The Age of Sub-Ohm Tanks and Why They Rock

by Brendan Frost |
Sub Ohm Tanks

Sub-ohm tanks produce more flavor, more vapor, and can help smokers quit much more effectively than lower-quality tanks.

Sub-ohm tanks have taken the vape market by storm, making huge clouds and awesome flavor much more accessible for e-cigarette users of all levels, and no longer limited to those who want to rebuild their coils and drip constantly throughout the day.

You can see a detailed breakdown of what exactly sub-ohm vaping is here. In this post, we discuss the benefits of sub-ohm vaping, how to decide what sub-ohm tank is best for you.

Sub-Ohm Tanks Make High-Powered Vaping Easy

Just a few years ago, the only way to get a huge vapor hit was to use a low-resistance (sub-ohm) coil on a mechanical mod. Mechanical mods are simple metal tubes that hold a battery with no circuitry and no ability to digitally increase or decrease your power output (voltage or wattage). Thus, the most important factor for a powerful hit was the resistance level of your coil—lower resistance, bigger hit.

Sub-ohm tanks do all of that legwork for you. Companies like Aspire, Kanger and Sense pre-build high quality, low-resistance coils that fit into tanks featuring great airflow options and fast wicking. Pair any sub-ohm tank with a quality, easy-to-use regulated device like a Sigelei 75 watt or a Snow Wolf 200 watt, and you can have a tremendously airy, delicious, high-wattage vape, and all of the convenience that was once limited to less powerful tanks.

So, what does this mean for the vaping experience?

Sub-Ohm Tanks Provide More Vapor and Bigger Clouds

We love big clouds as much as the next vaper, as long as they’re courteously blown—it’s just good old fashioned fun, inhaling a delicious waterfall of vapor, breathing out like a friendly dragon, watching the vapor curl and flow outward into the room. It’s just more satisfying.

Sub-ohm tanks are designed to give you this kind of vapor. The coils and wicks in a sub-ohm tank are built to be capable of absorbing and vaporizing your e-liquid much quicker, with a faster heating element, breaking it into particles rapidly and releasing it into your inhale. This does mean they go through e-liquid a bit (or a lot) quicker, but this is a small price to pay for a more fun and enjoyable vaping experience.

Sub-Ohm Tanks Provide a More Flavorful Experience

Perhaps the paramount feature of any tank or rebuildable atomizer is the amount and quality of flavor it gives you. Believe it or not, there are elements and complexities of a flavor that are brought out by sub-ohm tanks which you simply won’t taste in a less powerful tank. By releasing more of the e-liquid flavoring particles more rapidly, sub-ohm tanks tap into those underlying complexities.

A strawberry cream flavor, like Singularity from Paradox Liquids, on a sub-ohm tank will bring out more of the strawberry, more of the cream. You can notice differences like whether the flavor is a ripe strawberry, a regular strawberry or a blend of both. You’ll pick up that side note of honeydew which you may otherwise have missed. More of all the individual flavor components emerge. In this sense, sub-ohm tanks make this artisanal side of vaping much more easily accessible and convenient.

Sub-Ohm Tanks Make Quitting Smoking Easier

With increased power comes an increased ability to cater your vape to exactly what you like. If you’re trying to quit smoking, some lower powered setups might not cut it for you. With a sub-ohm tank, you can close off the airflow and get a mouth-to-lung hit, just like a cigarette.

Sub-ohm tanks vaporize so much more quickly that you can get a get a strong, bold throat hit even with a lower nicotine level. At Crescent City Vape, we see many vapers get down to a 3 or even 0 milligram level of nicotine with sub-ohm tanks.

Versatility combined with power means sub-ohm tanks can provide any vape you want, and before you know it, you won’t even want to touch a cigarette anymore. And if your ultimate goal is to get off nicotine entirely, sub-ohm vaping offers a substantial hit even with little or no nicotine, making it much easier to wean yourself off nicotine entirely.

What does sub-ohm mean?

Sub-ohm refers to the resistance level of the wire in your coil, aka your atomizer. Something under 1 ohm is “sub-ohm,” and therefore allows heat to travel through it more quickly—i.e. it has less “resistance” to energy.

A useful little fact is that “sub-ohm vaping” is often a bit of a misnomer. People commonly refer to high-powered vaping when they use this phrase, but your coil doesn’t need to be under 1 ohm to get a huge flavor/vapor hit. The important factor to allow high-wattage vaping is the setup of your wick and your airflow. As long as you’re wicking fast enough and cooling the coil off with enough airflow, you can crank up the wattage.

Sub-Ohm Tank Breakdown

Sub-ohm tanks can cater to any style of vape. What makes them amazing is their flexibility. If you love the vape from a Nautilus, for example, the Kanger Subtank Nano, Mini or Plus can give you the same vape, only better, but its flexibility allows you to expand in the future to a much more powerful vape with more airflow, if you so choose.

Here’s a chart to break down the different sub-ohm tanks, and what styles of vape they can achieve based on the different modifiable features like coil resistance and airflow.

Sub-ohm TankStyleComparable Tanks/drippers
Kanger Subtank Nano, Mini and PlusVersatile: from cigarette-like vape on up to mid-level high wattageTanks: Nautilus, Genitank, Evod
Drippers: Marquis, Tobh Atty, Magma
Aspire Atlantis V2 and Tobeco Mini Super TankSuper-wide airflow for air loversDrippers: Troll, Stillare, Dark Horse, Little Boy, Mutation X V3, Yep, Royal Hunter, REM, Production, Turbo, Aeolus, Mephisto
Herakles and Matrix and Aspire TritonGreat balance of flavor and vaporDrippers: Freakshow, Mutation V4, Fishbone, Hobo, Kennedy, Derringer, Low Pro, Plume Veil, Tugboat, Geyser
Smok TFV4Incredible flavor and vapor, massive airflow allowing up to 140 watts (!)Drippers (with a high-wattage build and airflow maxed): Turbo, Doge X2 or V2, Dark Horse, Troll, Little Boy, Kennedy, Mutation V4

That’s our rundown on sub-ohm tanks, the newest and most revolutionary aspect of vaping. If you have any questions at all about sub-ohm vaping or anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

We’d love to know your opinion, too: Leave us a comment telling us your favorite sub-ohm tank and why you love it!