If you’ve been looking at cartomizers, atomizers, or tanks you’ve undoubtedly seen the “ohms” rating or “Low Resistance (LR)” listed along side such products. Many of these items are available for sale in various ohm ratings. Even if you know what the term means, if you’re new to electronic cigarettes it likely presents some form of confusion when you’re just looking to order replacement atomizers or want to try the latest cartomizer. I’ll try to provide some clarity regarding what ohms actually mean and how it applies to ecigarettes.
In layman terms ohms is a measure of electrical resistance or how freely electricity is able to travel through something.
Ohms can also be represented using the following symbol Ω.
When we’re talking about ohms and ecigarette parts what we’re really concerned with is what kind of heat the coil is generating to evaporate our eliquid.
There are effectively 2 things that determine how hot the coil element gets; battery voltage and the ohm rating of parts attached to the battery. Higher battery voltage and lower resistance both create more heat for evaporation. Heat produced by the ecigarette will impact flavor, vapor production and your overall experience. Using ohms we can fine tune the vapor production and flavor that best matches the batteries we own.
Lets take 2 cartomizers assume they are made by the same manufacturer, but each has different ohm ratings as follows. 1) Low Resistance (LR) 1-1.5 ohm Cartomizer and 2) Standard 2.2-2.8 ohm Cartomizer. Here is a general overview of differences one should expect between them.
As you can see the general trade off’s between the two are pretty obvious. However, you might find yourself still asking, “so which ohm rating cartomizer or atomizer should I be purchasing?”. Well I hate to break it to you but there’s no definitive answer to this. Keep in mind there is a lot of personal preference between individuals, and also a difference in equipment and ejuice. Optimally you want to get the lowest ohm rating that won’t result in too many dry hits. This will give you the best vapor production and usually the best flavor.