Steve K's Vaping World

For those of you who thought there just weren’t any western themed e-cigarettes on the market, think again.  I’ve had a chance to shake down some of the gear offered by e-cigarette company Bullsmoke.  With starter kits named the City Slicker and Ranch Hand, I guess they have you covered on the western front.  So, is this an e-cig John Wayne would be proud to vape?  Read the rest of this here Bullsmoke review and find out, pilgrims!

Who’s it for

• New e-cigarette users looking for a cigarette style device
• Someone who wants a starter kit with a variety of flavors to sample
• On-the-go users might like the Bull Pen charging case.

Check out the kit on Bullsmoke’s website.

What’s in the Box

The good folks over at Bullsmoke hooked me up with their popular City Slicker kit as well as their Bullpen charging case. The City Slicker comes with:

• 10 color-coded cartomizers
• 2 Automatic KR808D-1 batteries
• 1 USB Charger
• 1 AC Adapter
• Printed manual
• “Special travel case”

Starter Kits

The first thing you might have noticed is that I put the phrase special travel case in quotes above there.  That’s to point out, this is not the charging case.  Rather Bullsmoke is referring to the box in which the kit comes.  It’s a good quality heavy cardboard box with magnetic latches and cutouts for all the stuff.  But, this is fairly typical packaging for most kits.

One other interesting thing I noticed is that while the company sells both shorty and manual batteries separately, the only battery option in the kit is the standard auto battery.

All Bullsmoke batteries of any ilk have the same color and graphic design scheme.  The batteries are white with thin stripes running down the battery to simulate the look of cigarette paper.  Each battery features the company’s vaping bull logo at the base.

Similarly, the only LED color choice is orange.  This of course has no impact at all on the performance of the e-cigarette.  However, it’s a personal pet peeve of mine, I dislike LEDs that might make over zealous mall security guards think I’m smoking an actual cigarette.

Choices improve dramatically in the refill cartridges department.  For starters both of Bullsmoke’s starter kits come with 10, rather than 5, refills (cartomizers).  While the Ranch Hand kit sticks to more traditional tobaccos, the City Slicker kit offers a more diverse choice.

The cartomizers in the Bullsmoke City Slicker do offer a couple of tobacco flavors, but also branch out into other flavors like coffee and grape.  I fell in love with the apple flavor myself, it’s a nice tart apple flavor reminiscent of a fresh granny smith apple.  But I digress.

The other cool part about the included cartomizers is they are color coded.  While this is generally a plus in my mind, sporting the grape cartridge which is very purple sort of throws off the old-west tough guy mystique with which I keep trying to associate Bullsmoke.

The Technology

Here’s the part of the Bullsmoke Review where I talk geeky terms about thread patterns and voltage and stuff.  Since I know that the target customer for kits like that may or may not be that into the technical stuff, I’ll try to keep the nerd-speak to a minimum here.

The e-cigarettes used in the Bullsmoke kits is a KR808D-1 style.  This is a term that refers to the size and style of connector between battery and cartomizer (more on cartomizers in a second).  There’s more to it than that, each style tends to have certain characteristics such as battery voltage and regulation and so on.

The batteries also feature some of the newest technology, which is a sealed connection.  Normally automatic batteries have a hole in the top of them to allow the switch to be activated when you take a puff.  This works great, but should any liquid seep out of your cartomizer and into the battery, it could damage the battery.

Sealed batteries somehow still allow the airflow to activate the e-cigarette, but lack the big hole in the middle of the battery connector.  This minimizes the odds of damage from leakage.

Suffice it to say the KR808 style is a fairly popular one in this class of e-cigarettes.  The batteries are 180mAh, which refers to the size of the cells.  Again, this is pretty standard with this style of e-cigarette.

As I mentioned several times, the Bullsmoke gear uses cartomizers rather than separate cartridges and atomizers.  The short story is I feel cartomizers are better, especially in starter kits than atomizers.  They perform better and aren’t as messy.

The Bullpen Charging Case

The Bullpen is a case that houses its own battery and allows you to charge one of your e-cigarette batteries on the go.  Simply stick the battery in the case, hold down the button for a few seconds to start charging and then toss it in your pocket.

A case like this is fantastic for people who may not always be around a computer or wall outlet for charging.  If you’re out on the town, you have a freshly charged battery ready to go when your first one putters out.

To be honest, I’ve reviewed this case before.  The Bullpen charging case is the same case as Smokeless Image’s Volt personal charging case.

The good news is that it’s also my favorite portable charging case.  It’s a very compact and sleek-looking case.  The case is about the size of an audio cassette (I just dated myself there, didn’t I?)

The replaceable battery in the charging case will recharge one of your e-cigarette batteries around three or four times.  Charge time is around 3-4 hours.

A word of warning, the top doesn’t flip up, rather it slides open.  Don’t try to force it, or bad things might happen.

The only downside of the case is that it is a separate purchase and not included with any of the standard Bullsmoke starter kits.

Click here to check out the Bullpen on Bullsmoke’s site.

Performance

As I mentioned a bunch of times already, the Bullpen uses pretty standard KR808 batteries.  This is important because I feel that the 808s are probably the best performing styles as far as traditional cigarette sized devices go.

Especially on a freshly charged battery, these e-cigarettes produce a good amount of thick vapor.  The temperature is good, not too warm, nor cold.  Throat hit is also very good, when you vape, you know you’re inhaling something with these.

Flavor of course is subjective.  With the City Slicker I’m sure you’ll find flavors you love as well as ones that you detest.  I thought the apple was great, and the grape was pretty decent.  I only tried one of the tobaccos, the Texas.  I found it to be on the sweet side, but not terribly unpleasant.

While on the subject of the cartomizers, here’s one thing to note.  Like pretty much everyone, Bullsmoke exaggerates the equivalency when it comes to how long a cartomizer lasts.

Bullsmoke claims the equivalent of 25 cigarettes.  I’ve found that at first, this might only be slightly high, but as you sort of get into a routine with vaping, you’ll find you take longer drags, which lowers that equivalency pretty quick.

A more realistic count is probably somewhere between 7-15 cigarettes depending on how you roll.

Battery life is sort of the same deal.  The company claims somewhere between 3 hours and a day (or more).  I’m a pretty heavy user, so I tend to blow through one of the batteries in less than two hours.  Light users will probably still go through two battery charges in a day.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

The Bullsmoke City Slicker kit is a typical and competent basic e-cigarette starter kit.  The biggest draw of the company’s offering is the City Slicker kit which gives you 10 different pre-filled cartomizers to sample the company’s flavor offerings.  The company also sells one of my favorite portable charging cases, a must for people on the go or out on the town.  You can check out Bullsmoke’s site here.

Pros:

• Great performance in its class
• Variety of flavors available in the City Slicker kit
• The Bullpen portable charger is a personal favorite

Cons:

• No option to select other batteries in starter kits
• Only orange LED available, only white batteries
• Battery life and cigarette equivalency claims may be inflated
• Bullpen charging case sold separately

Details:

Product Name: Bullsmoke City Slicker Kit
Available from: Bullsmoke
Price $59
Style: KR808D-1

Disclosure: These products were provided to me by Bullsmoke for review.  I feature affilate links for Bullsmoke.