The year is 2026. Vaping has been around nearly twenty years now. The market is unrecognizable from what it was, back in the early aughts. Today vape shops are few and far between, and many of the shops that do exist only care a tiny fraction of the products the market had previously. What you’ll mostly likely encounter is a shelf filled multi-colored Geek Bars, similar vapes featuring many celebrities like Mike Tyson or Snoop Dog, pastel colored FLUM’s, and many other various clones and derivatives. If you’re lucky you might also see a shelf filled with Zyns or nic pouches. And if you’re particularly lucky, you’ll see some Open Device tanks that you can fill with your own e-liquid.
No longer are shops-a-plenty, filled with the latest fun creations from e-liquid makers and the myriad of different mods, batteries, atomizers, tanks, wire, and all the paraphernalia that comes with it. No longer will you see innovative and truly delicious flavor profiles like Strawberry Shortcake Ice Cream Bar, or Rum Raisin Caramel Tobacco, or Coconut Lychee Mango Martini with accents of Japanese Pear. Instead, you’ll see forty variations of the same Blue Raz or Watermelon Ice, where the difference in flavor comes down to how much less flavoring a company decided to add to save on costs.
But alas, if you’re still hankering for a smooth, satisfying, juicy, absolutely deliciously flavorful vape filled with intricate profiles, with low nicotine values, that you can customize to perfectly fit your tobacco cessation journey, then you’re in luck. Because you can, at this very moment, still get that vape experience. It’s just takes a bit of work to produce it.
Who is Vaping For?
I want to quickly address something I’ve seen recently, and its a simple question. Who exactly is vaping for today? This is a question that has been muddled due to the onslaught of misinformation that has bombarded the market since its inception. But vaping is for anyone that is – 1. Serious about quitting smoking. 2. Wants a safer, yet satisfying, way to consume nicotine. 3. Enjoys inhaling/exhaling an aerosolized compound of flavors. If you fall into ANY of these categories, vaping is still, hands down, the best way to get what you want.
There is no better tobacco cessation device; where twenty years later, vaping has proven to be extremely effective at not only switching you off of cigarettes, but keeping you off of them. Other methods like patches, gums, and pouches can provide you the nicotine titration you need to slowly expel the tar from your body and weening yourself from the nicotine addiction. However vaping is the only method that does this all the way down to extremely low levels like 0.5% or 1% nicotine by volume. Also vaping is the only method that allows you to continue the physical motions of smoking, which so many people find the most addictive part about the habit. It does all of this while being the absolute BEST method of delivering a satisfying flavor and experience.
I Want to VAPE (Good)!
So now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, the next question is…HOW do I vape? The answer the industry wants to tell you is…just buy one of these disposables at your local shop or gas station, and voila…you’re vaping. However, if you’re reading this, it’s because you don’t just want to vape. You want to vape the best. You want the absolute pinnacle of tobacco cessation. You don’t want to just inhale some icy sweet liquid made in some Chinese lab somewhere with shoddy QA. You want a tailored experience that hits every single aspect of what you need, at any given moment, all of course, at a fair price. Well you’re in luck, because I’m here to help you.
What Do I Need?
Now you’re asking what’s needed to get the most optimal vape in 2026. Well here’s a list of items you’ll need to procure to really get vaping.
A “Good” Vape.
- What is a good vape used to be a very complicated question. And while we can get in the weeds with this, and detail the nuances between many different devices, outputs, and mechanics, in 2026 the simple answer is to get a device that allows you to input your OWN e-liquid. This not only allows you to fill your vape with whatever flavor you want, but also allows you vape the freshest e-liquid. E-liquid is water soluble and made of Vegetable Glycerin. Glycerin is quite hydroscopic and loves to suck in moisture. This means e-liquid that has been sitting around for some time has had time to suck in lots of unnecessary water which is one of the worst things you can add to e-liquid. Not only this, but that stagnant moisture also comes with its own host of aromas that can further degrade your product. So a “Open System” vape eliminates this issue by allowing you always fill your device with optimal juice.
- For someone looking for an easy way to get into Open System devices, Geek Vape makes many great combo products. Something like the Sonder is a nice sleek device that uses a coil system to provide you a great flavorful vape.
- For someone who wants a much more flavorful and powerful vape experience (like myself and many other hobbyist vapers), look at a device that includes an Open System Tank device with variable wattage. These devices usually contain coils rated for higher outputs, and gives you a much hotter, thicker, cloudier, and more flavorful vape. This Geekvape Legend Kit is a great example of the device I’m talking about. Note, many of these devices will require you to include your own batteries – such as large 18650’s cells. But this higher investment means it will last much, much longer, and provide a much higher quality experience.
NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SPONSORED POST. NO COMPANIES HAVE ASKED TO BE FEATURED IN THIS ARTICLE. THIS IS JUST ME.
