Let’s face it, vaping mods are fantastic bits of kit. Bigger and bulkier than vape pens they may be, but each of them comes complete with more and better features to supremely enhance a vaper’s experience. However, because they offer greater functionality, they’re more complex too, it must be said; which brings a need for clarification. Not least when all the mods you come across on the market are each individual but can also be categorised as everything from mechanical mods to box mods and regulated mods to unregulated mods. And this gives rise to a pair of big questions – what actually are regulated and unregulated mods? And what’s the difference between them?
The regulated mod
To go with a regulated mod is to play safe somewhat because it’s specifically designed to protect the device (or, more specifically, the battery) from getting damaged whatever you ask of it through vaping. Usually box mods – which means, yes, they often have something of a square shape – concern themselves with regulating the safety-level of vaping with low sub-ohms. What’s that about then, you may well ask? Well, most regulated mods enable the use of sub-ohm coils (which possess less than 1.0 ohms), so should the coil build of your device be dangerously low, the mod won’t let you vape – you won’t be able to fire the e-cig, turn the e liquid UK into vapour and an error message will be displayed.
Moreover, the same will happen if the mod detects the battery’s too low – it will prompt you to either charge the battery the mod contains or, if the battery’s dead, replace it with another fresh and/ or charged battery. You might also want to utilise a regulated mod to do the very thing from which it derives its name – to supply a regulated hit of vapour. This means then whatever setting for a hit you’ve given the mod (say, 25 watts), it’ll deliver a hit of that power every single time.
The unregulated mod
By contrast, unregulated mods – which are also often referred to as mechanical mods – aren’t capable of regulating the power of each hit you derive from your e-cig. There’s sometimes talk that they don’t err on the safe side (more like, they walk on the wild side), but so long as vapers are careful and committed to taking sensible safety measures when ‘modding’ and vaping, unregulated mods ought to be safe to use.
And safety measures here are important because the set-up of and experience given by the overall device is a lot freer with these mods. For instance, they enable sub-ohm vaping at as low a level as you desire and enable use of the e-cig until a battery’s fully spent; although many manufacturers and experts in a vape shop will always advise against vaping until the battery’s entirely depleted (basically because it could overwork the poor thing and potentially cause it to leak battery acid, which in turn could cause the thing to explode – not good!). Obviously too then, unlike with regulated mods, their unregulated counterparts will not deliver the same sort of hit every single time.
But which is better?
Well, while that’s a good question, that’s maybe not how to look at it when it comes to mods – because, as outlined above, regulated and unregulated mods do different things for different users at different times. Regulated mods are the (if you will) straighter and narrower choice, for sure, offering more guaranteed safety, while unregulated mods allow for experimentation among experienced and veteran vapers – especially those who like to think of themselves as ‘cloud chasers’.
It’s worth noting too, though, that if you are concerned about battery safety when vaping with mods, your best bet is to get your hands on a multimeter and an ohm reader as well, which will give you the detail you’ll want as to your ohm-levels as you vape and ensure that your battery remains in tip-top health and isn’t being overburdened to the point of harm.