What Battery For My E-Cigarette Do I Really Need?
E-Cigarette Batteries
E-Cigarette batteries come in all different shapes, sizes, and features. Batteries are rated by their power storage capacity; 650mAh, 1000mAh, 200mAh, and 2800mAh. The mAh is an abbreviation for milli-Amp-hours. In general, the higher the mAh, the more storage capacity a battery has, which means the longer the battery will last between charges.
Standard Batteries
These are fixed voltage batteries. This means that the voltage is set to one level of output, normally 3 to 4 volts. As the battery drains down, this voltage will decrease.
Variable Voltage, or VV Batteries
These batteries let you adjust the output voltage, typically from 3 to 5 or 6 volts. As the battery drains down, you can adjust the voltage back up.
Variable Wattage, or VW Batteries
These batteries let you you adjust the wattage output, typically from 5 to 15 watts of power. Wattage is a measurement of power consumption (or output) and is a calculation of voltage amperage. It is the amount of power output by the battery and consumed by the atomizer, which means as the battery drains down to lower voltages, the amount of power (amperage) is increased in order to maintain the same amount of wattage or power output. This is important in that it keeps the atomizer burning roughly at the same temperature, even as the voltage decreases. A Vw battery mimics the same behavior as manually cranking up the voltage adjustment of a VV battery as the battery drains, but does it automatically.
Intelligent Batteries
These batteries and Feature-rich, intelligent batteries such as the eVic by Joyetech, include advanced features such as VV, VW, digital displays, and usage log statistics that may be downloaded to your PC.
Why Does All of This Important?
E-Liquids, with their various levels of PG, VG, water, Nicotine, and especially flavorings, all vaporize at slightly different temperatures. One flavor may vaporize, and therefore taste better at a lower temperature than another E-Liquid. Adjusting the voltage or wattage output of a battery lets you obtain the optimal setting for vaporizing a specific E-Liquid, which affects its taste, flavor, throat-hit and amount of vapor produced.