In the World of Weed Vapes, These Brands Are the Movers and Shakers

In 2014, the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year was “vape.” However, even a decade ago, that word was more commonly applied to nicotine products. It would take another couple of years for the term to become common in the world of cannabis.

Today, weed vaping is one of the most preferred methods of cannabis consumption, courtesy largely because of its convenience, effectiveness and (of course) the increasing legality of recreational marijuana. That also means the marketplace for such devices has metaphorically exploded: literally thousands of vapes — be they the disposable concentrate-filled variety, the reusable dry herb variety and anything in between.

So how does one suss out which weed vapes are worth your time and money? You can start by getting to know some of the big names in the space — the ones that have proven themselves in the community. That’s why we’ve wrangled together the seven tried-and-true weed vape brands you should know.

AirVape

AirVape

AirVape is surprisingly cagey about who the brand is and what it stands for — there’s not even an About page on the company website. But that close-to-the-vest attitude hasn’t stopped the brand from becoming one of the bigger names in vapes, and the one that caters most closely to the upscale, luxury crowd. That’s really what AirVape’s offerings are all about: opulence.

That being said, the brand does actually have a very prolific blog, as well, which offers a wide variety of informational posts ranging from subjects including why weed gives you the munchies to how 420 came to be as a concept (and everything in between). It’s an interesting dichotomy, to be sure, but the fact remains: AirVape is a name to know in the cannabis vaporizer space.

AirVape

Best Luxury Vape

AirVape Legacy Pro

If you’re a fan of good-looking gear of any kind, the AirVape Legacy Pro might be the vape for you — so long as you can afford the price tag. It’s made with high-end materials (like ceramic, vegan leather and 24K gold plating) and looks almost like a sleek piece of musical equipment (perhaps a studio microphone). Better still, it is super simple to use, even for a first-time user (as our tester discovered).

It also has a big, powerful battery, ultra-quick heating — one of the shortest our tester experienced — and it pulls a great amount of smooth vapor, even right out of the box. Unfortunately, the way the bowl works makes it easy to make a mess of (the whole front panel opens up like a door and the bowl is situated toward the bottom, facing out). But, besides that minor annoyance, our tester had nothing but good things to say about this luxurious vape.

Specs

Compatible With	Dry Herb, Concentrate
Heating Type	Conduction

Pros

• Super easy and quick to use
• Great pulls, even for a first-time user
• Pleasing styling, like a piece of high-end musical equipment

Cons

• Fairly large, not ideal for taking on-the-go
• Small bowl, and design makes it easy to get dirty

• $269 at AirVape

Arizer

Arizer

Arizer doesn’t have a large social media presence. In fact, the brand’s social feeds — what few it does have — are prominently focused on its products. While that might seem odd to some, it gives a pretty good idea of who Arizer is as a company. It’s not seeking clout or grasping for influencer collabs. It doesn’t have to.

This brand has carved out an appropriate niche for itself: Arizer makes great vapes centered on the user experience, and little else matters. And if you don’t believe us, you can take a quick gander at the various weed vape forums out there, and you’ll see plenty of praise for the brand. We’ve also reviewed the Arizer Solo II MAX, the latest, upgraded version of the brand’s beloved Solo II.

Arizer

Arizer Solo II MAX

Arizer’s Solo II was already one of the best weed vapes around, but the Solo II MAX improves on it in a number of ways, including by adding tech and accessories that allow you easily to flip it upside down and use it in your bong. While many of the upgrades are incremental, it’s still impressive that the brand could improve on the previous iteration at all.

Specs

Compatible with	Dry herb
Heating Type	Hybrid

Pros

• Capable of inverting, compatible with most bongs
• Still has all of the Solo II's great features
• Smoking modes even more customizable than before

Cons

• Large price jump for relatively small upgrades

Read our full review of the Arizer Solo II MAX

• $269.99 at Arizer

DaVinci

Davinci

Taking your name from a legendary artist and engineer is a pretty big flex, but DaVinci is confident that its product lineup and continuous focus on imagination and innovation speak for themselves. Of course, you could always just look at user reviews to see whether this gamble paid off (spoiler: it did).

The brand centers its business on three tenets: purity, innovation and control — and it takes them very seriously. But it’s not all seriousness; the brand also has a playful nature just below the surface, positioning its devices as great for travelers and adventurers. If that sounds like you, this might be the vape brand for you.

