Fruit vape flavours: every family, how they taste and what to buy

Look at almost any range of bar-style salts or shortfills and fruit takes up most of the space. It is easy to see why: fruit is bright, recognisable and easy to vape all day without the heaviness of a dessert.

We counted the flavour tags on a sample of 56 flavoured liquids from our own catalogue to see which fruits turn up most often. Raspberry came out top, followed by strawberry, with lemon, cherry, banana and peach close behind. Mixed fruit blends mean many liquids carry two or three of these at once.

Fancy browsing by fruit? Every family has its own page, from mixed berries to tropical.

Grouping fruit by family is the quickest way to learn what you like. Each family has a typical balance of sweetness and sharpness:

• Berries: jammy to tart, the most versatile family. See our berry guide.
• Tropical: mango, pineapple and passion fruit, rich and juicy.
• Citrus: lemon, lime and orange, zesty and sharp. Read the citrus guide.
• Melon: watery, light and refreshing.
• Orchard: apple and pear, crisp and clean.
• Stone fruit: peach and cherry, soft and sweet.

If you love one fruit in a family, the others are a safe bet.

Two liquids both called strawberry can be completely different vapes. Manufacturers make fruit in three broad ways.

Realistic fruit aims for the real thing: a bit of tartness, a touch of green, not too sweet. Candy-style fruit tastes like sweets of that flavour, sugary and bold, which is what many bar-style liquids go for. Iced fruit adds menthol or a cooling agent for a cold exhale.

Knowing which one you prefer narrows your shopping massively. Product descriptions usually give it away with words like fresh, ripe, sweets, sour or ice. Use the question below to find your direction.

Fruit is the easiest family to match to a device because it works almost everywhere. In a mouth-to-lung pod, a 50/50 nic salt gives a crisp, clean taste with a smooth throat. In a sub-ohm tank, a 70/30 shortfill gives big, juicy clouds.

The one thing fruit dislikes is too much heat. Push a fruit liquid near the top of a coil's range and it can taste stewed or cooked rather than fresh. Running a little cooler keeps the bright, zingy top notes alive.

Nicotine is addictive, so pick your strength to match how you vape: higher strengths suit small pods, while sub-ohm vapers usually sit at 3mg or 6mg. You can browse nic salts for pods.

Realistic fruit liquids tend to be pale and lightly sweetened, so they are fairly gentle on cotton. Candy-style fruit is a different story: the extra sweetener that makes it taste like sweets also caramelises on the coil and shortens its life.

Fruit mixed with cream or custard, such as strawberry milkshake, behaves like a dessert and gunks coils fastest. Fruit ice sits in the middle: the cooling is clean, but bar-style bases are often sweet.

If coil life matters to you, keep a realistic or citrus fruit as your daily vape and save the candy and creamy ones for treats. These habits help too.

Not sure where to begin? A good approach is to buy two or three 10ml bottles from different families rather than one big shortfill. Try a berry, a tropical and a citrus over a week and note which one you keep reaching for. That tells you which family to explore next.

If you are torn between fruit and something sweeter for your main vape, our dessert vs fruit comparison explains why most people end up with fruit as their all-day flavour. The products below are a starting point pulled from what is in stock right now, so they change as the range does.

One question to see whether the families have stuck. Fruit gets confusing because the same name can hide very different recipes, and a candy-style fruit can taste more like a dessert than a piece of fruit. The best predictor of whether you will enjoy a new liquid is usually the family it belongs to, followed by the style: fresh, candy or ice.

If you know you love sharp, zingy flavours, citrus and sour styles are your friends. If you prefer soft and lush, head for tropical and stone fruit. Anything with cream on the label behaves like a dessert, both in taste and in what it does to your coil.