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.
Products · tested by hand
Products & gear, and what to skip
We buy the gear, use it for weeks, and tell you what is worth it. Every pick links to where to buy, every affiliate link is disclosed, and no brand pays to be here.
One axis, four processes
420 °C
Where a cartridge coil actually sits
Gear is mostly an argument about heat. A butter infusion and a vape cartridge are two hundred degrees apart, and almost nothing written about either one says so.
The last band is the one to look at. Thermography found a temperature-controlled pod holding 420 °C to within about ten degrees, while voltage-controlled batteries averaged 443 to 543 and swung by fifty to a hundred between puffs. Combustion is hotter still — we have left it unnumbered, because every figure we could find for an ember was one we could not source.
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Latest reviews and guides
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.