30-Second Verdict
The Slick wins — 6.5 to 6.3 — taking five of seven categories to do it. It also costs £10 more and it's discontinued, so the honest version of this verdict has a clock on it. One of these is the thinnest thing in your pocket. The other is the better-made object, with glass at the lips and a battery you can swap. Both are conduction, both are budget, and neither is anybody's only vaporiser.
Flowermate Aura: 6.3/10 | £69.00 Flowermate Slick: 6.5/10 | £79.00
Buy the Flowermate Aura if: - Invisibility is the entire brief — 90 grams, pen-shaped, fits where a biro fits - You want herb, concentrate and oil pods in the box at £69 - You want the simplest interface on this site: one button, three presets, nothing to learn - You accept that the mouthpiece is a consumable and budget for it
Buy the Flowermate Slick if: - You want glass at the lips rather than plastic — this is the whole £10 - A removable 18650 matters: swap a cell in seconds, £5 to reset the clock - You want a 0.4g bowl, a carbon-fibre-over-aluminium body and a proper kit in a case - You're buying a device you can afford to lose at a festival and won't mourn
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Flowermate Aura | Flowermate Slick | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Conduction, 3 presets (~185/195/215°C) | Conduction, 3 presets (196/206/215°C) |
| Mouthpiece | Plastic (cracks) | Borosilicate glass |
| Battery | 2600mAh sealed, 6–8 sessions | Removable 18650 (2500mAh), 60+ min per cell |
| Charging | Micro-USB, ~3 hours | USB via cradle or cable, no USB-C |
| Bowl | ~0.3g stainless steel | 0.4g |
| Weight | ~90g | ~120g |
| Heat-up | ~30–45 seconds | ~30–45 seconds |
| Warranty | 2 years | 2 years |
| Price | £69.00 | £79.00 |
The Hook
Everyone who went to a British school owns two memories of stationery, and they are not the same memory.
The first is the 30cm plastic ruler. Weightless, transparent-ish, living at the bottom of the blazer pocket bent round the shape of everything else in there. Nobody chose their ruler. Nobody looked after it. And at some point in the second term it snapped — not dramatically, just a hairline crack near the 12 that became two rulers by Friday — and you got another one, and you felt nothing.
The second is the Helix Oxford tin. Metal-edged, properly heavy, a satisfying rattle when it shut, a whole kit inside: compasses, set square, protractor, the little sharpener nobody used. It cost more and it felt like it, and it came with a small anxiety, because the good stuff is the stuff you can actually damage. And here's the bit that matters in 2026: you can't reliably buy that exact tin any more.
The Flowermate Aura is the plastic ruler. The Flowermate Slick is the Helix tin. One disappears and eventually splits. The other is better in the hand, comes with the kit, and is on its way out of the catalogue.
Both devices got their own metaphors in their own reviews — set those aside. What matters here is that these are the same company's two answers to the same £70-ish question, ten pounds apart, answered in opposite directions. One optimises for not being seen. The other optimises for being decent.
One of them scores higher. It's the tin. But the ruler wins the one category it was built to win, and it wins it by two clear points.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Winner: Flowermate Slick. 6/10 versus 5/10 — and the whole difference is what your mouth touches.
Both are pure conduction into a small chamber with three fixed presets, and neither will show you what a strain actually is. The Aura's review was blunt about the ceiling: thin but detectable vapour at preset 1, a functional zone at preset 2 (~195°C) where you'll get medicated without chasing terps, and preset 3 (~215°C) as extraction mode where flavour drops and harshness arrives. Terps arrive as the general character of a strain rather than individual notes — and behind all of it, a faint synthetic warmth from the plastic mouthpiece that you notice once and then try to forget.
The Slick runs the same physics through borosilicate. Its review scored the first three draws at 196°C as clean and smooth with genuine terp presence, and said plainly that the glass adds zero flavour of its own — explicitly against the Aura's polymer warmth. The 0.4g bowl helps too: more flower mass sustains flavour longer than a smaller conduction bowl. By draw four, conduction does what conduction does and you're stirring with the included stainless tool — a faff nobody enjoys that genuinely resets the session.
