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With the holiday season just around the corner, what better gift to get your cannabis-loving friends and family than a health-conscious way to consume. While a majority of vaporizer manufacturers focus on affordability and size, vapor quality and intuitiveness oftentimes must be sacrificed in lieu of these factors. This is far from the case with the new Firefly 2, a new dynamic convection vaporizer that offers users full control over their experience and exceptionally flavorful hits.
MERRY JANE was given the opportunity to take this new device for a test drive, and the Firefly 2 managed to shatter our expectations of how a vaporizer should function. Upon receiving the device, it was instantly made clear that the Firefly 2 wasn’t just any ordinary device. From the pristine packaging, to the simple and effective functionality, the vaporizer seemed as if it were designed by Apple—and in a way it was.
Before Firefly co-founder Mark Williams joined up with software wiz Sasha Robinson to create the first version of their portable dynamic convection vape, he worked for Apple as a highly ranked MacOS software designer. When the two Firefly founders first met at Burning Man in 2007, the only vaporizers available on the market at the time were bulky Volcano-like devices. And so, the two health-conscious smokers decided to leave their jobs in Silicon Valley behind to create an intuitive and highly functional vaporizer that would revolutionize the way cannabis is consumed.
“Working at Apple for over five years effectively reset my bar as to what made a truly great user experience and just how far you have to go in pursuit of that,” Williams says. “As it turns out, it’s pretty damn far.”
Fast forward to 2016, and Firefly has solidified itself as one of the best vaporizer producers around. While the first iteration of Firefly was praised for offering clean and flavorful hits, the weight and size of the device gave it the appearance of a bulky cellphone. However, with the new Firefly 2, the team managed to make the device 55 percent lighter and 33 percent smaller than its predecessor, while also managing to improve functionality and intuitiveness.
The Firefly 2’s dynamic convection style offers a number of advantages over the commonly used conduction vape method. While the conduction method passes heat directly to the cannabis, the convection method warms up the air inside of the heating chamber before it’s applied to the cannabis material. This allows the user to optimize the activation of cannabinoids and THC, and also experience the flavorful terpenes that are usually burned away with conduction vaporizers.
“The material is only heated while the user inhales,” Williams says of the Firefly’s convection method. “This allows maximum freshness, because the user only extracts the amount of vapor that they want, whether it’s one puff, two puffs, or 10 puffs, the system is both precise but scalable. Conduction heating makes you heat up the whole volume at once, which commits you to consuming that whole volume if you want it at its peak freshness.”
From the very first hit it was clear that the Firefly 2 was designed with versatility and simplicity in mind. The vaporizer is engineered to be used with both cannabis flower and concentrates, a versatile feature not commonly found with most other portable devices. There is no designated power button on the Firefly 2; instead it uses simple touch-sensitive activation instead. According to Firefly, the newest version offers a battery life of 40–80 draws, and also includes an extra rechargeable battery to double the time of use.
Another unique feature of the Firefly 2 is that every aspect of the device can be managed from the Firefly smartphone app. After connecting the device to the app via Bluetooth, you can change the heating profile, modify the way the device is activated, and even check the battery life. The app also includes the company’s new “Power Tuning” booster feature, which allows users to temporarily increase the power of the heating profile, producing bigger clouds and more satisfying hits.
Lastly, the Firefly 2 is extremely easy to clean, something that is generally more difficult to do with other vaporizers that require you to dig around and fish out resin from hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. With the Firefly 2, simply pop off the magnetic glass lid and give the device a quick alcohol wipe down. I completed the cleaning process in just a matter of seconds, and suddenly the device looked as good as new.
While other conduction vapes still slightly have this convection vape beat in portability and price, the flavor and intuitiveness of the Firefly 2 makes it well worth the extra cash and pocket size. The Firefly 2 is priced at $329.99, and is available in blue, gold, red, white, and black. While it is an investment for this innovative portable vaporizer, the quality hits and excellent functionality that the Firefly 2 offers set it one bar above the rest of the competition.
