Knowing how long a vape should last is pretty important if you want to get the most out of your vaping experience. It’s a key part of planning your budget. It also ensures that you’ll know when you need to stock up and won’t wait too long to place your next order for vapes, coils or vape juice.
Understanding how long a vape usually lasts can also be a key part of your troubleshooting process if something isn’t working as it should. If your vape isn’t behaving normally, it could turn out that it’s simply reached the end of its expected life – and if you know that, you won’t waste your time doing troubleshooting steps that aren’t likely to work.
So, how long do vapes last? If you use a refillable vape, what about things like coils and bottled vape juice? In this guide, we’re going to answer every question you may have and explain everything that you need to know for both disposable and refillable vapes. We also have an entire article elsewhere on this site answering the question of how long disposable vapes last, and we encourage you to check it out if you need more information. Let’s dive in.
How Long Do Disposable Vapes Last?
Quick Answer: A disposable vape typically lasts several days to a couple of weeks depending on how often you use it.
A disposable vape is very convenient, but it’s only designed for temporary use because it isn’t refillable. A disposable vape lasts until it runs out of vape juice, and exactly how long that is depends on how much vape juice is in the device and how often you vape. In fact, the exact answer to the question of how long a disposable vape lasts is always changing because manufacturers are racing against each other to release devices with ever-bigger puff counts.
At the time of writing, the longest-lasting disposable vape contains 30 ml of e-liquid, which is as much as you’d get in an entire bottle of nicotine salt vape juice. Capacities will continue going up, though, as long as consumers are willing to buy larger vapes. Eventually, things will level off when people decide that the devices have gotten big enough.
Because of the varying capacities, there’s no single answer to the question of how long a disposable vape lasts. After all, you can reasonably expect a device with 30 ml of e-liquid to last three times as long as a device with 10 ml. Plus, different people have different vaping patterns. Some people almost never put their devices down. Others tend to have session-based vaping patterns and don’t use their vapes at all between sessions.
If you're a former pack-a-day smoker and are using a disposable vape with a nicotine strength of 50 mg/ml, it’s fair to expect that you’ll use at least 2 ml vape juice per day. Therefore, you can expect a disposable vape to last roughly a day for every 2 ml of e-liquid it contains. Once again, the exact number can vary significantly from person to person. On average, though, a disposable vape typically lasts anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.
What Replacement Parts Does a Disposable Vape Need?
A disposable vape needs no replacement parts and requires no maintenance other than periodic recharging. That’s a big part of why so many people use disposables. It’s important to note, though, that disposable vapes don’t usually include charging cables – and inexpensive USB cables tend to wear out pretty quickly. If you’re charging your vape with the same cable every day, you should probably plan to replace it a couple of times per year.
How Do You Know When a Disposable Vape Is Finished?
A disposable vape is finished when it’s out of e-liquid. Many modern disposable vapes have screens. A screen makes it somewhat easy for you to tell when your vape is almost finished because you can watch the meter tick away as you use your device. Your vape doesn’t actually have a way to know exactly how much vape juice is in the tank, though, so what’s shown on the meter is approximate. You might still have some puffs remaining when the meter is empty, but you should definitely be ready to replace your vape very soon.
When a disposable vape is completely dry, it’ll start to produce a burnt taste every time you hit it.
How Long Do Refillable Vapes Last?
Quick Answer: A refillable vape typically lasts around a year, but you’ll need to buy vape juice and replacement parts to keep your device working.
A refillable vape with a built-in battery lasts as long as the battery holds a charge, because the battery is the only component of the device that’s not replaceable. A lithium-ion battery can typically be discharged and recharged 300-500 times before its capacity becomes noticeably reduced. If you recharge your device daily, that works out to anywhere from about a year to a little over a year.
There are also many refillable vapes with removable batteries. If a vape has a battery that’s removable, you can simply replace it when it stops holding a charge. In that way, your device can last significantly longer than a year if you take care of it.
To ensure that a refillable vape will last as long as it can, you should keep it away from extreme temperatures and ensure that you never drop it on a hard surface or in water. Extreme temperatures can cause chemical instability that shortens a lithium-ion battery’s life. Being dropped on a hard surface or in water can cause physical damage or a short circuit that can potentially make your vape stop working instantly.
What Replacement Parts Does a Refillable Vape Need?
The two primary replacement parts that a refillable vape needs are replacement pods or coils and bottled vape juice. You’ll need to buy both of those things on a regular basis as you use your device.
Vape Pods or Coils
When your vape starts to produce a smoky or burnt flavor, it’s time to replace the coil. Many types of vapes have replaceable coils, but there are also pod systems with pods that have built-in coils for the sake of simplicity and convenience. If you have this type of pod system, you’ll need to replace the entire pod when your device begins to taste burnt.
A vape coil – or a vape pod with a built-in coil – typically lasts a few days at minimum and up to about a week. The more vape juice you use per day, the quicker your vape will start to taste burnt. It’s possible to make a vape coil or pod last multiple weeks, but you’ll need to use vape juice with no added sweeteners for that to happen. Many modern e-liquids are sweetened because that’s what most people prefer.
Vape Juice
You can expect a bottle of vape juice to last approximately a week, but this depends on your personal vaping habits. The nicotine strength of your e-liquid largely determines how much you’ll use per day; if the strength is higher, you won’t have to use as much per day to feel satisfied. The difference between strengths is somewhat mitigated by the fact that lower-strength e-liquids usually come in larger bottles.
Other Replacement Parts
You may also need to buy other replacement parts for a refillable vape occasionally. If you have a pod system with replaceable coils, for example, you might want to buy a new pod once in a while because the pod that you’re using has become too difficult to clean. If you’re using a vape mod with a glass tank, you may need to buy a new glass enclosure or new gaskets for the tank because your tank’s existing parts are worn out or broken. It’s common for a vape mod with a glass tank to include one full set of replacement parts for the tank. If you happen to break one of the parts in the replacement set, you’ll need to buy a new part or just replace the tank.
How Do You Know When a Refillable Vape Is Finished?
If a refillable vape has a replaceable battery, it’s finished if it doesn’t work even when a charged battery is connected. This might happen because of physical damage to the device or because one of the internal electronic components has failed. Sometimes, devices simply stop working. It’s entirely possible, though, for a vape with a replaceable battery to last multiple years.
A vape with a built-in battery, on the other hand, is finished when the battery’s capacity has diminished so much that the device is essentially no longer usable. You’ll know this is the case because the device will show one of these two symptoms.
- You can connect your vape to the charger for hours, but it never finishes charging because the battery can’t reach its maximum voltage.
- You vape dies almost as soon as you remove it from the charger – and when you recharge it, the charge cycle finishes in just a few minutes.