30-Second Verdict
It's a dead heat — 6.8 to 6.8 — and the Lanza costs £30 less, which means on any sane reading of the numbers the cheaper device wins the argument. The Calent is the better-looking, better-lasting, better-tasting machine for the first fortnight. The Lanza is the one you'll still be able to describe accurately in month six, because it never pretended to be anything.
Auxo Calent: 6.8/10 | £78.00 XVAPE Lanza: 6.8/10 | £48.00
Buy the Auxo Calent if: - You want the slimmest, smartest-looking device under £100 — 135g, 25mm thin, genuinely jeans-pocketable - All-day battery matters: ~20 sessions and roughly sixty minutes of real use per charge - You want a zirconia vapour path and the cleaner, cooler first draws it buys - You'd rather have four presets and one button than five presets and one button, and the extra tenner-fifty for the aluminium doesn't bother you
Buy the XVAPE Lanza if: - £48 is the point — this is a first vape, a lending vape, a festival vape, or all three - You want the lowest-consequence device on the site: nothing to get wrong, nothing much to lose - Ceramic chamber, USB-C PD3.0 and stainless dosing capsules in the box read as generous at this money - You'd rather spend £30 less and know exactly what you bought
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Auxo Calent | XVAPE Lanza | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Conduction + infrared, zirconia path | Conduction, ceramic chamber |
| Heat-up | ~20–30 seconds | ~30–60 seconds |
| Battery | 2900mAh sealed, ~20 sessions (~60 min) | 1000mAh sealed, 3–4 sessions |
| Session | Fixed 3-minute | Session, ~5–8 minutes |
| Bowl | ~0.3g | ~0.15–0.2g |
| Weight | 135g | 204g |
| Warranty | 2 years | Not published (XVAPE hold ISO 13485) |
| Price | £78.00 | £48.00 |
The Hook
There are two kinds of people caught out by rain, and neither of them is dry by accident.
The first buys the umbrella at the station. Eight quid, sometimes a fiver, black with a wooden-effect handle that isn't wood. It looks like a proper umbrella. It goes up with a satisfying whump and for about four hundred metres it is genuinely excellent — you feel like a man who plans ahead, you can see the rain rather than feel it, and the handle sits nicely in the palm. Then you turn onto a road with a gap in the buildings, one gust gets underneath, and you are holding a metal flower. You do not repair a station umbrella. You bin it at the next bin and buy another one at the next station.
The second keeps a cagoule balled up at the bottom of the bag. It is not attractive. It rustles. It makes you look like you are about to marshal a car park. But it has been in that bag since before the phone in your pocket existed, it weighs nothing, it has never once let water through, and when the gust comes there is nothing for the gust to get under. Nobody has ever admired a cagoule. Nobody has ever been rained on in one, either.
The Auxo Calent is the station umbrella. The XVAPE Lanza is the cagoule. Both keep the weather off. Only one of them is trying to look like it's doing you a favour.
Set the review metaphors aside — the Calent got the Costa treatment in its own write-up and the Lanza got Primark work shoes in its, and both still stand. What matters here is that these two identically-scored devices sit £30 apart and disagree completely about where the money should go. The Calent spends it on the outside: sandblasted aluminium, a 360° zirconia mouthpiece, a 2900mAh cell, a Bluetooth app. The Lanza spends it on the two things you can't see and can't fake — a ceramic chamber and USB-C PD3.0 — and then stops spending.
Neither one wins on score. That's the interesting part.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Winner: Auxo Calent, 7.5/10 to 6.0/10 — the widest gap on the card, and the one you'll notice first.
The Calent runs conduction with an infrared assist through a zirconia cooling path, and its review was straightforward about what that buys: the first two or three draws at 180°C are genuinely good, better than £78 has any right to be, with the limonene lifting and the zirconia keeping everything smooth and cool. Then conduction does what conduction does. By draw four the flavour drops away; by draw five you're extracting cannabinoids and tasting very little. The infrared spreads the heat more evenly than pure conduction and buys you a draw or two of extra flavour window. It does not repeal physics.
