through history as we examine the many ways in which they’ve changed.
They Last Longer Than Ever
Arguably, the most important difference between today’s disposable vapes and the vapes from a decade ago is that they last much, much longer. In the past, you could expect a disposable vape to last around 100 puffs – maybe 200 – at the absolute most. If you were a pack-a-day smoker, you’d be very lucky if you could manage to use a disposable vape for even a full day. Today, though, modern disposable vapes from brands like Raz Vape can last tens of thousands of puffs.
When you buy a disposable vape in 2024, you can expect it to last several days – maybe even several weeks, depending on how you vape. That has two enormous benefits.
- Buying a longer-lasting vape means that you won’t need to visit the vape shop as often to stock up.
- The longer a vape lasts, the less it costs per day to use. In the old days, a disposable vape would often cost as much as a pack of cigarettes or potentially even more. Today, though, you can be a full-time vaper for just a dollar or two per day.
Why do today’s disposable vapes last so much longer? A lot of it has to do with the fact that they no longer have to look like real cigarettes. In the past, a vaping device needed to look somewhat like a tobacco cigarette in order for consumers to know what it was. Today, though, the visual similarity is no longer necessary because just about everyone who smokes knows what vaping is. Vapes can be larger – and can store more e-liquid – because consumers no longer need the visual cue of the cigarette-like design in order to understand what they’re looking at.
They’re More Satisfying
Another problem with the disposable vapes from a decade ago was that they just weren’t very satisfying to use because they didn’t deliver nicotine as efficiently as tobacco cigarettes. A disposable vape from the early days of vaping produced very small clouds and had a low nicotine strength compared to the vapes of today. There are two reasons why modern disposable vapes are so different.
- They use heating coils made from metal mesh as opposed to the wound resistance wire used in older e-cigarettes. Mesh coils have much greater surface area, and that enables them to generate very large vapor clouds on demand.
- They use a different type of e-liquid that contains salt-based nicotine instead of freebase nicotine. Freebase nicotine was used in all early vapes because that’s what the pharmaceutical industry used for nicotine replacement products. The problem with freebase nicotine, though, is that it tends to cause throat irritation at cigarette-like nicotine strengths because of its alkalinity. Nicotine salt e-liquid – which was first developed in the mid-2010s – has a more neutral pH and is smooth even at high nicotine strengths.
Thanks to those two developments, modern disposable vapes deliver almost as much nicotine per puff as tobacco cigarettes and provide an experience that’s just as satisfying as smoking.
They Taste Better
Along with price and satisfaction, another major shortcoming of early disposable vapes was that they simply didn’t taste very good. In those days, the disposable vapes that were available offered very little variety and usually only came in tobacco and menthol flavors. That was mainly because vaping was such a new thing that the factories producing the devices hadn’t reached maximum efficiency yet. They were making a new product for a relatively small customer base compared to today, so they offered the cigarette-like flavors that they thought were most likely to appeal to smokers.
Two things have changed since then.
- There are many millions of vapers around the world today, so companies are manufacturing disposable vapes for a much larger customer base. They can afford to make devices in a wide variety of different flavors because there are many more customers than there were a decade ago.
- Also, companies have learned that most vapers don’t actually enjoy cigarette-like flavors at all. They’d rather enjoy non-tobacco options like fruit and candy. By offering those types of flavors, the manufacturers have better aligned themselves with consumer demand.
They’re More Enjoyable to Use
The final difference between today’s vapes and the disposable vapes of the past is that modern devices are infinitely more enjoyable to use. You can expect a modern vape to have a screen, for example, that tells you when the device is almost out of e-liquid. In the past, you’d have no idea how much e-liquid was left and simply had to wait until the device started to taste burnt. Modern vapes also have a variety of other convenience features like USB-C charging and adjustable airflow. Today’s disposable vapes feel like modern pieces of consumer electronics rather than relics from the past, and that has helped more people than ever make the jump from smoking to vaping.
