A dry herb vaporizer is a device that heats ground, dried plant material to a temperature you choose — usually somewhere between 170°C and 210°C — so its aromatic compounds are released as vapour instead of being burnt. Nothing catches fire: the herb stays below the roughly 233°C point where combustion starts, so there's no flame, no smoke and no ash, just heated plant material giving up its flavour.

That's the definition. The rest of this page is what I wish someone had told me before I bought my first one: what it isn't, the main types, who it suits, what it actually costs to live with, and the handful of things to do in your first week so you don't decide it's broken by Sunday. (I did. It wasn't.)

The Definition, Slightly Longer

Every dry herb vaporizer, from a pocket portable to a desktop that lives on the coffee table, does the same three things. It holds ground herb in a small chamber (the oven or bowl). It heats that chamber to a controlled temperature. And when you draw, air carries the released vapour out of the chamber, through a cooling path and into your mouth.

The whole point is the temperature window. Plant material contains compounds — terpenes, which carry the aroma and flavour, plus the active compounds people vaporise for — that turn to vapour at different temperatures, mostly between the mid-150s and around 220°C. The plant fibre itself doesn't burn until roughly 233°C. A vaporizer lives in the gap between those two numbers. Burning is a blunt instrument; a vaporizer is a thermostat.

If you want the mechanism in detail — heat source, chamber, airflow, what boils off at which degree — I've written that up separately in How Does a Dry Herb Vaporizer Work?. This page is about the what, the which type and the who for.

How It Differs From Smoking, E-Liquid Vapes and Concentrate Pens

"Vape" is doing an awful lot of work in everyday English. It covers four very different things, and only one of them is what we sell.

Method	What goes in	How it's heated	What comes out
Smoking	Dried herb (often mixed with tobacco in the UK)	Open flame; the tip burns at several hundred degrees	Smoke: ash, tar and combustion by-products alongside the compounds you wanted
Nicotine / e-liquid vape	Liquid (PG/VG, flavouring, usually nicotine) in a pod or tank	A wire coil soaked in liquid	Aerosolised e-liquid. Different chemistry, different category
Concentrate pen / e-rig	Waxes, rosin, resins and other extracts	Ceramic, quartz or similar chamber, usually much hotter than herb	Vapour from an extract, not the whole plant
Dry herb vaporizer	Ground, dried plant material. Nothing else	Controlled heat below combustion (typically 170–210°C)	Vapour carrying the herb's own terpenes and active compounds; toasted brown herb left behind

Three things worth underlining:

• No liquid, ever. A dry herb vaporizer has no tank, no pod and no coil to wick. Pour liquid into the chamber and you'll ruin it.
• Concentrate kit is its own world. Puffco's range — the Peak Pro, Proxy and Pivot — is built for concentrates, not flower. If that's what you're curious about, start with What Is Dabbing?, What Is an E-Rig? and the Puffco brand hub. And before you ask: no, you shouldn't put flower in a Puffco.
• Smoking and vaporising use the same plant but a different process. One burns it, one heats it. That process difference is the whole story; the editorial team goes deeper in Dry Herb vs Extracts vs E-Liquid.

The Main Types of Dry Herb Vaporizer

There are four questions that sort every dry herb vaporizer on the market. Answer them in this order and the shortlist writes itself.

1. Portable or desktop?

Portables run on a rechargeable battery and go where you go — some fit a jeans pocket, most live happier in a jacket. The Mighty+, Venty, Arizer Solo 3 V2 and Arizer Go SRT are all portables, from chunky-but-bulletproof to properly pocketable.

Desktops plug into the wall and stay put. You trade portability for power, consistency and bigger shared sessions. The Volcano Hybrid is the category icon — balloon or whip — and Arizer's V-Tower is another route in. If it never leaves the house, a desktop is a lovely thing to own.

