Finding The Most Efficient Vaporizer & 5 Simple Tricks to Save Your Hard Earned Money

In a day and age where efficiency is an obsession in literally everything we do…

Getting a vaporizer that’s the most efficient with your herb is a quest worth pursuing.

While vaporizing in and of itself is already way more efficient than smoking:

• You will inhale 50% to 80% more cannabinoids when vaping compared to smoking using the same amount of herb…

…there are significant differences between vaporizers in terms of how much herb they use to produce potent clouds of vapor.

While some vaporizers slow down your consumption significantly, others use your herb at a pace that’s only slightly slower than smoking.

If conserving herb and more importantly, and with it, your money, is important to you, you’ve come to the right place.

When it comes to the efficiency of vaporizers, the term ‘efficiency’ can be defined in many different ways.

But there’s only one definition that I can test, which keep in mind, is still highly subjective:

Which vaporizers need the least amount of herb to get you medicated effectively?

In short, the most efficient vaporizer is one with the following characteristics:

1. On-demand heating;
2. Convection heating;
3. Small bowl/herb chamber;
4. Large distance between the heating element and the bowl/herb chamber;
5. A precise or interval-based temperature control system which is capable of reaching at least 428°F /220°C.

Most desktop vaporizers have exactly these characteristics, except, they usually don’t have a small bowl. There are also a few portable vaporizers that have these characteristics, including a small bowl.

But there are techniques you can use with any vaporizer, to reduce the amount of herb it needs to produce effective vapor.

And if you get a cheap dry herb vaporizer under $100, that’s also efficient…you’ll get a return on your investment in no time.

Browse by category, click any of the links below to jump to each category:

Threshold-Efficiency and Session-Efficiency Explained
Why Convection Vaporizers Are More Efficient
Why A Small Bowl Is More Efficient
Why You Want Distance Between the Heating Element and your Bowl
Why A Precise or Interval Based Temperature Control System Is More Efficient
What You Can Do to Increase Efficiency
The Most Efficient Vaporizers in the World

1. Threshold-Efficiency and Session-Efficiency Explained

In the introduction, I already explained that the only real measurable way to assess the efficiency of a vaporizer is by looking at how much herb it needs to get you medicated effectively.

But this is still vague.

Because how are you supposed to measure this?

Well, I found two ways I can measure this:

1. The threshold-efficiency of a vaporizer;
2. The session-efficiency of a vaporizer.

But what exactly are these?

Threshold-Efficiency

This essentially is the minimum amount of herb that’s needed in the bowl of your vaporizer to produce a satisfying hit.

Generally speaking:

• The smaller your bowl, the less herb you’ll need to produce a satisfying hit.

Session-Efficiency

This is how efficient your vaporizer will be during your vaping session. What it boils down to is the following:

• Does the vaporizer heat and thus waist any herb while you aren’t drawing?

Why does this distinction matter?

These are two very different types of efficiency.

Let me explain:

If you’re the type of user who generally just takes a few quick draws…AND efficiency is important to you, you’re going to want a vaporizer with a good threshold-efficiency thus has a small bowl.

If you’re the type of user who generally likes to go for long sessions…AND efficiency is important to you, you’re going to want a vaporizer with a good session-efficiency, thus is 100% convection and has its heating element separated from the bowl.

Now let’s talk about these specific vaporizer-features.

2. Why On-Demand Convection Vaporizers Are More Efficient

A true convection heating mechanism heats your herb 100% by means of hot air. Hot air flows through the whole heating chamber and through your herb…decarboxylating and converting cannabinoids into vapor no matter the location of your herb inside the bowl.

Now:

Let’s compare this to a conduction vaporizer. In a conduction heating system, your herb literally gets cooked by means of a heated surface.

To illustrate, I want you to imagine a bowl filled with dry herb. The bowl is heated on every side. However, the middle of the bowl isn’t in direct contact with the heated surfaces. This means that the herb that’s in the middle, but more generally, all the pieces that are not in direct contact with the heated surfaces, get exposed to less heat. If you have an effective conduction system, the heat will get distributed quite evenly. However, it will never be as even as a 100% convection heating system.

With a convection-heating system, a more complete extraction is much easier.

In theory, you could reach the same level of extraction with a conduction vaporizer. But this would take time and periodic stirring of the herbs inside the bowl.

Another advantage of a pure convection vaporizer is that it only exposes your herb to hot air when you’re pulling (drawing) the heated air over your herbs. When you’re not drawing, a convection vaporizer doesn’t expose your herb to significant heat.

Important here to note is that portable vaporizers are rarely 100% convection.