The Slick's own cost is airflow. Draw resistance is the annoyance — you pull harder than you want to, which cools the chamber slightly and thins the vapour. The Aura has no such complaint, but it also has less to protect.
Ten pounds buys you glass, and glass is the entire argument. Everything else in this category is a draw.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's where I have to be straight with you, because this pairing breaks the site's control.
The strain test is meant to be the constant — same two jars, every device, machine as the only variable. These two reviews predate that discipline and neither ran the standard pair. The Aura went through Papaya (indica hybrid, ~20–25% THC, myrcene/linalool/caryophyllene) and Noidecs T10:C10 (balanced medical, 10% THC / 10% CBD); the Slick through Grape Ape (near-pure indica, 18–21% THC, myrcene/pinene/linalool) and Tilray Warlock T22 (indica medical, 22% THC, myrcene/caryophyllene/limonene). I'm not going to invent a side-by-side that doesn't exist. What I can do is line up the two pairs that rhyme, and they rhyme closely.
The sweet myrcene indica — Papaya through plastic, Grape Ape through glass. Close cousins: both myrcene-dominant, both with linalool underneath, both the kind of flower that fills a room before you've ground it. Through the Aura, Papaya at preset 1 arrived as a general fruitiness rather than the detailed mango-papaya layering convection would give you; by preset 2 the sweetness deepened with the lavender calm beneath it, three then four draws, body effect building. The review's own conclusion is the giveaway: Papaya's myrcene profile is forgiving enough to shine through basic conduction, and sweet enough to mask the plastic mouthpiece's flavour contribution. That's a device being carried by its flower. Grape Ape through the Slick at 196°C got the opposite write-up — sweet, berry-forward, unmistakably Grape Ape, three draws of genuine flavour, glass adding no interference and no metal warmth. Same terpene family, same conduction, same three-draws-then-stir arithmetic. One review had to explain why the flavour survived. The other just described the flavour.
The medical jar — T10:C10 through the Aura, Warlock T22 through the Slick. Different missions, same finding. The Aura's balanced 1:1 at preset 1 was CBD-forward and gentle, pinene arriving first, subtle through plastic but present — the qualifier is the review's, not mine — and at preset 2 it became the medical use case the Aura was built for whether Flowermate knew it or not. The Slick took a 22% resinous indica and gave a warm, clear opening at 196°C, the caryophyllene-limonene combination reading through the glass, full extraction at 206°C, and a hard stop at preset 3 because Warlock goes bitter and one draw confirms it. Both land in the same honest place: cannabinoids don't care about temperature precision, and neither of these devices offers any.
The call: the Slick's glass path reports flavour; the Aura's plastic path reports flavour minus a caveat. Neither resolves a strain — both give you the headline and lose the detail by draw four. Flag for the archive: this pair needs a re-run on Jack Herer and Wedding Cake before the comparison is properly like-for-like.
Design & Build
Winner: Flowermate Slick, comfortably. 7/10 versus 5/10 — the widest gap on the card.
The Aura's form factor is its design, and Flowermate committed fully: metal body, slim profile, 90 grams, no visible branding from a distance, no immediate scratching from pocket carry. Then there's the mouthpiece, which its review called the design failure without hedging. It cracks. Not might — will. Jake's lasted a week; forum reports run weeks to months. It's a cost-saving material choice that costs you replacement parts, and the herb pod's gasket loosens after three to six months on top.
The Slick spends the £10 on materials: carbon-fibre-coated aluminium, fingerprint-resistant and grippy, described in its review as genuinely considered at a price where you expect matte plastic and wishful thinking. Real borosilicate at the lips. A pod system that clicks in and out, a concentrate pod and a stainless stirring tool in a carry case — a complete kit at a price that shouldn't include one. Its fragility is at least honest: the Aura's mouthpiece cracks on its own, the Slick's only cracks when you drop it. That's the Slick review's line, and it's the fairest sentence written about either device.
What hangs over the Slick is discontinuation. Glass breaks, replacement availability is declining. Buy a spare mouthpiece with the device or accept the risk.
