In today’s comparison, we are going to be looking at two very different vaporizers. The Mighty and the Lotus are both high performing portable vaporizers, but the similarities for the most part stop there.
The Mighty is a battery operated session style vaporizer, while the Lotus is a butane powered on-demand style vaporizer. Likewise, the Lotus is coming in at a much lower price point than the Mighty and its little brother the Crafty.
If you’re in the market for a high performing portable, you won’t want to miss this comparison.
This comparison is going to be broken down into the following categories:
- Ease of Use
- Temperature Control
- Vapor Quality and Efficiency
- Portability
- Battery Life and Butane
- Warranty
With all that said, let’s get into the Mighty vs Lotus review!
Ease of Use
The ease of use category will cover how easy the units are to operate and maintain for day to day use. Sometimes the best performing vapes are some of the most difficult to use, and that’s why we have this category.
Ease Of Use with the Mighty
The Mighty is actually a really easy vape to use as a daily driver. To power on the unit, simply press the orange button on the left side.
From there, you can adjust the temperature with the “+” and “-” arrow buttons on the front of the device.
The temperature readout on the front of the unit will display two temperatures. The top temperature, which will be orange, will tell you what temperature the oven is currently at.
The bottom one, which will be grey in color, tells you which temperature you set the oven to heat to.
For the best results, I found it best to just grind your material coarsely as opposed to a fine grind. The normal grind from a standard 4-piece grinder provides great results with the Mighty.
The finer particulates from a fine grind just get pulled into the cooling unit and make your life more of a hassle when it comes time to clean the unit. If you don’t mind getting your Mighty’s cooling unit dirty faster, you can load a fine grind and get slightly better vapor production, but it is not worth the extra effort for the little gain in my opinion.
A great thing about the Mighty as well is you can hand this vape to anyone and they will pull a good hit off it every time. It doesn’t matter if you draw slow or fast, the vape will produce outstanding vapor without much effort on the user’s part.
The cleaning process of the Mighty is my biggest gripe. Disassembling the whole cooling unit and thoroughly cleaning it is a chore that I dread doing.
I clean mine once a month, but it doesn’t really matter when you do it. The more frequently you do it, the easier it will be to clean each time. If you let it go too long, the mouthpiece starts getting sticky, there’s a noticeable draw resistance, and there’s an off flavor when just drawing from the unit with nothing in it.
I know a lot of people don’t clean their Mighty’s pretty much at all, so you can get away with it being dirty for a while, but why spend so much money on something you won’t take care of in the first place?
Ease of Use with the Lotus
The Lotus on the other hand, I would be lying if I said it was “easy” all around to use. It’s definitely not a hard vape to use by any stretch of the imagination, albeit I am an experienced user, but right off the bat I had no issue getting good vapor from the Lotus.
However, it does take time to master using this vape overall.
For starters, the way this vape actually heats up is with a typical single flame torch. This is unlike battery operated vaporizers, which use a battery to power some kind of heating element.
Another piece of the puzzle here is your draw speed. The Lotus is a convection vaporizer, so your draw speed is what determines vapor production as well as the intensity of the heat applied to the herb.
We’re going to dig deeper into the heating technique and draw technique in the temperature control portion of this comparison.
However, from an ease of use standpoint, what this means is that this vape takes some practice to get the hang of fully. Especially if you introduce this vape to new people, there has to be some guidance on your part or they are going to be left disappointed or combusting your flower.
Like the Mighty, a coarse grind is all you need for great results. You don’t have to do anything special and grind your herb finely or anything like that.
Cleaning the Lotus is a breeze. To clean the pipe, I just remove the screen and soak it in 91% isopropyl alcohol and give it a thorough rinse once all of the oil has dissolved.
For the Water Pipe Adapter, I just use a few cotton swabs soaked in isopropyl alcohol and thoroughly clean the inside of the water pipe adapter.
The screens can either be replaced cheaply, burnt off with a torch, or they can be soaked in isopropyl alcohol as well. It’s overall an easy cleaning process and doesn’t require a lot of effort on the user’s part.
Which Vape is the Easiest to Use?
I think it is pretty clear the winner here is the Mighty. While its cleaning process is a drag for me personally, its overall operation and ease of use is outstanding.
You don’t have to do anything special to your herb, you can set the temperature easily, and you don’t have to draw from it in any special way.
Temperature Control
The temperature control for both of these units is vastly different. In this section we’re going to explain the ways you control the temperature with each of these vapes.
The Mighty’s Temperature Control
The way the Mighty controls its temperature pretty much needs no explanation.
The Mighty offers its users a fully adjustable, accurate temperature spectrum maxing out at 410F. What this means for the user is that it is very simple for you to find your sweet spot with no effort required.
Once you find the temperatures you like, you’re set. You don’t have to think about it anymore.
For example, let’s say in a typical session you like to go from 360 to 380 then to 410. It is easy to replicate that experience every time because you’re able to simply adjust your vape to that heat level.
The device is doing all the hard work for you, it is just your job to sit back and relax.
The Lotus’ Temperature Control
This is ultimately the challenge when using the Lotus.
