Hi guys. It's Max here, and welcome to the first of many product review videos that we'll
be doing here at Australian Vaporizers. Today, we're going to be comparing two of the most
popular, portable vapes on the market today, the Pax by Ploom, and the Crafty by Storz
and Bickel. The things we're going to be taking into account are vapor quality, so the efficiency
of the unit, the units operation, how easy it is to use, the battery life and everything
charging related, the build quality and finally the ease of maintenance.
If you're looking for a vaporizer, one of the first things you should be looking at
is the quality of the vapor that it produces. There's nothing worse than being sucked in
by a bunch of bells and whistles, only to find that the unit itself produces hardly
any vapor, which is it's main job. Fortunately enough, I can say that both of these units
produce nice, clean vapor, but I feel that the Crafty is definitely the winner in the
terms of vapor production and also calling capacity.
It's a lot smoother to draw from. If you're using it often, you want it to be as comfortable
as possible to use. The Pax can get a little bit hot, but unfortunately that's sort of
the trade off that you make when you go for such a tiny unit.
One of the biggest issues with the Pax though is that more so than most other vapes, it
doesn't perform very well with a partially filled chamber. If you're somebody who likes
having smaller sessions with smaller amounts, it's not going to produce the thickest vapor
for you in those situations.
The Crafty doesn't really have this problem. They've actually included a small spacer they
called the liquid pad and for smaller sessions, you can just put this on top of your material
and it squashes it down to the bottom of the chamber for thicker vapor. Here's a quick
visual comparison.
Moving on the operation of these units, both these vapes are quite easy to use. It's hard
to pick a clear winner for this section. The Pax, apart from powering on and off, the functions
are mainly triggered by gestures. This is different for vaporizers, an unprecedented
thing. For checking the battery life for example, you shake the unit for the automatic shut
off, you basically just put it down on the ground and it senses that it's been stationary
for longer than 20 seconds and it goes into standby mode automatically.
When it comes to actually heating these units up, both of them use pre-set temperatures.
The Pax has three pre-set temperatures, these are 190, 199 and 210 degrees Celsius. The
Crafty has two pre-set temperatures, there's the standard temperature and a booster temperature.
The standard temperature is 180 degrees Celsius and the booster temperature is 195 degrees Celsius,
but these can be altered to pretty much any specific temperature you like, using this
app.
They actually provide an app for you to download for android or iPhone. At first, I thought
this was a bit of a gimmick to be honest but it's actually cool. You can use it to change
the temperature, which I mentioned before, or you can monitor the battery life, you can
get it to give you an alert when it's finished heating up so you can walk away from the vaporizer
and your phone will go off when it's heated up. It sounds kind of lazy, but there's always
an application for these sort of things.
Moving on to battery life. This is one of the areas where I feel like the Crafty is
somewhat lacking. It will only give you about 45 minutes of continuous use per charge. You
can expect about three, maybe four sessions in this time. It also takes about two hours
to charge from zero percent to 100 percent. The Pax on the other hand will give you about
an hour of continuous use, which is more like four or five sessions, and it will charge
slightly quicker as well in one and a half hours from zero to 100 percent.
One thing that's worth mentioning is that the Crafty charges via a micro USB cable.
This is a newer feature that's come into vaporizers into the last year or so. It's quite convenient.
If you're over at a friend's house and you forgotten your charger, most people these
days will have a micro USB charger laying around. The Pax on the other hand, charges
via a dock. This is just simply plugged into the wall. Which brings me to my next point,
the Crafty can actually be used while it's charging. It's not a true passthrough functionality
because it will still deplete in charge slowly. This is do to the restrictions that come with
micro USB charging. Obviously the Pax you can't use while it's charging. It just sits
stationary on the dock.
Moving on to build quality. As you can see, both of these units are pretty similar in
terms of size and they actually weigh about the same, too. They are both quite comfortable
to hold in the palm of your hand, or to store in your pocket. In terms of size and weight,
there's no real clear winner. The Pax is a little bit smaller, but unless you've got
tiny, tiny pockets, the difference is pretty much negligible.
The biggest letdowns for the Pax in my eyes, are the mouthpiece and the vapor path. The
mouthpiece uses a spring loaded mechanism, and while this is cool and inventive, I just
find that it causes problems later on down the track if you don't clean it well enough.
This is mainly because the mouthpiece itself is responsible for switching the unit on and
off. If anything happens and it gets stuck, you're not going to be able to use your vaporizer
at all.
While I don't have any major gripes about the Crafty's construction, I do feel that these little
plastic sections to the side of the filling chamber are a little bit too fragile. If any
of them broke, it wouldn't really make a difference to the functionality of the unit, but I just
can't help that it would have been better without them. Because this is mainly a cosmetic
flaw though, I'm going to go ahead and award this section to the Crafty.
Moving on to maintenance. This is the Pax's main weakness. It's really hard to look after.
The mouthpiece requires lubrication and cleaning regularly, and the vapor path will also require
cleaning regularly, and you can't just do this with a brush or anything like that, you
actually have to get right inside it with a pipe cleaner. While they do provide these
with the kit, I just find that it's a real hassle and when you're going to be cleaning
it every week or two weeks, depending on how much you're using it, it starts to become
really tedious.
The mouthpiece just makes things even more difficult, so basically if you're not cleaning
this thing frequently with isopropyl alcohol just like the vapor path, and lubricating
it with the oil they provide, it can potentially get stuck and then you're not going to be
able to use your vaporizer until it becomes unstuck.
Now the Crafty on the other hand, is actually quite easy to look after. There's a lot of
plastic in the mouthpiece, but this is a high temperature plastic and it's not porous
or anything like that, so you can actually use solvents to clean it. You can use isopropyl
alcohol, and you basically just dismantle it like I'm doing here. Then you basically
just dunk all of the plastic parts in isopropyl alcohol and clean away the debris with the
little brush that they provide for you. Storz and Bickel do state in your manual that you
can't soak the plastic sections for more than an hour, but I find a couple of seconds is
all that's needed, especially if you're using the little brush.
The only maintenance that's really required from the Crafty apart from that is to clean
out the bowl and this can be done with just a little bit of isopropyl on the end of a
q-tip or a cotton swab. This is pretty similar for the Pax but with all of the extra maintenance
that's required for it, I think that the Pax has definitely lost this section.
Guys, I'm just going to finish up by saying that both of these units are pretty great.
At the end of the day, if you're looking for a high quality, pocket friendly portable, both of these are
great options. The Crafty is the clear winner overall in this case. I just feel that the
vapor quality from this unit is pretty much second to none. The maintenance is really
easy, the build quality is great. The only thing that it doesn't have going for it is
the battery life, but it's not that big of an issue because you can charge it via a micro
USB.
As I said before, we're going to be doing some maintenance videos, just some general
how to's and some more reviews to come as well, so keep an eye out for those ones.