Your first vape: what to buy, what to skip, what it costs

Kit pages are full of wattage figures and battery sizes, and none of that matters until you know what you actually want from a vape. A smoker who wants something that feels like a cigarette needs a very different device from someone chasing big clouds.

Be honest about how much faff you will put up with. Some people enjoy filling pods and trying new flavours. Others want to clip in a pod and forget about it. Both are fine, but they lead to different kits.

Tap the answer that sounds most like you and you will have a shortlist before the kettle boils.

Since single-use disposables were banned from sale in the UK on 1 June 2025, the shelf has settled into three kinds of beginner kit. Prefilled pod kits look and feel like the old disposables but have a rechargeable battery and swappable pods. Refillable pod kits take any bottled liquid. Tank kits use a screw-on tank and replaceable coil heads.

For a first vape, the top two rows are where you want to be. A prefilled kit such as the Elf Bar 600 Pod Kit costs under a fiver to get started, while a refillable like the Uwell Caliburn G3 Lite costs a bit more up front and much less to run.

The most common reason new vapers drift back to smoking is not the device. It is nicotine that is too low, so the vape never takes the edge off. Nicotine is addictive, and if you smoke now your body expects a certain amount of it.

As a starting point, a pack-a-day smoker usually lands on 20mg nic salt, someone on 10 a day on 10mg, and a social smoker on 5mg or lower. You can always step down later. Our full nicotine strength guide breaks this down by habit and by liquid type.

UK law caps nicotine liquid at 20mg per ml, so nothing you buy here will be stronger than that.

Pod kits have small coils that run at low power. They work best with thinner liquids: nic salts or 50/50 freebase in 10ml bottles. Thick 70/30 shortfills are made for sub-ohm tanks and tend to flood or starve a small MTL pod, which gives you weak flavour and early burnt hits.

Nic salts also feel smoother at higher strengths, which is why most first-time vapers on 10mg or 20mg prefer them. A range like Elfliq comes in 5mg, 10mg and 20mg, all at 50% VG, so you can change strength without changing flavour.

The first week is when vapes run out at the worst moment: battery flat on the bus, pod empty at 10pm, coil burnt on a Sunday. A tiny bit of planning stops all three.

Buy the kit plus one spare pod or coil, and at least two bottles of liquid in different flavours. Flavour fatigue is real, and the second bottle is what keeps a bad first choice from ruining the week. Check you have a USB-C cable and a plug that fits it, because many kits ship with a cable only.

Tick these off before you check out.

A few kits keep coming up because they are simple and forgiving. The Caliburn G3 Lite has a 1,200mAh battery, a 2ml top-fill pod and inhale activation. The OXVA Xlim Go 2 gives you a 1,500mAh battery and a 0.8 ohm MTL pod out of the box. If you want the cheapest possible refillable, the Geekvape Sonder Q2 sits under £8 with a 1,350mAh battery.

All of them take ordinary 10ml nic salts, all charge by USB-C, and none needs settings changed to work well. Pick the one whose shape you like holding, because you will hold it a lot.

One question that catches out more first-time buyers than any other. If you get this right, you have understood the single most important part of choosing a first vape, and you are already ahead of a lot of people who bought on looks alone.

If you get it wrong, no harm done: read the nicotine section again and the reason will click. Then pick your kit, pick your strength and pick two flavours you would happily vape all week. Keep the receipt and the box for the first fortnight too, in case the kit turns out to be faulty.