The Lanza runs ceramic conduction and nothing else. Its review's line — first draw's decent, third draw's a memory — is the whole category in eight words. What the ceramic genuinely earns is the absence of a fault: no off-flavour, no chemical edge, no cheap-coil tang, which at £48 is not a given. The Lanza also asks you to stir mid-session, because without any convection airflow the middle of the bowl doesn't get the message. It is not a load-and-forget device.
So: one and a half stages of good flavour versus about one. The £30 buys you a slightly longer flavour window, a cooler mouthpiece, and a draw you don't have to fight for — the Calent's airflow is open and natural, and for a first-timer that difference between breathing and sucking is worth real money. Just don't read 7.5 as "good vapour" in absolute terms. Read it as good for £78, and appreciably better than the £48 one for the first ninety seconds.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's the honest bit, and I'd rather say it than fudge it: neither of these devices has run the site's control pair. Jack Herer and Wedding Cake are the fixed variable across the rest of the reviews, and both of these were tested before that circuit reached the sub-£100 shelf. The Calent ran Banana Kush and Noidecs T17 Red No.2. The Lanza ran Runtz and Noidecs T14 Shishkaberry. Four different jars. I'm not going to invent numbers to make a tidier table.
What I can do is compare by terpene family, because the four strains land in two matching pairs — and that turns out to be more useful than it sounds.
The sweet limonene hybrid. Banana Kush on the Calent and Runtz on the Lanza are both myrcene-limonene-caryophyllene builds with a loud sweet top note, and both reviews tested them at 180°C and again around 200°C. The Calent's version: banana sweetness immediately, the zirconia preserving the lighter top notes, three smooth creamy draws before the drop-off — its review called this the Calent at its best, and reading it back that's fair. The Lanza's version: the limonene arriving first with what its review admitted was surprising clarity for £48, three draws each thinner than the last, and the memorable framing that the Runtz sweetness came through as a watercolour rather than an oil painting — recognisable, not frameable. Same terpene doing the same job at the same temperature; the difference is entirely how long it survives. The Calent holds the sweet top note for three good draws and gives you a fourth that's functional. The Lanza holds it for two and gives you a third that's warm air. That is the zirconia and the infrared, working exactly as advertised and not one degree further.
The budget medical indica. Noidecs T17 Red No.2 on the Calent and Noidecs T14 Shishkaberry on the Lanza are the closer pairing — same producer, similar money at about £5–6/g, both myrcene-and-caryophyllene, both undemanding on purpose. Both reviews reached the same verdict from opposite directions. The Calent: a fine strain in a fine device, competent meeting competent, adequate in exactly the way both halves are adequate. The Lanza: budget device meets budget flower and the result is genuinely okay — and, notably, the Lanza handled its medical strain better than its street one, because a simpler terpene profile doesn't need precision extraction to survive. That last observation is the one that travels. Neither of these machines resolves a complicated strain. Both of them deliver a simple one perfectly honestly — and if your prescription is a £5/g myrcene indica rather than something exotic, the gap between £78 and £48 shrinks to almost nothing.
One comparative note that follows from both reviews rather than from any new session: the Lanza's dosing capsule improved evenness on the medical strain and added a faint metallic edge to the first draw that faded by the second. The Calent has no capsule system and instead has a grind requirement — medium-coarse only, because fine grind kills its airflow outright. Different ways of asking you to prepare properly. Both of them do ask.
The call: on the strain evidence available, the Calent extracts more of a complicated strain and holds it a draw or two longer. On simple medical flower, which is what most buyers at this price will actually be putting in them, the two are far closer than the 7.5 and the 6.0 suggest. If you want the full control-pair comparison, it isn't here yet, and I'd rather flag that than pretend. The methodology page explains what the control is and why it matters.
Design & Build
Winner: Auxo Calent, 8.0/10 to 6.5/10 — and this is the category where the umbrella looks best.
