Limitations Of The ProVari P3 – Is It Serious?

ADDENDUM: MAY 7TH, 2015 – Last night we received some information; ProVape customers, and potential customers, will find it very encouraging. While still pumping out 20w of power, the new ProVari P3 update, called Version 38,  includes the ability to fire down to 0.5-ohm resistance! For all of us, myself included, this opens up the most intelligent vaporizer as a possible purchase because we no longer need to leave our 0.5-ohm coil-equipped Subohm tanks at home. This news will be well received by many vapers, though I’m sure that many others, those in the extreme-high-wattage camp, will find little to celebrate. Version 38 is available on all ProVari P3’s as of May 5th, 2015.  I have no doubt that Provape is busy on other, enticing products, but in the meantime, the P3 is again on the table.

Versioin 38 is contained all of the following improvements.

  •  Support for .5 ohm tanks – The P3 now supports tanks down to .5 ohms. Amperage limit increased.
  • Low Battery Alert – When the device gets down to 18% left in the battery, the light will slowly flash yellow to alert you that it’s getting low. 
  • CheckAll (1 second) – The Check All feature now has the option to set it to 1 second. This allows for a quick look at your settings without leaving the display on for 5 or more seconds.
  • Money Saved Counter – This new feature allows you to set the price of a pack of cigarettes and the P3 will keep track of: How many cigarettes avoided, puff count, and how much money you have saved on cigarettes, based on the amount you set per pack.
  •  Various bug fixes

Will this new upgrade, the following article may not be as relevant as it was on the original publication date, and although all you Kanger Subtank owners that love the 0.5-ohm coils can now get a very nice flavor and vapor production when attached to a new ProVari, please understand that the P3 will not fire when using any subtank with 0.2-ohm to 0.4-ohm, so be careful when it comes to choosing your tank. – Julia Hartley-Barnes

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First, let me say this upfront, I am a huge fan of Provape. Hell, I own 4 Provari v2.5 vaporizers. They are the best vaporizers on the market, as far as build quality goes. They last forever, you can roll over them with a tank, and drop it out of an airplane at 35,000 feet and it will (probably) chug right along. When it comes to quality materials, workmanship, and even customer service, Provape is the cream of the crop, and ProVari stands as a testament to American Made.

Yet…

I have not purchased a Provari P3. I don’t plan to, for the foreseeable future anyway. With good reason I think…my vaping preferences today do not conform to using a Provari. I stare at my ProVari collection on my dresser and can’t remember the last time I used one.

The reason? 20 watts of power… plain and simple.

I am so used to enjoying my .5ohm tanks that I can’t imagine making due with less in order to use one of my current ProVari’s, much less a new P3. You see, even the fine folks at Provape say that the P3 can handle nothing under .7ohms. That doesn’t cut it, not anymore.

My current obsession with the Aspire Atlantis, the Kanger Subtank, The Council of Vapor Stratos, along with my desires for the new Delta 2 by Joyetech, as well as the eLeaf MELO I was using yesterday, are based not on some fad, but rather a new found respect for flavor and vapor production. These are the tanks that I use 100% of the time now, with no desire to backslide to clearomizers and lesser tanks.

Older eliquid favorites, that I vaped all the time at 18mg nicotine, have come alive again at 6mg nicotine. New eliquids, purchased with 6mg nicotine and higher VG ratios have richer, fuller flavor profiles and deliver thick voluminous clouds of vapor I never thought possible with a mainstream, non-rebuildable tank, and they bring me to vapers heaven all day, every day. How do you turn away from this kind of vaping?

Don’t get me wrong; there are still plenty of opportunities to enjoy a 20w device, but to make an investment of $270+ for the Provape P3, a device I would use maybe twice a week, doesn’t make much sense.

When I look at the vaporizers I use today I see the Aspire CF Sub ohm battery ($40) and the iStick 30 ($37), and that’s about it. Everything else sits there gathering dust. I suppose this is progress, the evolution of vaping, and as more devices come out sporting higher wattage the more the sub ohm tanks will be purchased and used. I am looking forward to getting the new iStick 50 and the SMOK XPro M50, and both cost a fraction of the Provape P3, but will drive my new tanks to heights the ProVari 3 cannot.