Battery & Charging
Winner: Flowermate Slick. 8/10 versus 7/10, though this is closer than the gap suggests and they win it differently.
The Aura's 2600mAh in a 90-gram body is impressive relative to its size — its review noted it outlasts a PAX Mini 2's 1500mAh and a Smono No.3's 1600mAh, and 6–8 sessions per charge at preset 2 covers a full evening. Then it plugs in via Micro-USB and takes three hours, in 2026, through a port the industry abandoned years ago. Its review called that the Aura's silent embarrassment and told you to keep a cable in the drawer and guard it. Finding one is becoming an archaeological exercise.
The Slick's 18650 comes out. 2500mAh, 60+ minutes per cell, and when it degrades after 300 cycles you buy a £5 replacement rather than a device. Charging is USB via cradle or cable, also not USB-C, also slow — but it barely matters, because an external charger and a second cell means you never wait for anything. Dave ran his exactly that way, which his own appearance in the Slick review covers.
Sealed and clever versus removable and boring. The removable one wins on the same logic every time: a device with a swappable cell has no battery lifespan, only a chassis lifespan.
Ease of Use
Winner: Flowermate Aura. 7/10 versus 6/10 — the Aura's first of two wins, and it's a real one.
Five clicks on, five clicks off, three more to cycle presets, green-blue-red LED, five-minute auto-shutoff. That's the whole interface, and its review put it plainly: no learning curve, no decisions beyond "which preset." The cost is that ten degrees separate preset 1 from preset 2 with nothing in between — experienced users feel the restriction, beginners don't know what they're missing. (The temperature guide explains what those ten degrees actually contain.)
The Slick has the same three-preset architecture and adds work. Stirring is required mid-session — pop the mouthpiece, stir, replace, continue. Its review called it a ritual, not elegant but necessary, and flagged it as a genuine ADHD problem: a mid-session task you'll forget or resent. Add the draw resistance and you're working harder than the Aura asks.
Both fail the same way, mind. The Mum test on the Aura came back MIXED — she pressed the button five times without being told, then asked "Which colour am I supposed to want?" The Slick's came back "not ideal" for the same reason: "Is green the hot one or the cool one?" Two devices, two separate occasions, one identical unsolved problem. Colour-coded LEDs are not an interface; they're a quiz.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Winner: Flowermate Slick. 6/10 versus 5/10, and the difference is anxiety rather than minutes.
Both use pods, and pods genuinely help — resin builds on the pod rather than the device. The Slick's glass mouthpiece soaks clean in ISO with no drama; the airpath is the awkward bit, needing a pipe cleaner weekly, with a full disassemble monthly.
The Aura's problem is that cleaning is the thing most likely to break it. The plastic mouthpiece needs gentle, lukewarm ISO — too hot or too long and the plastic degrades faster — but too little and resin builds in the narrow airpath. Its review's admission is the tell: I clean it more gently and more often than I would glass, and I'm always aware the crack is coming. A maintenance routine you perform nervously is a worse routine, even when it takes the same three minutes.
Portability
Winner: Flowermate Aura, and this is the one it was built for. 9/10 versus 7/10.
Ninety grams. Pen-shaped. Fits in a shirt pocket, a jacket, jeans, a coat, anywhere a biro fits. Its review called it the most discreet named-brand vaporiser I'd tested and meant it: from two metres it looks like an e-cigarette, from five it looks like a pen. That's a 9 in a category where almost nothing earns one.
The Slick is 120 grams and pen-style but thicker than an actual pen — manageable for jacket pockets and bags, carbon fibre that doesn't collect lint, but a glass mouthpiece that adds a fragility tax to pocket carry the Aura simply doesn't pay. Carry pre-loaded pods for either; that's the sensible move both ways.
Thirty grams and two points. That's the trade, and for one specific buyer it's the only line in this article that matters.
Value for Money
Winner: Flowermate Slick, decisively. 8/10 versus 6/10 — the second-widest gap on the card, running against the £10 price difference.