Firstly, when adjusting the flame on your torch, there’s a technique to determining how big your flame has to be. Your flame should be as long as the distance between two points on the Lotus flower.
Controlling the temperature of the Lotus is a combination of the heat applied from the torch and how fast you’re drawing from the vape.
The Lotus uses convection heat to vaporize your material, so what this means is that speed in which you draw from the Lotus is a big part of getting consistent results.
Let’s start with heating the Lotus with the torch. First, without drawing from the Lotus, you want to start preheating the hot plate for about 4 seconds as per Lotus’ instructions.
When you begin to draw, you want to start moving the flame in a circle around the center of the hot plate.
Once you have begun drawing from the Lotus, you have to really think about your draw speed. Start slow at first, and once you feel or see the vapor coming on, you can maintain that pace for a thick large hit, or you can begin to draw faster to get a lighter or airer hit.
In general, slow draw speeds produced the most vapor, while faster draw speeds gave the best flavor and vapor quality.
Since you are harnessing the power of a flame, you can push your herb and concentrate much farther than you can with the Mighty.
The Lotus can combust your material if you are careless, but an experienced user can teeter that line of vaporization and combustion and achieve truly awe-inspiring 1 hit extractions. It is all up to the user and their technique when determining how hot someone vaporizes with the Lotus.
Which Vape has the Better Temperature Control?
Again, I would give it to the Mighty for just being more simple, accurate, and consistent. I know if I set my Mighty to 360F it’s going to be 360F the entire time, there’s no guesswork or technique involved.
Vapor Quality and Efficiency
Both the Mighty and Lotus offer great vapor quality and efficiency, but in this section we’re going to compare them both side by side.
The Mighty’s Vapor Quality and Efficiency
The Mighty uses a hybrid of conduction and convection heating to vaporize your material.
Likewise, for being a session style vaporizer, I found it offered overall one of the most consistent vaping experiences I have ever had the pleasuring of enjoying. From the start of your session to the end, the flavor and vapor production are very consistent throughout.
Before the vapor reaches you, the vapor passes through the Mighty’s cooling unit. The Mighty’s cooling unit is a series of different chambers and channels that effectively extends the vapor path giving the vapor more time to cool down before reaching you.
This creates some of the smoothest overall vapor that I have ever experienced in general.
I found 360°F-380°F delivered the best compromise between flavor, smoothness, and vapor production. This is the range I typically vape at when using the Mighty or the Crafty.
The Mighty is a really efficient vape. I found myself needing .2-.3 grams of coarsely ground material to fully load the Mighty’s oven. You can get away with loading smaller amounts if you use the included concentrate disc to fill the remaining space in the oven.
I didn’t find it necessary to stir the bowl during a session, but it can be done halfway through a session to keep the experience consistent.
Concentrates with the Mighty and Crafty are equally phenomenal. The Mighty can vaporize small amounts of concentrate very effectively, and I found it was a very efficient use of my concentrate as opposed to traditional dabbing methods.
The Lotus’ Vapor Quality and Efficiency
The Lotus uses convection heating to vaporize your material. The Lotus offers some of the best vapor production you can get on the market, and for being under $200, I am having a hard time finding competitors in its price bracket.
Very few vapes wow me with vapor production, but this is definitely one of those units.
The Lotus has many ways of using it. I have experience with the Lotus Pipe and the Water Pipe adapter.
They both have pros and cons over each other, but for today’s comparison I am going to be focusing primarily on the Lotus pipe.
In general, the Lotus pipe offered the best flavor, and I found the water pipe adapter was smoothest and could achieve the best vapor production.
The higher temperature vapor can tickle the throat and can be a little harsh especially if you are cloud chasing. With that said however, if you balance out the heat and draw speed, you can achieve great vapor production, flavor, and smoothness.
Going easy with the torch and going for some lower temperature vapor is something I advise everyone to try who uses this unit at least a few times. It takes a bit to get the hang of lightly heating the lotus to get consistent lower temperature hits, but once you get there, I found I got very comparable vapor quality to the Mighty.
The only thing is consistency. If you don’t maintain the correct heat and draw speed with the torch, you’re not going to get a consistent hit.
Like I said, it takes practice to master this vape, but once you start understanding the principles behind getting good results with the Lotus, you shouldn’t have any problems repeating those results.
The Lotus only needs .1 of coarsely ground material to sufficiently fill the bowl for vaping.
Hands down, I would say this is the most efficient vape I have used so far. If you push your herb on the brink of combustion, you can literally extract every last bit of active compounds on your flower.
The Lotus doesn’t do concentrates natively, but there is a workaround. The Firefly concentrate pads fit right in the Lotus bowl and can be used to vaporize concentrates in your Lotus.
Unless you go for the high temperature vapor cap that Lotus offers, I would recommend taking it easy when torching the hot plate on top of the Lotus vapor cap. I only heat mine as much as I would for dry herb, which is more than sufficient to effectively vaporize a small or large amount of concentrate.
Who has the Best Vapor Quality and Efficiency?
All around, I would say the Mighty is the winner primarily because it has great consistent results.