The Calent is sandblasted aluminium, 135g, 106mm tall and 25mm thin, with a 360° zirconia mouthpiece that rotates smoothly and a magnetic system that clicks like something dearer. No rattles, no gaps. Its review said that on design alone it would score 8.5, and standing it next to almost anything under £100 that reads as an understatement rather than a boast.
Then the caveat, which is not a small one: documented heater failures at around three months, units cycling on and off producing no heat, and Auxo's customer service described as considerable hassle with two-month waits on replacements. Two-year warranty, if someone picks up the phone. That's the gust getting under the canopy — the thing looks like it will outlast you right up until the moment it doesn't, and there is no repairing it at the roadside.
The Lanza is soft-touch silicone over something I still couldn't identify, 204g, nothing creaking, nothing wobbling, and the marketing's "diamond-cut design" amounting to the fact that it has edges. Within a month the silicone is a lint magnet. But its review's evidence on durability is the strongest kind available: it survived a fortnight with Jake, whose record with borrowed hardware is a matter of public record across this site. Soft-touch silicone and no glass anywhere is a specification, not an accident.
Winner on score: the Calent, clearly. Winner on the thing scores measure badly: the Lanza. One of these is prettier. The other has fewer ways to stop working.
Battery & Charging
Winner: Auxo Calent, and it's the biggest functional gap between them. 8.0/10 versus 5.5/10.
The Calent's 2900mAh cell does roughly 20 sessions — about sixty minutes of real-world vaping — over USB-C at ordinary rates. Its review called this the moment Auxo's battery problem got fixed, and in daily terms it means you leave the house without thinking about it and come home with charge left. It's sealed, so when capacity fades in eighteen to twenty-four months there's no remedy, but you'll get eighteen to twenty-four months of not caring first.
The Lanza's 1000mAh is, in its review's phrase, a glorified countdown timer: three sessions on a good day, four if you're gentle and staying low. Sealed as well, with 200–300 cycles as the realistic budget, which means the battery is the expiry date. The one genuine bright spot is real: USB-C PD3.0 in a £48 device, about an hour from empty on a decent brick, when Micro-USB and a three-hour wait would have been forgiven at this price. Credit where it's due — that decision cost XVAPE money.
But charging fast is not the same as lasting long. If you vape more than twice a day, the Lanza needs a power bank or a second device. That limitation is the specific reason its review adjusted the overall score down below its category average, and it's the honest reason not to buy one as your only vape.
Ease of Use
Winner: XVAPE Lanza, 8.0/10 to 7.5/10 — the Lanza's best category, and the closest thing either device has to a genuine strength.
Both are one-button vapes. The Lanza is one button, five presets, five LED dots: click on, click to cycle, draw. Its review described explaining it to my mum in the time it takes to say "press the button, wait for the light, breathe in," and that's the whole manual. Nothing to get wrong, no technique, no app to fail. The bowl is small enough that you can't meaningfully overpack it.
The Calent is one button, four presets, 20–30 seconds, and it is nearly as simple — but it has two tuition fees the Lanza doesn't charge. The first is grind: medium-coarse or the chamber clogs and the airflow dies, which is a real trap for a beginner with a cheap grinder. The second is the fixed three-minute session, which stops without warning and, without the app, cannot be extended. And the app is not a fallback: 2.8 stars on Google Play, Bluetooth pairing failures, Pro Mode effectively unreachable for a lot of owners.
Which brings me to the beat this article gets. Mum came round on her monthly visit, and because the Calent is the one that looks like something a person would want to hold, that's the one she picked up. She got the light, waited, drew, said it was nicer than she expected — and then three minutes in it shut off mid-draw and she handed it straight back. "It's stopped. Is that me?" It wasn't her. The Calent's own review predicted exactly this and told whoever lends one to explain the timer first, and I had read that sentence and still not said anything. The Lanza, when she tried it after, ran until she was finished with it. It also charges every night, which she was less impressed by.
The Lanza asks you to learn nothing. The Calent asks you to learn two things and doesn't tell you either of them. For a device aimed squarely at beginners, that's the half-point and then some.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Dead level: 7.0/10 apiece, and they get there differently.