The Aura at £69 looks fair on paper: triple-use pods, 2600mAh, two-year warranty. In practice its review docked it for total cost of ownership, because replacement mouthpieces at £5–10 every few months aren't optional, they're scheduled. £69 is an awkward middle — not cheap enough to be throwaway, not dear enough to be an investment.
The Slick at £79 gets glass, a removable 18650, carbon-fibre aluminium, a 0.4g bowl, dual-use pods and the same warranty. Its review called that a genuine feature set for under eighty quid, and discontinuation adds urgency rather than doubt: when it's gone, there's nothing else at this price with glass and a swappable cell.
Both reviews then do the same thing, which I'd rather you heard from me than found out later: each points at a device a few quid away and tells you to buy that instead. The Aura's says the Smono No.3 at £75 is a category above for six pounds more. The Slick's says the Smono 4 Pro at £85 beats it everywhere except removable batteries. I can't link you to either review here — but the honesty stands, and it's the context this whole comparison sits inside.
Score Comparison
| Category | Flowermate Aura | Flowermate Slick |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 5.0/10 | 6.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 5.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7.0/10 | 6.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 5.0/10 | 6.0/10 |
| Portability | 9.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Value for Money | 6.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Overall | 6.3/10 | 6.5/10 |
Read that card and the 0.2 gap looks wrong. Five categories to two, two of them by a full two points, and the Slick edges the overall by a fifth of a point. That's the Aura's 9 for portability doing enormous work — the highest single number either device puts on the board, dragging a 6.3 out of a machine that scores 5 for vapour, 5 for build and 5 for cleaning. The Aura is a one-category device that happens to be brilliant at that category. How the weighting works is on the methodology page if you want to check my working.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Flowermate Aura if invisibility is the entire brief. Not "portable" — invisible. Something that goes into a shirt pocket at your in-laws', into a bag next to a lipstick, into a cinema, and never once gets asked about. One button, zero decisions, herb and concentrate and oil pods in one £69 box. And you've read "the mouthpiece will crack" and thought fine, I'll buy two rather than dealbreaker. That's a coherent buyer, and the Aura is genuinely the right answer for them.
Buy the Flowermate Slick if you want the better-built object and can spare a tenner. Glass at the lips, a battery you can swap forever, a 0.4g bowl, a complete kit in a case. It's the festival device, the camping device, the one that lives in the bag you might leave somewhere. It's also the one with a deadline: discontinued means no future parts, so buy the spare glass now or don't buy it at all.
The wrong buyer for the Aura is anyone who cares what the vapour tastes like. The wrong buyer for the Slick is anyone who needs the device to vanish — or anyone who'd be genuinely upset when the mouthpiece meets a kitchen floor in 2027 and there's nothing to replace it with.
How I Actually Choose
Neither of these is my daily driver and neither pretends to be. They live in different drawers for different reasons: the Aura is the situational tool for stealth-first occasions where being noticed is the only failure mode, and the Slick is the one in the festival bag, whose tally of survived events its own review sets out.
The fresh data point is Sarah's, and it's the most useful thing either of us learned this year. She's the Aura's actual heavy user in this house — which I'm still processing — so when the Slick arrived I handed it over on the reasonable grounds that it wins five of seven categories, and asked her to run it for a week. She gave it back on day three. "It's nicer than the other one," she said, entirely fairly. "But I can feel it in the bag."
Thirty grams. That's what she was describing. Not the glass, not the swappable cell, not the carbon fibre — thirty grams and a slightly thicker barrel, and the better device came straight back to me. The Aura went back where it had been, and it's still there.
That's the whole comparison in one sentence, and I didn't write it. The tin is better. The ruler is the one that stays in the pocket.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody ever chose a plastic ruler. That's not what plastic rulers are for. It was there, it was straight enough, and when it snapped you got another one and got on with the lesson.
The Helix tin was chosen. Somebody bought it deliberately, it had the good kit inside, and it was heavy enough that you noticed it in the bag every single day. It was the better object. It was also the one you left at home more often than you'd admit.