Here’s why:

Because portable vaporizers are so compact, no matter the heating system, heating up your vaporizer for longer periods (more than 10 seconds) will always lead to some conduction/radiant heating in the bowl.

Even a so-called 100% convection portable vaporizer will usually have some degree of conduction and radiant heating present.

Conduction and radiant heating lead to constant cooking of the herb inside your bowl, whether you’re drawing or not. And a session vaporizer is constantly powering the heating element, from the moment you turn on your session vaporizer, to the moment you turn it off.

It’s not hard to see how you will need more herb to get medicated effectively when conduction and radiant heating are present.

Enter on-demand vaporizers.

On-demand vaporizers only heat up the herb inside your bowl when you press a button. The heating element is only active when you press that specific button. With an on-demand vaporizer, you press the heating button, take a hit, and immediately stop the heating process afterward.

Keep in mind that there are on-demand conduction vaporizers like the MFLB which only keep an active heating element while you keep the button pressed…but the nature of conduction is such that your bowl won’t immediately cool down.

2. Why A Small Bowl Is More Efficient

The cannabinoids in your herb need time to kick in, and a vaporizer with a small bowl forces you to LET them kick in before you decide that you don’t feel ‘anything’.

A small bowl is more efficient because of two reasons…

Reason 1: With any bowl what you want to do is pack it quite well and fill it up at least decently.

Why?

With most vaporizers, you need to fill the bowl at least somewhat decently to get proper vapor production.

If you, for example, fill only 10% of the bowl with herb, the vapor you’ll get will be very wispy. This doesn’t mean you’re not inhaling any cannabinoids…but if you’re anything like me you’ll want to definitely feel something too and not just ‘know’ you’re inhaling vapor.

What happens if you keep getting wispy vapor? Well, in the worst case, you’ll give up on vaping and go back to smoking.

To give an example, you have:

• Vaporizer 1: with a bowl capacity of 0.5 grams, and
• Vaporizer 2: with a bowl capacity of 0.1 grams.

Now let’s say for argument’s sake that you need to fill the bowl for at least 50% to get decent and visible vapor (in reality this percentage differs per vaporizer). With vaporizer 1 you need at least 0.25 grams of herb to get decent and visible vapor, while with vaporizer 2 you only need 0.05 grams.

I’m not saying that 0.05 grams will get you exactly where you want. But it will help you control it better. Maybe you’ll need 0.1 grams, or maybe 0.15. With vaporizer 1 (which needs at least 0.25 grams to produce effective vapor), you’ll never know whether smaller amounts of herb work for you.

If your tolerance isn’t high 0.05 grams of herb with the right vaporizer may get you medicated properly.

Reason 2: Another advantage of a small bowl is that it forces you to use your herb little by little.

Let’s say your tolerance is quite high and you ‘think’ you need at least 0.25 grams of herb to get medicated properly.

Again you have:

• Vaporizer 1: with a bowl capacity of 0.5 grams, and
• Vaporizer 2: with a bowl capacity of 0.1 grams.

With vaporizer 1 you just put in 0.25 grams herb in your bowl, not only because that’s the minimum to get decent and visible vapor, but also that’s what you ‘think’ you need to get there.

Now you try vaporizer 2 and fully pack the bowl with 0.1 grams of herb. You hit it, devour it in a series of 10 strong and dense hits…and all over the period of 15 minutes.

“Alright, the next 0.1 gram you think…”

But while you’re grinding up your next 0.1 gram you come to realize you’re already far away in THC-land.

The best part?

You really didn’t need that extra 0.1 gram, but you never realized it because you never tested it…and now you’ll be saving money.

Summarized:

• The cannabinoids in your herb need time to kick in, and a vaporizer with a small bowl forces you to LET them kick in before your herb-hunger takes over.

3. Why You Want Distance Between the Heating Element and Your Bowl

This one is only applicable to convection vaporizers. With conduction vaporizers, you actually need the bowl to be very close to the heating element.

You already know why convection vaporizers are more efficient, just to recap:

1. Convection heats your herb more thoroughly and evenly which leads to more complete extraction, and;
2. Convection only exposes your herb to the heat while you’re drawing (not wasting your precious cannabinoids).

Here’s the kicker:

If you have a convection vaporizer and the heating element is close to your bowl, it will always produce a certain degree of conduction and radiant heating. In practice, most convection-based portable vaporizers have some conduction and radiant heating going on. That’s why 100% convection vaporizers are few and far between.

The perfect vaporizer when it comes to efficiency has a good distance between the heating element and the bowl.