The Lanza's case is simplicity: a ceramic chamber, a mouthpiece, nothing else. Ten seconds with a brush after each bowl, a twenty-minute ISO soak of the mouthpiece weekly, a deeper chamber swab monthly. No cooling unit, no screen maze, no O-rings to lose down the sink. Ceramic also darkens more slowly than metal, so it looks acceptable for longer.
The Calent is a stainless chamber and a zirconia path — standard ISO-and-brush work, but with the 360° mouthpiece coming apart for cleaning and magnetic contacts that want keeping away from alcohol. The variable is that grind requirement again: pack it fine and you're soaking screens every three to five sessions instead of every five to seven, which turns a tidy routine into a nagging one.
Neither is difficult. Both would feel like a holiday to anyone who has ever excavated a Mighty+ cooling unit at midnight. The tie is fair.
Portability
Dead level again: 8.5/10 apiece, which is the strangest tie on the card given they share almost nothing.
The Calent gets there by being genuinely slim — 135g, 25mm thick, jeans pocket rather than jacket pocket, a sandblasted finish that doesn't hold lint, and enough visual ambiguity to pass for a power bank to anyone not looking hard. Its 2900mAh battery is part of the portability score, too: you don't carry a charger.
The Lanza gets there by not mattering. At 204g it's heavier and it looks like a vape, so it loses on stealth outright — but it disappears into any pocket, the silicone doesn't clank against keys, and its review's festival test is the real argument. Lose the Lanza and you've lost £48 and some dignity. Lose a £300 device and you've lost your afternoon. Sarah took it to a hen do and it came back in one piece, unremarked on by anyone.
One is portable because it's beautifully made. The other is portable because it's disposable. Same number, opposite reasoning, and honestly both earn it.
Value for Money
Winner: XVAPE Lanza, 7.5/10 to 6.5/10 — and with the £30 gap pointing the same way, this is the category that decides a tied match.
The Lanza's case is arithmetic. Forty-eight pounds gets a ceramic chamber, USB-C PD3.0 fast charging, and stainless steel dosing capsules in the box — accessories that normally cost extra. Against a takeaway, three pints in central London, or a month of streaming you forgot to cancel, it looks generous. It converts joint-smokers because £48 is a gift rather than a gamble, and its review has two named cases of exactly that.
The Calent's case is harder, and its own review didn't try to hide it. At £78 it's cheaper than most of its competition, but the XMAX V3 Pro sits alongside it with hybrid heating, a removable 18650, and both session and on-demand modes; the XMAX Ace offers self-cleaning and a removable battery in the same bracket. The Calent's value proposition is design and portability, and if the slimmest, sleekest sub-£100 device is the specific thing you want, it wins that specific contest outright. It just isn't the contest most buyers are actually entering.
The £30 is the entire argument. It buys aluminium, zirconia, and forty extra minutes of battery. It does not buy reliability, and it does not buy a longer session.
Score Comparison
| Category | Auxo Calent | XVAPE Lanza |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 7.5/10 | 6.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 8.0/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 8.0/10 | 5.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7.5/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 7.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 8.5/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Value for Money | 6.5/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Overall | 6.8/10 | 6.8/10 |
Three categories to the Calent, two to the Lanza, two drawn — and a dead heat at the bottom. That looks wrong until you notice what happened to both overall scores: the Calent's seven categories average about 7.6 and it published a 6.8; the Lanza's average 7.0 and it published a 6.8 too. Both were marked down, for different sins. The Calent lost most of a point to heater failures at three months and a two-month replacement queue. The Lanza lost the difference to a battery that genuinely constrains daily use. Two devices docked for opposite reasons, landing on the same number. The tie isn't a coincidence; it's two honest adjustments meeting in the middle.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Auxo Calent if the object matters. You want the slimmest thing you can own under £100, you like sandblasted aluminium and a zirconia mouthpiece that rotates properly, you'll be out all day and would rather not think about charging, and you value the extra draw or two of flavour the infrared and the zirconia genuinely provide. Buy it from somewhere that will actually handle a warranty claim, and register it. If the heater goes at month three you'll want a real dealer between you and Auxo's inbox.