It’s Not Completely Over… Yet

With the Kanger Subtank you have the option of going sub-ohm or using the 1.2ohm coil heads. If you choose the 1.2ohm coils you’ll make out fine with a lower wattage device like the Provari 3 and the eVic Supreme, but after vaping many hours with both the .6ohm and 1.2ohm Kanger Subtank coils I can tell you that from where I’m sitting, the .6ohm coils provide a much fuller vape.

I have a strong suspicion that the only reason, Kanger opted to ship a 1.2ohm coil head, is so that the millions of vapers that use 20w and under vaporizers could enjoy the tank.

I’m not trying to say that all 20w devices are useless, you can push a 20W to the maximum setting and get a barely ‘adequate’ vape from the Aspire Atlantis and Delta 2, and even a good vape from the Subtank equipped with the 1.2ohm coil head or the 1ohm RBA component in the Subtank and Delta 2, but the direction is clear; higher wattage and lower ohms.

Did Anyone See This Coming?

I know I didn’t see the Atlantis coming, did you? Once it shipped though it didn’t take long for other manufacturers to try and go one better with not only a sub-ohm coil head option but an RBA component as well. (The RBA component will become a part of the Atlantis 2 experience). Talking to the vendors I know these tanks are literally flying off the shelves, and you can bet we’re going to see upgrades for these tanks in as little a 6-8 weeks (The February Chinese Holiday is only 2 weeks away). My point is this; every time a new Atlantis tank is sold, another 20w device takes a seat.

These new tanks are hugely popular because they work. ‘Sub ohm vaping’ for the masses as arrived, unannounced… and are all the rage.

Manufacturers of vaporizers are bumping the wattage in their devices as fast as possible. I heard just today that SMOK is bumping their two XPro box mods by some 35% and will even take back newly purchased devices and install the new electronics. The 50w XPro will sport 65watts in a matter of a couple of weeks.

So Where Does This Leave Provape?

It took a very long time for Provape to deliver the P3, with variable wattage as its main improvement, but 20w is woefully underpowered for January 2015. Can Provape catch up? Do they even want to? I’m not so sure.

Provape doesn’t play the one-upmanship game, so until it’s time to announce a P4 I think they will coast along at 20w with the hope that enough users will forego sub-ohm coils under .7ohms, which leaves out the Atlantis altogether, and P3 owners, that buy the Kanger Subtank, will simply throw away the .6ohm coil it comes with.

I know there are plenty of vapers in the community that want nothing to do with sub-ohm vaping, and that’s fine. Even so, the sub-community of sub-ohm vapers is growing larger all the time, and in addition to vapers that drip and vapers that just won’t spend $270 for a vaporizer under any conditions, there is now a group of vapers that won’t buy a Provape Provari because doing so would require giving up that sweet spot of .5ohm vaping. I’m in that crowd.

Hindsight is 20/20

I’m quite sure that had Provape known that there would be such a clamor for sub-ohm vaping at the mainstream level that they might have opted for a 30w or even a 40w P3. In hindsight, it looks like they should have done so, but you know what they say about hindsight.

Some months ago when I first learned that the Provape Provari 3 was in beta stages it was all I could do to stop myself from begging to be on the beta team. Hell, I even gave one away in a self-sponsored giveaway and I was happy to do it. But when the P3 came out I was hesitant about buying one for myself. The timing wasn’t right, I could feel it, and now I’m relieved I didn’t bite.

Today Provape announced 4 new colors for the P3, and every one of them are gorgeous… and I, for an instant, was tempted to buy a red one. While looking over the options to place in my shopping cart I was refilling my Atlantis, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed this:

  •  Sub-ohm capability – down to .70 ohms

And it hit me like a ton of bricks…buying it meant putting away my Atlantis tanks.

I couldn’t do it.

Julia Hartley-Barnes