4. Why A Precise Temperature Control System Is More Efficient

Even though THC is the most well-known cannabinoid in…

There are many other cannabinoids and other compounds like terpenes in your herb, which have medicative properties (maybe not always directly like THC but all of these substances do also influence each other and their respective effects).

All of these compounds have different boiling points and thus start off-gassing at different temperatures as well. Different vaping temperatures result in different chemical profiles of your vapor.

Why does this matter?

If you want to extract every compound out of your herb, the most efficient way is to start with the cannabinoids that have the lowest boiling point, and gradually work your way up to the cannabinoids with higher boiling points. Most vaporizers have a maximum temperature that’s below the combustion point of cannabis (446°F / 230°C), but if you don’t then make sure to stay below this temperature.

When you give your vaporizer enough time at every interval to extract all of the compounds, it may result in a more complete extraction.

Here’s why:

If you only vape at the higher temperature ranges, you will get a couple of massive dense, but harsh draws…which is great if you’re looking for those face-slammer rips, but less good for taste and efficiency.

As explained before, the most efficient way to vape is to do it relatively slowly. Because:

You will have more time to realize the effects of your vapor if you take 15-20 modest draws compared to five (5) face slammers.

Again…don’t underestimate the impact of giving the cannabinoids enough time to kick-in has on conserving your herb!

And it’s quite obvious why it doesn’t work to only vape in the lower temperature ranges:

First of all, some compounds will be completely absent in your vapor. Plus, if you only go as far as the boiling point of a certain compound, you won’t extract every molecule of it, leaving much on the table.

5. What You Can Do to Increase Efficiency

Do weed vaporizers save money in general? Yes. No matter what vaporizer you use, you will save money compared to smoking cannabis.

But there are techniques you can use to make your vaporizer even more efficient.

1. Pack Your Bowl Appropriately

Packing your bowl properly is a two-fold process. First, you have to fill it up to the minimum amount that’s needed to get decent and visible vapor.

How much this ‘minimum’ amount is, really differs per vaporizer.

If you want to know the specific minimum amount of a particular vaporizer, read our vaporizer reviews. I really suggest you do this if you want to vape efficiently.

The second process is about grinding your marijuana properly for your particular vaporizer and how loosely you need to pack your bowl.

Now:

How exactly you should grind your vaporizer, depends mostly on the type of heating mechanism your vaporizer uses:

Conduction

Grind your herb as fine as you can and pack your bowl for at least 50% with the screen technique and at least 80% without it for best efficiency (and vapor quality) results.

Conduction heating works by means of exposing your herb directly to a heated surface.

What this means is you want your herb to be as fine as possible so every little particle can easily get exposed to the heated surface by stirring (more about stirring your herb later).

Convection

Usually, it’s best to use a medium to fine grind and pack your bowl relatively loose but full.

It basically comes down to using a grind and pack that is facilitative of letting the hot air easily pass through your bowl and through your herb.

You want to maximize the airflow the best you can while exposing every trichome of your herb.

A super-fine grind will block your airflow severely. Also, don’t pack it so loose your herb keeps flopping around when you’re vaping! You don’t want to disturb the delicate extraction process.

2. Stir Your Material

With most vaporizers…to get the most out of your herb it’s best to stir up your bowl every couple of draws.

With conduction vaporizers, it’s obvious why…you need to let every little particle of your herb hit the heated surface.

But even with convection vaporizers, it is definitely advisable. With a 100% perfectly working convection vaporizer this wouldn’t be needed…

The reality unfortunately is:

There aren’t many 100% convection vaporizers. This means stirring will help to expose those ‘hard-to-reach’ trichomes to the heated air. And this, in turn, means you will get the most out of your herb and thus need less herb to get you where you want…

…increasing efficiency and saving money!

3. Keep Your Vaping Companion Clean

To keep your vaporizer functioning properly and efficiently, you need to regularly clean it.

Don’t let any resin build up in any parts of your air path and especially keep your bowl/filling chamber and the screen in your bowl/filling chamber clean.

You want to keep airflow at the maximum, otherwise, extraction will be half-assed and your efficiency (and wallet) will take a hit.

4. Start Your Temperature Low and Increase it Gradually

This is important for efficiency but was already covered and I don’t want to sound like a broken record…you can read about it here.

5. Turn Your AVB into Edibles

If you didn’t know already…

AVB stands for ‘Already Vaped Bud’. Another abbreviation that’s often used to refer to the same thing is ‘ABV’ which stands for ‘Already Been Vaped’. However, you choose to call it…they both mean the same thing:

• AVB or ABV is the herb that’s leftover after your vaporizer got intimate with it.

