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Comment by p1necone | Hacker News Reader

The thing that get's me about Juul is that it's basically a bunch of marketing money and visual design piled on a product that's strictly worse that the vaping options that came before it.

The biggest thing vs a regular mech mod is that it has single use proprietary cartridges that you have to throw out afterwards, vs spending less money on a bottle of vape juice that will last for way longer.

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"a product that's strictly worse that the vaping options that came before it."

this is false. the Juul product is a 3rd iteration of a long line of vaping innovations. Juul was far ahead of their competitors when they launched: small, practical, easy to use, great nicotine hit. they're so far ahead that most of their competitors now use the Juul model of selling a compact vape along with pre-filled pods.

So it's the Keurig + K Cup of the vape world?

That's just the Gillette of the coffee world.

Gillette is just the Levi Strauss of the personal care world.

Kind of. They're pushing big here in Indonesia by partnering with bars and supermarkets/minimarkets to make it more convenient for users to purchase their cartridges. Other e-liquids are only sold through e-commerce or specific hobby shops.

Isn’t there a claim that Juul popularized nicotine “salts” that are more satisfying than traditional vaping options for cigarette smokers?

It appears they popularized nicotine salts, but you can get nicotine salt ejuice for use in standard mod/tanks setups.

I don't have any experience to assess if it is more satisfying or smoother but I believe Juul has used both those claims in their marketing.

From my experience it's not 'smoother' per se, but you can inhale as you would smoke (MtL or Mouth to Lung), while the standard mod/tanks setups tends to be inhaled as you would 'shisha' (DtL or direct to lung). It's also quicker to get the 'hit' as salt-nicotine is quicker to absorb by the body.

While you can do Mouth-to-Lung on a Juul (mainly for vape tricks such as ghosting or french inhaling)l, I'd say it's much more common to Direct-to-Lung inhale at least among young adult nicotine fiends who are dependent on the substance.

Yes, AFAIK Juul was the first to popularise it. Using salt-nics enables device makers to use lower-wattage devices for the same nicotine 'hit', and also reduces the vapor output. This results in smaller devices due to smaller battery and more convenient to use.

As I understand it, yes. According to my friends who vape, Juul is still way ahead of everyone in the juice department. So much better they'll spend close to $60 a week on the stuff...

Pretty sure that's more expensive per volume than printer ink!

Pretty close to what I was paying as a pack-a-day cigarette smoker. They're copying the streaming TV subscription business model!

I've read, on HN, that Juul also has patents on nictoine salts that hit faster and don't last as long. e.g. the crack of nicotine.

You can buy third party compatible pods. It's pretty convenient compared to building coils, replacing pre-made coils, or even refilling a tank.

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