2. Conduction, convection or hybrid?

This is about how heat reaches the herb:

• Conduction heats the chamber walls and the herb touching them — like a hot plate. Simple and fast, but the herb against the wall cooks harder than the middle, so you stir.
• Convection heats air and pulls it through the herb — like a fan oven. More even, but dependent on how you draw. The Volcano Classic is the old-school example.
• Hybrid does both, and it's where most good modern devices have landed. Nearly all of Storz & Bickel's range is hybrid (the Volcano Classic is the pure-convection exception); Arizer's portables are hybrids that lean convection.

Honest opinion after years of arguing about it: engineering beats heating type. A well-built conduction vape beats a lazy convection one. The full argument is in Conduction vs Convection.

3. Session or on-demand?

A session vaporizer heats the chamber and keeps it hot for a few minutes; you take draws until the bowl is spent. An on-demand vaporizer heats only while you're using it, so you can take one or two draws and walk away. Several newer devices, including the Solo 3 V2 and Go SRT, do both. This is the single biggest lifestyle decision, which is why it gets its own piece: Session vs On-Demand.

4. Battery, or no battery at all?

Then there's the odd one out. A DynaVap M7 has no battery, no screen and no electronics. You heat its metal tip with a butane torch or an induction heater until a cap clicks to tell you it has reached temperature, take a few draws, and it clicks again as it cools. Nothing to charge, nothing to update, very little to break. The trade-off is technique: overheat it and you'll scorch the bowl until you learn where to put the flame.

Type	Best at	The catch
Portable, session	Full bowls anywhere, consistent results	Bigger bodies, battery wears out eventually
Portable, on-demand / dual-mode	A couple of draws and done; less waste	Often pricier; more settings to learn
Desktop	Home use, sharing, maximum consistency	Doesn't leave the house
Manual (butane / induction)	Off-grid, tiny doses, near-indestructible	A learning curve and an open flame

What's Inside One (the 60-Second Tour)

Strip any electric dry herb vaporizer down and you'll find the same handful of parts:

• Chamber (oven): where the ground herb sits — ceramic-coated metal in the Storz & Bickel range, glass stems in Arizer's.
• Heater: the element that warms the chamber, the air, or both.
• Temperature control: a sensor and a small controller that hold the heat where you set it — to the degree on some devices, via presets on others.
• Airpath and cooling: the route vapour takes to your mouth. Longer or better-designed paths mean cooler, smoother draws.
• Power: a battery in portables, the mains in desktops, a flame for manual devices.

How those parts work together — and what boils off at 170°C versus 200°C — is the job of How Does a Dry Herb Vaporizer Work?. If you like the idea of seeing your settings make a difference, the temperature guide is where that gets fun.

Who a Dry Herb Vaporizer Is Actually For

In eight years I've handed vaporizers to a lot of people. The ones who stick with them tend to fit at least one of these:

• People who care about flavour. At lower temperatures you taste the herb itself rather than smoke. That's usually the moment it clicks.
• People who want control. Choose a temperature, get a predictable result, repeat it tomorrow. For anyone who likes consistency — and as an IT bloke with a spreadsheet habit, I'm the poster boy — that's the appeal.
• People who want to use less material. Nothing burns away between draws, and what's left in the chamber isn't ash. More on that in the AVB guide.
• People who value discretion. Vapour smells, but differently and more briefly than smoke — the honest detail is in Do Dry Herb Vaporizers Smell?.
• People who like a ritual. Grind, load, choose a temperature, clean afterwards. Some of us genuinely enjoy that part.

And who it's not for: anyone after nicotine (wrong category entirely), anyone who wants a concentrate device (see Puffco above), and anyone who won't tolerate a two-minute clean once a week. That last group will be unhappy with any vaporizer. I know, because for my first month I was that group.

What It Costs to Run

I'm not putting prices in here because they change faster than I can update articles — the Best Of roundups cover current picks at every budget, and the product pages carry live prices. What I can give you is the shape of it.