Unlike smoking, vaping your herb does not turn it into a toxic and stinky pile of ash ready to be thrown in your trashcan. Unless you vaped at really high temperatures…

If you vaped mostly around the combustion point of marijuana (446°F / 230°C), most cannabinoids will be fully extracted and your AVB won’t have much potency. Besides, the taste of such AVB will be absolutely horrible.

How to recognize such AVB? It will be dark brown/blackish and will smell bad (note that most AVB will not smell very pleasant, but dark brown/blackish AVB will smell particularly bad).

I actually vaped for a full year before I realized/learned this:

If you keep your temperature relatively low and your AVB still looks light brownish…your AVB can DIRECTLY be used in numerous ways for oral ingestion to get even more bang for your buck (you don’t have to cook AVB to let the cannabinoid acids decarboxylate to their corresponding cannabinoids, this was already done during the vaporization process!):

• You can make edibles out of it (cannabutter, cannoil, etc.);
• You can directly eat it (advisable is to put it in capsules).

Important:

Be very careful when using AVB. Experiment by starting with very low doses and every time keep all your variables the same while vaping (your vaporizer, the temperature you vape at, your strain, etc.). If all the variables stay the same while you’re creating the AVB, it will be easier to experiment and you’ll get a more consistent experience.

Because AVB has the potential to hit like a truck and when it does there really is no way back…you just have to sit it out. It might not make for a very pleasant experience.

6. What’s the Most Efficient Vaporizer in the World?

As explained in the introduction, vaporizers are always more efficient than smoking.

However, vaporizers with the following characteristics are more efficient than others:

1. On-demand heating;
2. Convection heating;
3. Small bowl/herb chamber;
4. Large distance between the heating element and the bowl/herb chamber;
5. A precise or interval-based temperature control system which is capable of reaching at least 428°F /220°C.

Based on these characteristics, you’ll find the most efficient vaporizers below:

#1 E-Nano Log Vaporizer (Desktop)

While the E-Nano isn’t a true on-demand vaporizer, it functions as one.

How the E-Nano works almost as a true on-demand vaporizer is like this:

Because the E-Nano’s heating element doesn’t draw much electricity, you can easily keep it on 24/7. Just make sure to not put the heating dial on the highest setting.

Now:

Whenever you decide to take a draw from your E-Nano, all you have to do is take a draw. Since the heating element is on, it will immediately send hot air to your herb in the bowl.

And since the E-Nano works with a 100% convection heating system, the heated air only gets pulled inside the bowl when you’re drawing. While the 100% convection heating system doesn’t make the E-Nano special compared to other desktop vaporizers, what does make the E-Nano special is that it produces impressive clouds of vapor with very small amounts of herb. It has a small bowl for a desktop vaporizer. It starts producing good vapor with only o.04 grams of herb.

It’s one of the most efficient vaporizers you can get.

• Compare the E-Nano to other high-rated desktop vaporizers here.

#2 VapCap M (Portable)

The VapCap M is a true on-demand portable vaporizer. It doesn’t even have a heating element. It heats up by means of an external butane torch lighter.

The VapCap M only heats up while you put the flame to the bowl. You completely control the heating process. This is on-demand vaping at its best.

Combine this on-demand heating with the tiny bowl of this vaporizer, and you have the perfect recipe for a highly efficient vaporizer. One that can produce proper clouds with a measly 0.05 grams of herb.

The only thing the VapCap M doesn’t have is a precise temperature control system. Although you can control the temperature roughly: high, medium, or low, you can’t really go more precise than that.

• Compare the VapCap M to other high-rated portable vaporizers here.

#3 MIQRO (Portable)

The MIQRO is another great portable vaporizer for micro-dosing.

It’s the most compact vaporizer you can get. It also comes with a small bowl with a maximum capacity of 0.15 grams.

While it’s a conduction session vaporizer and not an on-demand vaporizer, if you put 0.05 grams of herb inside and finish it within one session, it almost functions as an on-demand vaporizer.

The best part?

You can control the temperature within 4 intervals, making it very easy to start at a low-temperature setting, and gradually work your way up.

Bottom line:

Even though the MIQRO doesn’t fit the blueprint of a perfectly efficient vaporizer, its small bowl and interval-based temperature control system make it suitable to perform well with only 0.05 grams of herb.

• Compare the MIQRO to other high-rated portable vaporizers here.

And Finally…

Now that you’ve learned all ins and outs of vaporizer efficiency, you will not only be saving herb but more importantly: your hard-earned money!

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