Buy the XVAPE Lanza if the money matters, or if the device isn't for you. It's the right answer for a first vaporiser, for the mate still rolling joints who needs the barrier low enough to say yes, for a festival bag, for a glovebox, and for a new medical patient who's been told to try vaping and is balking at the price of hardware. £48 plus £5/g flower is under £70 to find out whether vaping works for you at all, and that's a lower entry cost than anything else I'd recommend with a straight face.
The wrong buyer for the Calent is anyone who has heard of the V3 Pro, which its own review said plainly and I'm not going to soften. The wrong buyer for the Lanza is anyone who already owns a vaporiser they like — it's an entry point, not a destination, and it says so on the tin.
How I Actually Choose
Neither of these is in my rotation, and I'd be lying to say otherwise.
The Calent is in the drawer. Its review told the story of the mate who borrowed it, used it for two months, said "yeah it's alright," asked to borrow the V3 Pro instead and never mentioned the Calent again — and nothing since has changed. It isn't broken. It's just never the thing I reach for, because the desk has better and the counter has better, and the Calent has no single quality strong enough to override that. Sleek isn't a use case.
The Lanza is also in the drawer, but it leaves the drawer. It's the lending device — the one that goes out to whoever's curious, the one I don't ask back with any urgency, the one that has genuinely moved two people off joints. It's also the 11pm device when everything decent is dead or dirty, and in that role it's exactly fine. The difference between the two isn't quality. It's that the Lanza has a job and the Calent doesn't.
Mum, having handed the Calent back mid-session, would use neither. She keeps a cagoule in her handbag and always has. There's a lesson in that I've chosen not to examine.
If you're starting from nothing and you want a temperature to begin at, both of these live best around 180–200°C — the temperature guide explains why, and it applies identically to a £48 device and a £78 one.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody has ever repaired a station umbrella.
That's the whole thing, really. The station umbrella is better than the cagoule in every way you can see from the platform — it's smarter, it's roomier, it feels more like an object a serious adult owns, and for four hundred metres it is unambiguously the superior piece of equipment. Then the wind finds the gap, and you discover which of the two was actually built to be out in weather. The Auxo Calent is the nicer thing to own on day one and the more likely of the two to stop working by month four. The XVAPE Lanza will never impress anyone and will never surprise you either.
The scores say 6.8 and 6.8. The prices say £78.00 and £48.00. Put those two facts next to each other and the conclusion is unavoidable: at identical quality, take the £30. The Lanza is the better purchase for almost anyone reading this, not because it's the better vaporiser — on vapour, build and battery it plainly isn't — but because the Calent's advantages are the ones you notice in the shop and the Lanza's are the ones you notice in year one.
There is exactly one buyer who should pay the extra: the person who genuinely wants the slimmest, best-looking device under a hundred quid and will accept a reliability risk to get it. That person exists, I understand them, and the Calent is unambiguously their answer.
Everyone else: buy the cagoule. You'll look ridiculous. You'll be dry.
Just one more bowl.
FAQ
Auxo Calent vs XVAPE Lanza — which should I buy? The Lanza for most people. They score identically (6.8 vs 6.8) and it costs £30 less (£48.00 vs £78.00), it's the easier of the two to hand a beginner, and it has no documented reliability pattern. Buy the Calent only if slim aluminium looks and all-day battery are specifically what you're paying for.
Which one actually tastes better? The Calent, and by a clear margin — 7.5/10 against 6.0/10. Its zirconia path and infrared assist hold a strain's top notes for about three good draws against the Lanza's two, and its draw is looser and more natural. Both are conduction, so both fall off; the Calent just falls off later.
