Blog Post
Voltage, Watts & Ohms Explained
What Are Ohms?
An ohm is a unit of resistance. Essentially, the lower the resistance, the more electricity will flow through it. When you increase the resistance, less electricity will flow through the device. A lower resistance atomiser has more electricity flowing through it, more heat is generated at the coil, more vapour is generated and you may experience a more intense flavour.
Sometimes you can also experience the following negative effects: your battery will drain quicker, you will use more e-liquid, you can get a dry hit and your atomiser life will be reduced.
When you use a high resistance atomiser the opposite will happen.
You’ll find that different e-liquids react differently, and that the resistance used can have a big impact on flavour, so it’s definitely an area for experimentation.
Variable Voltage/Wattage
The resistance of your atomiser is not the only thing which controls the amount of vapour, flavour and throat hit that is produced. It also depends on the amount of power flowing through your atomiser. Adjusting the voltage of a battery will allow you to get more vapour, flavour and throat hit you desire. You can also experiment with using different resistance atomisers and combining them with different voltages.
There are two common types of batteries or devices which allow different amounts of power to flow through your atomiser, which are known as variable voltage (VV) and variable wattage (VW). With a variable voltage device you manually control the amount of voltage going through your device. Variable voltage batteries allow you to increase or decrease the voltage provided by the battery, usually by pressing a button or by twisting the end of the battery.
With a variable wattage device, rather than telling the device how much power you want to flow through your atomiser, you tell it how much wattage you want it to output.
Watts is essentially how much power the device produces and voltage is how much power is put through the device.
What is mAh?
I’m sure you have seen mAh used to describe electronic cigarette batteries, mAh stands for Milliamps per hour and is basically the capacity of the battery or how long a battery lasts.
Sub Ohm Vaping
Sub-ohm vaping is to vape with an atomizer that has a coil with a resistance value of less than 1.0 ohms. Sub-ohming uses much more power to spread a larger amount of heat over a much larger area, which causes more e-liquid to be vaporized. Sub-ohm vaping is for experienced vapers who want to push the boundaries with their devices. Being that Sub Ohm vaping simply produce bigger clouds of vapour, this can also contribute to providing a mouthful of flavour with each draw. More intense clouds paired with great flavour is how it all started.
There are now a range of devices specifically built for sub-ohm vaping which make it easier for beginners to enjoy the experience.