Davinci

Best Vape for Sharing

Davinci IQC Vaporizer

The DaVinci IQC is truly a vape designed to share with its antimicrobial mouthpiece, large bowl, 8-minute session length, solid battery life, and incredibly full vapor it is suitable to get a whole group toasted with straight flower. Out of the box, the IQC is incredibly intuitive to use & if you want to adjust features like session length and temperature intervals an app is available for IOS and Android. The glass-lined ceramic bowl on the bottom of the device is fairly easy to pack and keep clean and the wide ceramic zirconium vapor pathway contributes to a cool smoke.

Our tester found that the IQC produced incredibly cool, flavorful and full vapor when sipped on and was impressed by the volume of vapor output by the device. It’s the first dry herb vape our tester reported was able to do smoke tricks on. Although we haven’t tested the ShareSafe antimicrobial mouthpiece under a microscope just yet, the FDA’s approval of the material gave our tester peace of mind when sharing with friends.

Specs

Compatible With	Dry Herb, Concentrate
Heating Type	Conduction

Pros

• Antimicrobial mouthpiece
• Outstanding vapor quality and volume
• Good battery life
• Easy to maintain

Cons

• Not discreet
• Fragile hinge design

Read our full review of the Davinci IQC Vaporizer

• $199 at Davinci

G Pen

G Pen

G Pen is an interesting and unique brand, perhaps the one most ingrained in the public eye, largely because of the brand’s ongoing celebrity partnerships (that’s Mike Tyson with some of his signature G Pen products above). And it’s not just celebs; the brand also has Artist Series vapes designed by some big names in the art world and a full Charity Series collection, the sales of which partly go toward non-profits.

Perhaps all of those collaborations are possible because the brand also has one of the most widely beloved collections of cannabis vaporizers and other accessories (we’re quite fond of the G Pen Dash and the G Pen Dash+, both of which we’ve reviewed). Their products are extremely user-friendly, even if they’re not the most premium around—but, to be honest, user-friendliness is higher on our list, anyway.

G Pen

Best Pax Plus Alternative

G Pen Dash+

While it is named similarly to our best budget vape, the G Pen Dash, this is a completely different beast — a very good thing, in this case. Much more feature-rich and user-friendly than its smaller, cheaper sibling, the Dash+ is a world apart, offering a far greater swath of capabilities that translate to an overall better experience. The one downside: it’s a good deal larger than its namesake. If you can look past the size increase, however, this vape stands among the best of them, perhaps even beating out the Pax Plus for some users (especially those in search of a clearer, more fleshed-out user interface). It’s not without issues, our tester notes, as the magnetic cap still heats up too much and is easy to knock off. But the trade-off (features like a flat base, which make it easier to load) is well worth it.

Specs

Compatible With	Dry Herb
Heating Type	Hybrid

Pros

• Elegant, streamlined experience
• Easy to load thanks to flat-bottom design
• Somewhat high price, but worth the investment

Cons

• Magnetic cap can easily be knocked off
• Requires deep inhales to be effective
• Misleading naming convention

Read our full review of the G Pen Dash+

• $100 at gpen.com
  $150 (33% off)

Pax

Pax

Occupying a unique spot in cannabis culture, Pax has practically become synonymous with weed vapes — and for good reason: its catalog, although small, includes some of the most beloved (or at least most talked about) devices on the market today. In fact, the Pax Plus and Pax Mini are among the best vapes we’ve ever tested. But the devices the brand makes (and its array of other products, like edibles and concentrate cartridges), however exceptional, are only a part of the brand’s story.

Yes, Pax makes dry herb- and concentrate-compatible vaporizers that are great for the average recreational user. But it has also made a big push for social justice, as well, participating in programs such as the Last Prisoner Project, Weed for Warriors, and its own plaform, Peace by Pax. Love or hate the brand’s devices (but, seriously, how could you hate them?), it’s hard to argue with a cannabis vaporizer brand that tries to utilize its platform and influence for good.

Pax

Best Overall Weed Vape

Pax Plus

After more than six years on the market, the industry-leading Pax 3 weed vaporizer has finally, officially been supplanted by the next generation from the same brand. Called the Pax Plus, this vaporizer can still do everything that its predecessor can do — smoke both dry herb and concentrate, swap modules on the fly, work with a single push of a button, heat to exacting temperatures, super simple USB charging, etc. — but it does all of them just a little bit better. It’s also slightly smaller, the pieces are easier to swap out, the instructions are clearer … the list just keeps going.

