The Difference Between Pods, Mods, and Pens

So you finally made the leap to deciding to get a vape. Maybe you’re thinking of kicking a bad smoking habit, or maybe you’re just into the idea of blowing thick, voluminous clouds of vapor; either way, you’re here now, and you’re browsing for vapes.

The first thing that should hit you is how many mods, pods, kits, tanks, coils, and liquids exist on the market. Vaping isn’t exactly an obscure hobby anymore, and given the explosive growth of the vaping community over the past half-decade, it’s no surprise that manufacturers have increased both production and variety to meet the demands of consumers around the world.

While this is a cause for celebration for most vaping enthusiasts, it has made it so getting into the activity is just a little bit harder for newcomers. With greater variety comes more obscure, vaping-specific knowledge that only someone who’s been fiddling with tanks for years would have. For most others, they’re inundated with more and more choices they know absolutely nothing about, making it all the more difficult to buy that first mod or pod.

In this article, we’ll be covering the broad strokes of what matters most to your vaping experience as a beginner. We’ll discuss the different components of a typical starter kit and let you know the choices you can make at each fork, as well as what these choices entail. This will help you make that first purchase with confidence, knowing that you’ve bought the right product for you.

MTL tanks can be attached to mods (sometimes referred to as pod mods), but the most popular MTL devices are vape pens and pods. These are slimmer and sleeker in build than mods, and they have fewer moving parts. They also rely on a different delivery mechanism for flavor and nicotine, utilizing nicotine salts or nic salts for short.

Smaller, lighter puffs categorize the vaping experience when making use of nic salt-based liquids, and fewer puffs at a time. This is because nic salts contain much higher nicotine concentrations, and they’re not designed for the flashy, showy vapor clouds that you’re used to seeing with DTL Mods. Pods tend to have much smaller capacity tanks, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck refilling or replacing your flavor at every given turn. A pod can last you much longer than a full tank on a DTL mod, simply because of those smaller puffs we talked about earlier.

When vaping from a pod, you’re also likely to take fewer puffs than you would with a mod. Just a couple of hits, and you’re good. Nic salts also tend to prefer lower temperatures, so you’re also likely to have lower power (and higher resistance) on these than on mods.

Not only are nic salts less taxing on your lungs when you’re a vape beginner, they also tend to be more economical than DTL Mods, which tend to consume more flavor and have more customizable parts. What you get with a Pod Kit like the SMRT is consistent, low-key hits. For newer vapers who aren’t trying to go around leaving a trail behind them, they provide the most bang for your buck, letting you get your hits indiscreetly.

DTL Mods are the bulkier, brawnier cousin of the vape pen and pod. Where a pod will usually look like a single, sleek unit with a single button and maybe a couple of airflow adjustment nozzles, your average mod will look much more like a “chimera”, with different parts and multiple buttons and settings.

Mods rely on heat and higher liquid consumption to give you longer, more flavorful hits. This makes them unsuitable for use with nic salts, which contain high concentrations of nicotine that would likely give even the most seasoned vaper a blistering headache. For this reason, mods tend to make use of freebase nicotine e-liquids. They’re made up of a combination of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, and you can experiment with mixtures containing different quantities of both. High VG mixtures will tend to give off thicker, sweeter tasting clouds, while high PG mixtures will tend to give you more of a throat hit, making them less viable for use with DTL devices.

For people who’re interested in vaping for the mouthfeel, taste, and hit, low-PG mixtures are usually the way to go. While PG is the substance responsible for most of your flavor’s “kick” and its unique tastes, a sweet-tasting fluid can still rely upon VG for flavor delivery. On the other hand, high-VG formulas will not have very high concentrations of nicotine in each hit, meaning you’ll be taking a lot more hits and using up a lot more liquid to get your buzz on.

When you’re using a mod like the Wotofo Manik, you’re much more likely to find multiple ways to disassemble and reassemble your vape to suit your needs. You can find different options for tanks, coils, liquids, even casings in some cases. These options will often tie directly into the quality and consistency of your hits, meaning you can fine-tune your machine to give you thicker clouds or more of a throat feel.

More often than not, all those options aren’t clear to a newbie, so you might not find the customizability of these vapes all that enticing. However, as you begin to get into the vaping culture, and learn about the different kinds of Mod Kits, tanks, and coils available, and you learn how these affect you, the vaper, you might appreciate the option to play around with your vape more.

There’s plenty of options out there for new vapers, and just knowing the difference between Pod Kits and Mod Kits might not be enough to help you make a final decision. Especially when it comes to people who’ve never tried out a vape before, figuring out whether they’d prefer an MTL or DTL device can be difficult.

These days there’s an abundance of devices (like the Smok Nord series or the Voopoo VSuit Mod) that can double as both an MTL and DTL device. These devices offer new vapers the opportunity to try out both ends of the vaping spectrum, and once they’ve decided on one or the other, they can then invest in a more specialized device. Such devices will often come bundled with both a sub-ohm, low-resistance coil (for DTL vaping), and a high resistance coil (for MTL vaping).

Generally speaking, newer vapers will prefer Pod Kits to Box kits since they come with less of an associated learning curve and they come with a more hassle-free experience. A lot of these kits will not feature refillable pods, though, so they might make for a rather costly addition to your daily routine. Either way, given the many great options available (like the nexMESH pod), and the fact that pods tend to be lighter on the pocket, you might as well start out with one now and make the switch to Mod Kits later if you feel like doing so.