Get “Good” E-liquid
- Now that we have our vape, we need something to fill it with. Choosing what e-liquid is right for you is quite easy when we have a device we can fill ourselves. For one, you’ll want to find an e-liquid that has a flavor you enjoy. This is obvious and subjective. However, its important you pick a flavor you will enjoy for a long amount of time. For instance, I love Chocolate Chip Cookies, however I’m not sure I want to vape Chocolate Chip Cookies all throughout the day. Instead, choosing something familiar and simple will ensure long term success.
- The next thing to note when choosing e-liquid is Nicotine Level. If you’re a new vaper coming straight off of smoking, you may want to start with a higher nicotine level and titrate your way down. Purchasing an e-liquid with “nicotine salts” may also be a good idea, since salts provide you quite a stronger “hit” of nicotine compared to unsalted variants. WITH THAT BEING SAID, I do not recommend nicotine salted e-liquid if you want to quit smoking. I recommend regular e-liquid in the area of 6mg – 12mg. My experience shows this to be far more successful without all the side effects of the more intense nicotine.
- One of the best ways to get e-liquid is at a vape shop. That said, I’m aware that many just don’t exist anymore and the ones that do may not have stocked the type of e-liquid we’re looking for. If this is the case you can easily purchase e-liquid online at many places like https://eliquid.com or https://vaping.com – you’re only a quick google search away from buying delicious e-liquid. (Though, if you unfortunately live in a state where e-liquid cannot be shipped to, things become more difficult).
Sticking With It
Once you have your “good” device and “good” e-liquid, you will see – compared to disposables, pod systems, and cigalike devices – your vape experience will be of such a higher amount of quality. You will truly “enjoy” having a vape, you will look forward to vaping, and you will do it all without jacking up your nicotine tolerance and in turn, spending obscene amounts of money on constantly buying gas station Geek Bars. What you will also notice is that, all of a sudden, its 6 months later and you’ve abstained from smoking altogether. While it normally takes an entire year to fully allow your lungs to heal from the damage that’s caused by smoking, you will notice how much better you will feel only after a few months and this will only encourage you further to keep going. And soon enough, you’ll be like me and millions of others, who’ve stayed away from smoking for over a decade plus. Even then, I do have some tips to help you on your vaping journey.
- Make sure you don’t run out of e-liquid or vape.
- The thing that most often gets vapers to go back to smoking is running out of e-liquid or vape. This means when a craving comes, they often buy a pack of smokes, or a tin of dip, and justify it by saying it’s “just this one time”. However, this one time often leads to “man this is the 10th pack I’ve bought!” and leaving vaping altogether. So always make sure you have e-liquid. Make sure to buy more than one bottle once you’ve found a flavor you like. Or learn to make your own e-liquid (right here at DIYorDIE!) to ensure you always have what you need, forever, irrespective of the market altogether. Also make sure your vape is in good condition and if it seems like it’s on the way out, purchase a new one. All of this upkeep is vital in making sure you don’t fall off the wagon.
- Vape as much as you need to.
- The science is the science. And the thousands of studies released (many of which DIYorDIE has personally read) all point to vaping being orders of magnitude safer than smoking. So in order to fully abstain from smoking, feel free to vape when you feel like you need to. If you need to vape all day, never parting it from your hand, doing so may be more beneficial than slipping up and falling back to smoking. “Vaping through it” is a common phrase vapers use to discuss who they initially quit smoking. Once your cravings have started to subside, you can then look at limiting how much you vape.
Taking the next step in vaping
The last thing I want to talk about, is the thing that’s been missing for some time in the current vaping market. You see, the reason vaping was so successful early on, was because it gave ex-smokers and new vapers a new found interest and hobby, which helped keep so many of us away from smoking. A good distraction. This also led us to finding the vaping community, which gave us people to talk about the hobby with as well as a level of accountability we needed.
For instance, once you spent your investment and got your vape device and e-liquid, you then took the next step in vaping by trying to find how to get EVEN BETTER flavor and vape experience. That next step involved learning about how different devices worked, and how which ones might fit our needs better. That next step may have also taken us to learn about the coils themselves, and how, if we made our own, we could get even better vapor and flavor production. That next step may have had us learn how to make our very own e-liquid, not only allowing us to make whatever flavor we desired at the time, but doing it by saving a MASSIVE amount of money in the process. All of these steps involved people and communities of their own and this collaborative process all became a feedback loop of tobacco cessation.
The entire goal of this article is to hopefully find you – and make you think about either quitting smoking or think about quitting using disposable devices like Geek Bar – and truly enter the world of vaping. It’s a fun, vast world, with a lot of really interesting history and people, and I promise, if you’re a creative or technologically minded person, you’ll really enjoy your time here.