It’s worth noting, however, that our reviewer found that the changes, while numerous and varied, are somewhat incremental. That is to say, users of the Pax 3 will probably find the Pax Plus to be very familiar and, perhaps, even a little lackluster in its suite of upgrades. Still, the 3 was such a great weed vape that to improve on it at all is an achievement. And that makes the Pax Plus worthy of the top spot on our list.

Read our full Pax Plus review.

Specs

Compatible With	Dry Herb, Concentrate
Heating Type	Conduction

Pros

• Extremely easy to use
• Numerous accessories for custom vaping
• Even smaller than previous generation

Cons

• Still quite expensive
• Only incremental improvements over Pax 3

• $160 at Pax
  $200 (20% off)

Puffco

Puffco

Some years ago, THC concentrate — also known as hash, dabs, wax, honey, etc. — was a fringe method of cannabis consumption. Today, it’s something you can find in just about any licensed dispensary. Puffco, founded in 2013, had a big hand in making that shift happen, as the brand was born specifically with the aim of making concentrates easier to consume (and, by proxy, making the overall experience better).

And it’s not just technology and innovation that makes Puffco special; the brand has also endeavored to make consuming THC concentrate safer by removing toxins common in other brands’ products and producing devices that are safer for use. While this brand does make a variety of gear (including our favorite discreet bong, the Cupsy), it still focuses primarily and largely on concentrate-focused vapes (like the Peak Pro below).

Puffco

Best Smart Weed Vape

Puffco Peak Pro

Unlike the original Puffco Peak, the Peak Pro has a sensor in the concentrate chamber that communicates with the device, keeping the temperature at where it needs to be regardless of how much you inhale or how much concentrate you put in, giving a controlled and consistent dab experience. The app allows for setting a custom temperature outside of the four pre-programmed heat settings, the ability to save custom heat profiles and flashy functionalities like LED customization (although the Stealth mode is useful for public dabbing). If you’d like a dabbing contraption that fits in your pocket, the Peak Plus ($90) is a great option. Our tester found that this rather expensive offering is also a pretty big pain to clean — although skipping on the frequency won’t affect the quality of the device as much as its appearance. However, they did discover that it is also very easy to clean and is both convenient and safe to use, especially for people who are perhaps a bit clumsy.

Specs

Compatible With	Concentrate
Heating Type	Conduction

Pros

• Easy to clean
• App compatibility offers maximum control

Cons

• Fragile glass cone
• High suggested cleaning frequency

Read our full review of the Puffco Peak Pro

• $370 at Puffco
  $420 (12% off)

Storz & Bickel

Storz & Bickel

It’s probably safe to call Storz & Bickel the godfather of weed vape brands, as the pioneering company was founded back in 2002 — long before “vape” was a colloquially accepted term (and its history dates even further back than that, to 1996). Today, the brand exports to over 100 different countries and serves a customer base of over 250,000 clients a year.

That’s to say nothing of the brand’s robust lineup of offerings, which started with the original Volcano — a hefty tabletop vape designed originally for medical use — and most recently saw the advent of the Venty — the world’s fastest-heating dry herb vape and the first with an adjustable airflow. Headquartered out of Germany, Storz & Bickel is to vaping what Victorinox (the sole official maker of Swiss Army Knives) is to multi-tools; yes, the brand is that significant.

Storz & Bickel

Fastest Weed Vape

Storz & Bickel Venty

The newest all-new offering from Storz & Bickel in about a decade, the Venty was worth the wait — at least according to our tester. While this device definitely sits at the very tippy top of the price pyramid, checking in at an eye-watering $449, the technology might make the cost seem more than worth it to some. That’s because this is the first-ever vape with an adjustable airflow, and it can heat up in just 20 seconds flat. While its larger size (like a TV remote, but thicker) makes it more suitable for home use (it’s not particularly portable), the smoothness of its hits and the convenience of its speed and robust battery make for an exceptional overall package … if you can afford the investment, of course.

Specs

Compatible With	Dry Herb
Heating Type	Hybrid

Pros

• Incredibly fast heating time
• Adjustable airflow for custom hit size
• Robust battery life
• Outstanding build quality

Cons

• Extremely Expensive
• Not very portable

Read our full review of the Storz & Bickel Venty

• $449 at Storz & Bickel

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