Up front, there are loosely three tiers. Budget devices do the basic job and are a sensible way to find out if vaporising suits you. The mid tier is where proper temperature control, better airpaths and decent batteries arrive. The premium tier buys you build quality, faster heat-up, longer warranties and years of service. A manual device like the DynaVap sits near the bottom on price but plays by different rules entirely. The buying guide walks the tiers properly.

Ongoing, the running costs are small but real:

• A grinder. Non-negotiable. A decent metal one lasts for years.
• Screens, seals and O-rings. Consumables. Cheap, but they wear.
• Cleaning supplies. Isopropyl alcohol and cotton buds. Skip the fancy branded "vape cleaner" — it's the same stuff in a nicer bottle. See the cleaning guide.
• Storage. An airtight jar and humidity packs keep herb vaporising properly. The herb prep guide explains why this matters more than people think.
• Battery wear. Sealed batteries in portables lose capacity over a couple of years of daily use; removable cells can simply be replaced. Worth checking before you buy — the battery and power types explainer covers the difference.
• Butane, if you go the DynaVap route with a torch.

On the other side of the ledger, most people find they use less herb for the same session once they've dialled in their technique. That's not a promise, it's a pattern; the bioavailability explainer has the reasons.

Common Misconceptions

"It's basically an e-cig."

No. No liquid, no coil, no nicotine, no pods. A dry herb vaporizer heats plant material and nothing else. Same verb, different machine.

"Bigger clouds mean it's working better."

Vapour is naturally thinner than smoke, especially at lower temperatures where the flavour lives. I spent three weeks at maximum temperature chasing clouds before I realised I was cooking off everything that made it worth doing. Judge by taste and by the colour of what's left in the chamber, not the size of the exhale.

"Vapour doesn't smell."

It does. Less, and for a shorter time, than smoke — a toasted, herbal smell rather than a burnt one that clings to curtains. Full, honest answer: Do Dry Herb Vaporizers Smell?

"Convection is always better than conduction."

I believed this for two insufferable years. Implementation matters far more than the label. Here's the long version.

"No smoke means it's safe."

"No combustion" is a fact about the process, not a clean bill of health. You're still inhaling a heated aerosol. The honest, sourced picture is in Are Dry Herb Vaporisers Safe? and Is Vaping Healthier Than Smoking?.

"If it's not working, the device is broken."

Almost never. In my experience it's grind, packing, temperature or draw speed nine times out of ten. Why Isn't This Working? covers the usual suspects.

Your First-Steps Checklist

My mate Dave came round on day seven of my first week and found six mistakes in one session. Save yourself the week:

1. Charge it fully and do a burn-off. Run an empty chamber at a high setting once or twice to clear manufacturing residue.
2. Grind medium, not to dust. Coarse enough that it doesn't fall through the screen, fine enough that heat reaches the middle.
3. Pack loosely. Fill to the top of the chamber without compressing it hard. Overpacking chokes the airflow.
4. Start at 180–185°C. It's the most forgiving place to learn. Adjust in 5–10°C steps once you know what "working" feels like.
5. Draw slowly. Long, gentle sips — think hot tea, not a milkshake through a straw.
6. Check the colour. Light-to-medium brown means you're vaporising. Black and crumbly means you've burnt it; turn it down.
7. Clean little and often. A quick brush after sessions saves a proper deep clean later.

The full, mistake-by-mistake walkthrough is Your First Vaporizer Session, and if the jargon is getting on top of you, Vaporizer Jargon Decoded translates the forum-speak.

Brands Worth Knowing First

• Storz & Bickel (Germany) — makers of the Volcano, Mighty+ and Venty. Hybrid heating across the range, known for reliability and long warranties.
• Arizer (Canada) — glass vapour paths, strong batteries, and the Solo and Go lines.
• DynaVap (USA) — the battery-free, torch-or-induction specialists. Start with the M7.
• Puffco and Dr Dabber — primarily concentrate hardware. Worth knowing so you don't buy the wrong category by accident.

Frequently Asked Questions