Folks are coming into vaping and seeing sub-ohms and low resistance, etc, as the ‘standard’ for increasing your vape experience. And, for a while, that was the answer.

However, that was the answer when true regulation wasn’t that prolific.

Without going into a full vaping history diatribe here, we started with crappy 3.2-3.7v devices that couldn’t push anything lower than about a 1.8Ω atomizer without frying. People realized that they needed more heat, more power, more wattage. THe devices we had couldn’t do it, so mechanical style devices started happening. Flashlight mods mostly.

The point being, that crappy mosfet driven ego/cigalike couldn’t hit as hard as we wanted so we eliminated it with higher powered switches/mechanical style devices. Now, we’ve got raw battery voltage at 3.7v. We want more wattage so the only way to fix that is to reduce the resistance of our heating elements. And… that’s what happened. It became the standard, RBAs blew up, mechs blew up, etc.

Now, fast forward to today… the vast majority of people who’ve entered the vaping world are entering with MVPs, Twists, VV V3s, they’re graduating to Kicked devices, Provari, Vamo, Evic, even DNA powered devices… power and voltage regulation are prolific… but, a lot of folks are still constantly yearning for that ‘sub ohm’ vape…

But that’s pointless. We started reducing resistance to increase wattage, now we have the ability to increase our voltage. There’s no reason to reduce resistance with a regulated device. In fact, you’re hurting yourself because as soon as you drop below the max wattage and/or amp rating of your device, you’re essentially wasting money and effort.

If you have a lower cost regulated device like a twist, MVP, Vamo, etc, you’re not going to get 30w out of it. You also don’t need to… you do not want to build these things at .5 Ω.

This is where it starts to get complicated… first, we started reducing resistance to create more wattage, to do that, we had to go with thicker and thicker resistance wire or smaller and smaller coils. The downside to this was the coils heat up slower because they’re thicker or they have reduced vapor production because they’re smaller. So dual coils and what not started happening.

But here’s the trick,:with regulated power, you don’t have to use 28awg, you aren’t striving for a super low resistance coil. Build that puppy up to 2Ω with 30 or 32awg wire, build a nice, big, THIN WIRE coil. Thin wire and higher resistance means you can build a larger coil with a wire that’s going to heat up a LOT faster. That means more instant return, peak heat earlier in the hit, and a more rapid heat response. You’ll get an effectively higher temperature vape at a lower wattage level due to those aspects of thinner wire/larger coils. You’ll have significantly increased surface area for wire-juice contact which will produce more vapor.

In testing with my ZNA, I’ve run a wide variety of coil set ups. The best performing coil has been a single, 2Ω coil made out of 30awg wire.

Now, the coil isn’t the only thing that mattered, I had to increase my airflow to support that big coil with a big hole. I had to put wick all over the place around the coil to keep it juicy since it was firing so much faster and so much hotter than a ‘thick’ coil at a lower resistance.

The reason for this is because my device no longer gives a shit what my resistance is… it’s pushing out X wattage, regardless of what the coil is (As long as I’m within the operating parameters).

SO. Stop focusing on “sub ohm” if you’ve got a regulated device. Start thinking about the physics of vaping and build with that in mind on the platform you have access to.

If you’re running a mech, well… resistance IS king for you. If you’re running a regulated device, start thinking outside the standard low ohm concept and you’ll be amazed at the results.

Thanks to /u/SteamMonkey for the info!