The Flowermate Slick is the better vaporiser and the better purchase: 6.5 against 6.3, five categories to two, glass instead of plastic, a battery you can swap instead of one that expires with the device — and nothing else under eighty quid still offers that combination. Ten pounds is a low price for all of it. Buy the spare mouthpiece at the same time, because the shelf is emptying.
But the Aura keeps the one thing the Slick can't take: at 90 grams and pen-shaped, it's the most discreet named-brand vaporiser I've tested, and no score table has ever talked anyone out of that. If disappearing is why you're here, the ruler is your answer and the tin is a heavier version of a problem you already solved.
The tin for the work. The ruler for the pocket. If your budget stretches to one and you actually care how it tastes — spend the tenner, buy the tin, and grab it before it's gone.
Just one more bowl.
FAQ
Flowermate Aura vs Flowermate Slick — which should I buy? The Slick for most people: it scores higher (6.5 vs 6.3), wins five of seven categories, has a glass mouthpiece instead of cracking plastic, and takes a removable 18650. It costs £10 more (£79.00 vs £69.00). Buy the Aura only if pen-form invisibility at 90 grams is specifically what you're paying for.
Is the glass mouthpiece really worth ten quid? Yes, and it's the clearest difference between them. The Aura's plastic adds a faint synthetic warmth behind the flavour and cracks as a matter of when, not if — Jake's managed a week. The Slick's borosilicate adds nothing to the taste and only breaks if you drop it.
Which battery is better? The Slick's, because it comes out: 18650, 2500mAh, 60+ minutes per cell, £5 to replace when it fades. The Aura's sealed 2600mAh is more impressive for its size — 6–8 sessions in a 90-gram body — but it charges over Micro-USB in about three hours, and when it eventually dies the device dies with it.
Which is more portable? The Aura, by a wide margin: 90 grams and pen-shaped, two clear points ahead on the card. The Slick is 120 grams, thicker than an actual pen, with glass to protect. If it needs to be invisible rather than merely small, that's the Aura's whole reason to exist.
Does the Slick being discontinued matter? For parts, not performance. No future support, and replacement mouthpieces and pods will get scarce — a real risk on a device whose best feature is breakable glass. Buy a spare mouthpiece with it, or don't buy it.
Do either of them handle concentrates? Both, via pods. The Aura ships with three — herb, concentrate and oil — which at £69 is genuinely rare and is its best spec-sheet line. The Slick ships with two, and its review recommends preset 3 (215°C) for wax. Neither is a dedicated concentrate device.
Can I get proper flavour out of either? Not really, and I'd rather say so. Both are conduction with three fixed presets and no degree control, and both fade by draw four. Choose sweet, terpene-heavy strains; delicate citrus and floral profiles don't survive the trip. If flavour is the priority, spend elsewhere — more comparisons at the head-to-head hub.
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 returned the objectively better vaporiser after three days on the grounds that she could feel it in her bag, and who has not been wrong about anything in this house since roughly 2019.
Dennis would like it noted that he still owns a Helix Oxford tin, that it lives in a drawer, and that he has not used a compass since 1998. He is aware this is relevant.
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: - Flowermate Aura Review → - Flowermate Slick Review →
More Comparisons: - All Head-to-Heads →
How I Score: - Methodology →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide →
Get Either at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Flowermate Aura — £69.00 Buy the Flowermate Aura →
Flowermate Slick — £79.00 Buy the Flowermate Slick →
Last updated: 26 August 2026.
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: this pairing is the exception on this site. The Aura was tested on Papaya — indica hybrid (Citral #13 × Ice #2), ~20–25% THC, myrcene/linalool/caryophyllene — and Noidecs T10:C10, balanced medical at ~10% THC / 10% CBD. The Slick was tested on Grape Ape — near-pure indica (Mendocino Purps × Skunk #1 × Afghani), 18–21% THC, myrcene/pinene/linalool — and Tilray Warlock T22, indica medical, 22% THC, myrcene/caryophyllene/limonene. Both reviews predate the site's standard control pair, so the strain is not a true constant here and the flavour findings are aligned by terpene family rather than by jar. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing here 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.