Vaporizers
Pax Era pods: what the chip knows
A Pax Era pod is a sealed cartridge of cannabis oil, filled by a licensed producer rather than by Pax, that clips into a Pax battery. The newer ones carry a chip holding the batch data and laboratory results, which is the feature worth buying the system for.
Aaron
Articles by Aaron
Vaporizers
Pax Era pods: what the chip knows
A Pax Era pod is a sealed cartridge of cannabis oil, filled by a licensed producer rather than by Pax, that clips into a Pax battery. The newer ones carry a chip holding the batch data and laboratory results, which is the feature worth buying the system for.
Pre-Rolls
Cannabis cigars, cannagars and Thai sticks
A cannabis cigar, or cannagar, is compressed cannabis wrapped in a cured cannabis or hemp leaf and aged. The wrap is the whole distinction: a blunt is rolled in tobacco leaf and carries nicotine with it, while a cannagar carries none. Everything else follows from the mold and the curing.
Daily High Club review: cancel by the 15th
Daily High Club, formerly Dollar High Club, no longer sells the three tiers our old review described. It sells one box on four commitment lengths, and it publishes something most of this category does not: a cancellation cut-off you can read before you subscribe.
Hemper box review: the monthly bong
Hemper sells one idea in two sizes: a themed piece of glass every month, with smoking consumables packed around it. The old build-your-own tiers are gone. You do not see what is coming before it arrives, and whether that is the appeal or the problem is the only question worth answering.
G Pen Pro review: the silicone problem
The G Pen Pro is a cheap, small, genuinely easy dry herb pen with one button and three temperatures, and a silicone mouthpiece that takes over the flavour after the first draw of a session. We scored it four out of five, and the missing point is that mouthpiece.
G Pen Gio review: the closed system
The Gio is a battery with a magnet on it, and that is deliberate. Everything interesting about a sealed pod system is upstream of the device: who filled the pod, what they put in it, and whether the coil it sits on knows how hot it is. The hardware is almost beside the point.
G Pen Elite II review: the ceramic oven
The Elite II is the device where Grenco stopped building pens and built an oven. A full ceramic chamber, temperature set to the degree on an onboard screen, and a convection boost that fires while you draw. It holds half a gram of flower and it will not take concentrates.
PAX 3 review: the conduction trade
The PAX 3 is the most durable portable dry herb vaporizer most people will own, and it heats by conduction, which is the compromise everything else on it is built around. The oven tops out at 215C, so the concentrate insert it ships with was never going to work properly.
Grinders
Electric weed grinders: what they give up
An electric grinder replaces the pinch grip and forearm twist a manual one needs with a button press. Nearly all of them give up the kief screen to do it, which is the trade almost no listing mentions. The four devices worth naming do four different jobs.
Grinders
How to use a weed grinder properly
Break the flower into a few pieces, load them around the outer ring of the teeth rather than over the centre post, close the lid and turn it about ten times. Stop when the resistance goes. Almost every complaint people have about a grinder is a complaint about grinding for too long.
Grinders
How to grind weed without a grinder
Scissors in a shot glass is the best substitute and the only one that comes close to an even grind. Everything else in the kitchen trades resin, evenness or hygiene for convenience. The two to avoid are a coin in a container and a coffee grinder you also make coffee in.
Hemp Bombs review: the batch code is on the pack
Hemp Bombs publishes a certificate for every batch and prints both a batch number and a scannable code on the packaging that lead to it. Being able to look up the report for the container in your hand is the single check most brands in this category fail, and this one is built for it.
Ignite CBD review: what independent testing found
Independent testers bought an Ignite vape pod labelled as 150 mg of CBD and measured 188.9 mg — about 26 per cent over the label, well outside the ten per cent variance most consider acceptable. The same testers reported being unable to obtain the certificate for the batch they had bought.
CBDfx review: a wide range, openly tested
CBDfx sells one of the widest ranges in the category and publishes independent lab reports for it, from ISO 17025-accredited laboratories. What the reports do not state on the overview page is which contaminants are covered, which is the gap between publishing certificates and being transparent.
Select CBD review: the pens, and a dead padlock
Select CBD is best known for vape pens blending CBD with essential oils. When we checked in September 2026 the brand site did not load securely — an expired certificate — which is a problem in its own right and makes verifying anything else about the range difficult.
cbdMD review: broad spectrum, and now THC too
cbdMD sells broad-spectrum and full-spectrum CBD across every common format, and now delta-9 THC and THCV products alongside them. It states independent testing and links lab results; what the site does not make obvious is whether you can find the report for your own batch.
Vaporizers
A vaporizer heats cannabis until its active compounds come off as vapour without the material catching fire. How it applies that heat, not what number is on the dial, is what separates one from another: four devices run at an identical 210 degrees delivered between 54 and 83 per cent of their THC.
Grinders
A grinder does two jobs: it reduces flower to pieces of even size so it burns evenly, and it collects the resin heads that would otherwise stick to your fingers. Three things decide whether one is any good: the tooth geometry, the micron rating of the screen, and whether the aluminium is properly anodised.
Cannabutter Machines
A cannabutter machine is a heated, stirred vessel that decarboxylates cannabis and then infuses it into fat. The chemistry it automates is simple and unforgiving: too little heat and nothing converts, too much and what converted degrades. Judge one on its temperature control before anything else.
How to use a dry herb vaporizer
Grind medium-fine, fill the chamber loosely, start low and step up in small increments. Draw slowly for four to six seconds. Almost every harsh first session is a grind or a temperature problem rather than a fault in the device.