The Electronic Cigarette Company asked if we’d be interested in a couple of their newer starter kits and first up for review is the Joyetech Widewick pod kit which is aimed squarely at the first time vaper. This has a rather unique wicking system with a mesh coil and comes rather attractively priced at just £9.99 so I thought it might well be worth seeing how well this performed.
Specifications
- 113 x 23.5 x 12.5 mm
- 37.5 grams
- 800mAh battery
- 2ml pod
- 1.2 mesh ohm coil (Kanthal)
- Unique Widewick technology
The packaging is rather basic as you might expect at this super low price point and although the box took a little bit of a beating in transit, the contents arrived undamaged. The Widewick ships with just one pod and the battery is sealed in a protective plastic wrapper with some basic instructions. You do get a choice of seven colours though, and I was sent the “Red” version to test which starts off black at the base and graduates into a deep red at the top.
The Joyetech Widewick has a 800mAh battery capacity which is quite a bit more generous than many similar kits which typically only have around 500mAh, this does make it a bit more chunky than its rivals, but the plastic and aluminium construction means that it’s still small and light enough to throw into a pocket. This is a draw activated device with a pinhole air inlet on either side of the battery located where the base of the pod sits, the pod is held securely in place at the top by magnets.
There is a bright LED at the base which will light up when you take a puff or plug it in to charge. There’s no colour changes present here so you won't get any warning that your battery is about to run out which brings us onto charging.
Charging is done via a USB-C port on the base but you’ll need to supply your own cable. Charging is limited to just 0.5amps which meant that although I recorded a final charge of 829mAh, it took a whopping two hours which was mildly disappointing. At least vape whilst charging is supported which does offset this problem somewhat and with the Widewick battery only outputting 9 to 12 watts of power to the 1.2 ohm coil, you’ll easily get a full day out (if not two) out of a single charge.
The Widewick pod is where things get interesting with a large polymer composite cotton wick surrounding the 1.2 ohm kanthal mesh coil and filling the bottom half of the pod. Airflow comes in from the base and is a medium tightness mouth to lung draw. In the TPD edition, there’s a childproof rubber grommet in the fill port with a small air relief hole on the opposite side. I’m assuming the 2ml pod is PCTG but this isn’t actually stated anywhere I could find and we had to make enquiries about the coil material as well.
To fill the pod Joyetech suggests pressing the mouthpiece on the flat side as shown on the left. I actually found this quite hard to do and quickly learnt that it was in fact easier to do by pressing on the shorter side as shown on the right.
With the mouthpiece removed, filling was easy enough but Joyetech recommend a maximum bottle nozzle of 3.3mm, as you’ll likely be using this with high nicotine 10ml bottles anyway it shouldn’t really be an issue. On the first fill you’ll see the polymer composite cotton Widewick gradually start to saturate and after a few minutes left to itself there was a considerable air gap at the top of the pod showing just how much it had soaked up! I’d definitely recommend letting this sit for several minutes on that first fill and then giving it a quick top up as I did before taking your first hit.
The 1.2ohm kanthal mesh coil gives cracking flavour for a pod kit, and that Widewick technology does it’s job keeping the coil fully saturated at all times. I did tend to want to fill this up when there’s no liquid visible at the top of the pod, but in reality there’s no need as there’s still quite a lot of liquid soaked into that polymer cotton wick at the base.
I did initially find the autodraw a bit hit and miss until I realized that I was unconsciously slipstreaming (letting additional air in through the side of my mouth), you need to get a really good seal around the mouthpiece when you inhale and then it works perfectly every time. The Widewick also seems to soak up any condensation as well as I’ve had absolutely zero under the pod.
The pod is disposable so once the coil is no longer performing well, you need to bin it and buy a replacement. Widewick Pods come in packs of two and are also competitively priced at £4.99 a pack.
Pros
- Widewick keeps the coil saturated
- Kanthal mesh coil with good flavour
- Lightweight kit
- Good battery capacity
Cons
- Slow charging
- No charge capacity indicator
Conclusion
The Joyetech Widewick is perfect for the new vaper with no complicated buttons, and you’re virtually guaranteed not to get a dry hit thanks to the Widewick technology, especially at the price point that this is being offered at. If you’re a current smoker, then I’d recommend this over a disposable pod system any day of the week and I wish kits had been this good and this inexpensive when I first started vaping, it probably would have helped me quit much sooner!
Many thanks to The Electronic Cigarette Company for sending the Joyetech Widewick kit out for review.
Antony Lord
Reviewer at POTVI was a twenty a day smoker for 25 years and like most smokers I was always going to quit "next week". Having hit my mid forties and having the usual smokers cough and difficulty with anything more than moderate exercise it was obviously time to give up the cancer sticks. I bought my first e-cigarette in 2013 when they were expensive, difficult to find and quite frankly... crap. I used it for about a week then went back to the roll ups, mark up another failed quit attempt. The fact that I had just changed jobs and was under quite a lot of stress probably didn't help. Move on to 2016 and whilst I was browsing eBay I noticed that one of the suggested items that would occasionally pop up was for a cheap e-cigarette. It looked similar to the one I'd bought 3 years earlier but it was only £5 (about 8 times cheaper than before) so I decided to give it another go on a whim. Once the kit arrived I managed to gradually replace the cigarettes with my new kit over a two month period and got into watching YouTube reviews for newer kit. My cheap and cheerful kit was replaced by a more upmarket affair, and being a noob I made a mistake once it arrived... I put in the supplied direct lung coil, this was of course a complete revelation and I haven't touched a cigarette since. Oh and I no longer spend the first five minutes of every day having a coughing fit either.
Join the discussion
VOOPOO VMate i2
VOOPOO have released another update to a classic pod kit, this time it is the turn of the VMate pod kit which has been refreshed and rereleased as the imaginatively named VMate i2
Vaporesso XROS 4 Nano
Vaporesso follow their pattern of expanding the family with the latest XROS Nano 4 kit, and Stephen got to try it out
Joyetech EVIO M Pro Kit
Stephen goes in for round 2 with the new Joyetech Evio M Pro kit
Joyetech Evio M Kit
Joyetech have disposable users in their sights with the surprisingly versatile Evio M Pod kit