Is the Calent's reliability problem real? Real enough to be worth planning around. Heater failures at around three months are documented — units cycling on and off with no heat — and it's not every unit, but it's enough that its review docked most of a point for it. The two-year warranty should cover it; Auxo's customer service has been described as considerable hassle with two-month replacement waits. Buy from an authorised dealer.
Which battery is better? The Calent, comfortably: 2900mAh, around 20 sessions, roughly sixty minutes of real use per charge. The Lanza's 1000mAh gives 3–4 sessions and needs charging most days — though its USB-C PD3.0 refills it in about an hour, which is genuinely unusual at £48. Both are sealed, so both have a finite life.
Can either be a proper daily driver? The Calent, just about, if you can live with three-minute sessions and you get a good unit. The Lanza, honestly, no — its own review calls it a backup device, a lending device, a conversion device. If you vape more than two or three times a day it will be flat before you are.
What grind should I use? Medium-coarse for the Calent, and this is not optional — fine grind clogs the chamber and kills the airflow, and it's the single most common reason someone thinks the device is faulty when it isn't. The Lanza is more relaxed: a loose grind works, dosing capsules work, and the bowl is too small to overpack.
Is there something better than both at this money? Yes, and both reviews say so: the XMAX V3 Pro, with hybrid heating, a removable 18650 and both session and on-demand modes, is the device most people should buy in this bracket. The Calent's own review calls it the elephant in the room. Neither of these two beats it — they win on price and on looks respectively, not on performance.
About Dennis M.
Dennis M. has been reviewing vaporisers and vaping daily for the best part of a decade. He works in IT, has ADHD, and uses cannabis for chronic pain management. He lives in Manchester with his partner Sarah, who has pointed out that the drawer now contains more vaporisers than the desk does.
Dennis owns four umbrellas, three of which are broken and in the hall, and one cagoule, which is in the bag. He would like it noted that he has never once thrown away the cagoule.
A note on spelling: 'vaporizer' is the de facto international spelling, but I've stuck with the British 'vaporiser' throughout this blog.
Questions, corrections, or a device you want tested? dennis@herbvape.co.uk
Related Content
Full Reviews: - Auxo Calent Review: The Costa Coffee of Vaporisers → - XVAPE Lanza Review: The Primark Work Shoes of Vaporisers →
More Comparisons: - All head-to-heads →
How These Scores Are Made: - Methodology →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide →
Get Them at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Auxo Calent — £78.00 Buy the Auxo Calent → Worth grabbing with it: a four-piece grinder, because the Calent needs medium-coarse flower and a fine grind will convince you the device is broken.
XVAPE Lanza — £48.00 Not currently stocked at HerbVape.co.uk — no product page to link, so I won't pretend otherwise.
Just one more bowl.
Review Policy: I buy or borrow the devices I review. HerbVape.co.uk is my employer, but my opinions are my own — they pay me to be honest, not to sell you shite. Affiliate links and discount codes exist because running a site costs money, not because they influence scores.
Strains Used: neither of these devices has yet run the site's control pair (Jack Herer and Wedding Cake), so this comparison works from the strains each review actually tested, matched by terpene family. Auxo Calent — Banana Kush (indica hybrid, ~18–22% THC, myrcene/limonene/caryophyllene/linalool) and Noidecs T17 Red No.2 (indica medical, ~17% THC, myrcene/caryophyllene/limonene). XVAPE Lanza — Runtz (balanced hybrid, 19–29% THC, limonene/caryophyllene/linalool) and Noidecs T14 Shishkaberry (indica medical, 14% THC, myrcene/caryophyllene/pinene). Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing in this comparison constitutes medical advice, and I am not a medical professional. Cannabis is a controlled substance in the UK; medical cannabis is legal only on prescription from a registered specialist clinic. HerbVape.co.uk sells vaporiser hardware only: we do not sell, prescribe, or recommend cannabis or cannabis products. Vaporisers are sold for use with legal dry herbs and legally prescribed medical cannabis. You must be 18 or over to buy one, and cannabis law varies by jurisdiction — check yours.
Last updated: 26 August 2026.