That is not to put down the Lotus; the Lotus holds its own against a vaporizer that is over $300.
While the Mighty has a more consistent experience, I find the Lotus is able to more efficiently extract all of the active compounds out of my flower than the Mighty.
Portability
Typically when I compare portables, I look at how discrete they are for public use and how easily they fit in the pocket. These portables aren’t really what I call discrete, and they both aren’t super pocketable.
The Mighty is a larger design, while the Lotus is about the size of a large pipe.
I wouldn’t use either of these in public. They are more so vapes I would use around the house or at a destination like a festival or a friends house.
The Mighty’s Portability
The Mighty is about 5 inches tall and and 3 inches wide. This makes it the largest overall portable vape in my collection next to the 7th Floor Sidekick.
For being large, it does fit well in the hand, and it should fit well in most pockets. This means you don’t necessarily have to take a bag with you or anything like that if you simply want to bring the Mighty somewhere.
If you are interested in a more portable version of the Mighty, I would check out the Crafty. In short, it’s a smaller sized Mighty with shorter battery life.
The Lotus’ Portability
The Lotus cap itself is just under 2 inches in diameter. The short stem is 5 and half inches long while the long stem is 6 and a half inches long.
The Lotus and pipe itself fit well in the hand, but the whole package isn’t really pocketable. I found it necessary to bring a bag with me when I wanted to bring the Lotus kit somewhere.
Which Vape is more Portable?
I found the Mighty easier to bring with me from place to place. It is a more pocketable design, and you don’t have to worry about bringing 3 separate parts to make your vape function.
Battery Life and Butane
This is somewhere both vapes differ pretty greatly. The Mighty uses a battery to power its heater, while the Lotus uses a flame to power its heater.
The Mighty’s Battery Life
With the Mighty, I get about 6-8 ovens per charge, or a little under 2 hours of usage.
The Mighty simply plugs into the wall to charge, and you unfortunately do not have a way of charging the unit on the go with something like a portable battery charger.
I found on average it takes about 2 hours for the Mighty to become fully charged.
Using Butane with the Lotus
You don’t have to worry about charging your Lotus since it is powered by butane. This does mean that you have to periodically purchase butane. One large can of butane costs me under $15 and sufficiently fills both of my torches for about 2 weeks. If you’re not a really heavy user, the butane will last you longer.
In general, I found I only had to refill my torch about every other day with pretty consistent use. This is a big pro for the Lotus in my opinion. You don’t have to worry about a short battery life or having it die on you.
Battery or Butane?
Personally, I found using butane to be more convenient. You don’t have to worry about constantly charging your device, and when you finally need to refill your torch, it only takes seconds.
Butane does cost more over the long run, but I find it more convenient personally for extended periods away from home like long road trips, festivals, camping, etc.
Warranty
This section will briefly go over the warranties on each of these units.
The Mighty’s Warranty
The Mighty has a 2 year warranty on defects and flaws in the devices workmanship.
The Lotus’ Warranty
Lotus offers a 3 year warranty on the vapor cap itself, with exceptions for cases of “physical abuse or severe overheating.”
Lotus also offers warranties on both their standard model 226 hot plate and their 234 high-temp hot plates.
The Standard model 226 hot plate which we reviewed is covered for 1 year with exceptions of punctures and dents from foreign objects.
And due to the extreme temperatures the model 234 cap is expected to face, it is only covered for 90 days with exceptions of punctures and dents from foreign objects.
Who has the Better Warranty?
I would give it to the Lotus. You’re covered for a little bit longer, and there’s a lot less stuff that can go wrong with the vape in general.
Conclusion: Which Vape Should You Choose?
First of all, one of the reasons why I put the Lotus up against the Mighty is to make a point about a lot of the budget options that are on the market right now like the Lotus. There’s a lot of vapes on the market or about to come out that really perform beyond their price point, and the Lotus is one of them.
Is the Lotus the best vaporizer on the market? No, but at the same time I don’t think there is a best one to begin with.
What I am saying though is Lotus excels in the main category that people care about, which is vapor quality.
Its vapor production is on the same level as the Mighty’s and the Cloud EVO’s, its flavor is what I would expect from a higher end unit, and it’s pretty smooth even when you aren’t using it through water.
If you decide to pick up the Lotus over the Mighty, you are trading off some things like portability and ease of use, but you’re also trading those off for a much lower price point.
The Mighty retails for $399, while the kit I got from Lotus retails for $147, which is the Combination Pipe and Water Pipe Adapter Kit.
If you just want to use the Lotus with a water piece, it can be had for as little as $101 for the Water Pipe Adapter Kit.
If you’re just looking for raw vapor production and great vapor quality in a cheap affordable package, the Lotus has what you want.
The Mighty is offering an all around better package for a lot more money. I feel the Mighty is worth the price tag; it is one of the best vaporizers I have ever used and after extensive experience with it, I don’t want to ever be without it.
It’s a great vaporizer, and if you can afford it, I would highly recommend the Mighty. It offers an easier to use design, and it’s also an overall easier experience for the owner and anyone else who uses the vaporizer.
Looking for the best deal on either of these units?
