Last updated: 26 August 2026.
30-Second Verdict
The XVAPE Lanza wins — 6.8 to 6.5 — and it costs £31 less. A strange sentence to write, because the Flowermate Slick has the better hardware by almost every measure a spec sheet can take: glass mouthpiece, swappable 18650, 0.4g bowl, carbon fibre over aluminium, against ceramic and a sealed 1000mAh cell. One is more vape for your money; the other is less hassle for less money, and at this end of the market hassle is the whole argument.
Flowermate Slick: 6.5/10 | £79.00 XVAPE Lanza: 6.8/10 | £48.00
Buy the Flowermate Slick if: - A removable battery is non-negotiable — 18650s in, 18650s out, £5 a cell, forever - You want glass on your lips, which almost nothing else under £80 offers - You want a 0.4g bowl and a five-minute session, not a 0.15g nibble - You can live with three presets, a stirring ritual, and a discontinued device
Buy the XVAPE Lanza if: - You want the lowest possible cost of entry to vaping — £48, and you're in - You're lending, gifting, or converting someone off joints and want zero learning curve - Pocket carry and low effort matter more than spec-sheet features - USB-C PD3.0 and a one-hour charge beat a cradle and a mystery cable
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Flowermate Slick | XVAPE Lanza | |
|---|---|---|
| Heat-up | ~30–45 seconds | ~30–60 seconds |
| Battery | Removable 18650 (2500mAh), 60+ min | 1000mAh sealed, 3–4 sessions |
| Charging | USB cradle/cable, no fast charge | USB-C PD3.0, ~1 hour |
| Bowl | 0.4g | ~0.15–0.2g |
| Temperatures | 3 presets, 196–215°C | 5 presets, 180–220°C |
| Weight | ~120g | 204g |
| Warranty | 2 years | Not published (XVAPE hold ISO 13485) |
| Price | £79.00 | £48.00 |
The Hook
There are two ways to eat for under a tenner in this country, and neither is trying to impress you.
The first is the pub pie. Steak and ale, proper plate, chips on the side, gravy in its own little jug because someone in head office decided that was worth doing. Eight or nine quid, with cutlery and a table and a bloke asking if everything's alright with your food. More dinner than you strictly needed and genuinely good — right up until you notice there's a new laminated menu behind the bar and the pie isn't on it. Last few. Get it while it's there.
The second is chips and gravy from the chippy on the corner. Three-fifty. No plate, no table, no jug — the gravy goes on the chips because where else would it go. You eat it walking home with a wooden fork and it's gone in ten minutes. Nobody has ever recommended a chippy tea to a colleague. But it has never once let you down, and you can afford it on the worst Tuesday of the month.
The Flowermate Slick is the pie that's coming off the menu. The XVAPE Lanza is the chips and gravy.
I called the Slick a disposable camera in its own review, and the Lanza got the Primark work shoes treatment in its own. Set those aside. What matters here is that these are the two cheapest devices on this site I'd let a friend buy, thirty-one pounds apart, and the dearer one is better equipped in ways you can read off a box while the cheaper one is better in ways you only notice on a Wednesday.
One of them scores higher. It's the chips. Here's why the pie is still worth ordering.
We stock the Flowermate Slick at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below. The Lanza isn't on the site yet.
Vapour Quality
Both reviews scored this 6.0/10, and for once a dead heat tells you something rather than dodging the question: these are conduction ovens with a good liner and no airflow trickery, and neither escapes what conduction does by draw four.
The Slick's story is the glass mouthpiece. Real borosilicate, cool on the lips, adding precisely nothing of its own — faint praise until you've drawn on the Aura's plastic and tasted polymer warmth on a strain you paid for. At 196°C the first three draws are clean with genuine terp presence. By draw four the walls have given what they've got and the centre of the bowl is barely touched, so out comes the stainless tool. The 0.4g bowl is the compensation: enough flower mass to keep giving after a stir in a way 0.15g can't.
The Lanza's story is the ceramic. At 180°C the first draw is surprisingly clean for £48 — no chemical edge, no hot-metal tang, which is not what a coil-and-a-prayer at this price would have given you. Draws two and three thin out, and by draw four, in its review's phrase, you're extracting memories. Preset 3 is its best work; preset 5 improves density while flavour leaves the building.
The honest split: the Slick's best draw is cleaner and its bowl lasts longer; the Lanza's opening draw arrives with less fuss and fails quicker and cheaper. Neither is a flavour device and both reviews said so. If you want to know what your jar actually smells like, the temperature guide will do more for you than either purchase.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here I have to be straight with you, because the whole point of running the same jars through everything is that you can lay the lap charts on top of each other. These two reviews don't share a strain. Slick: Grape Ape and Tilray Warlock T22. Lanza: Runtz and Noidecs T14 Shishkaberry. Both ran the budget circuit — street sweetie plus cheap medical indica — but the control broke, so what follows compares behaviour rather than notes. Full workings in the methodology.
The sweet street strain. The Slick took Grape Ape, myrcene-dominant and unsubtle, and did the thing the glass was bought for: at 196°C the grape candy came through as grape candy, sweet and berry-forward with no plastic in front of it, for three genuine draws. At 206°C the musk deepened, linalool's lavender arrived, and a stir at draw four bought three more with decent density. The Lanza took Runtz — limonene-led, tropical — and its review reckoned it caught maybe 60% of what makes it special: candy sweetness at preset 1, three draws each thinner than the last, complexity failing to survive the mid-range. That's a resolution difference, not a quality one: the Slick's larger bowl and glass path hold a loud strain's headline note for longer, while the Lanza gets the headline and loses the paragraph underneath.
The budget medical indica. This is both devices doing the same job for the same person, and it's the more useful half. The Slick on Warlock T22 at 22% THC: earthy spice with citrus at 196°C, full medical extraction at 206°C, three draws, heavy body, pain relief in waves — and a flat instruction not to touch preset 3, because Warlock goes bitter at 215°C. One draw confirmed it. The Lanza on Shishkaberry at 14% THC: berry and myrcene warmth at 180°C, caryophyllene at preset 3 with three good draws, and the detail worth stealing — the dosing capsule evens out extraction compared with a loose pack. Its review concluded the Lanza handles Shishkaberry better than Runtz, because a simple terpene profile doesn't need precision it hasn't got. Which is the lesson of this pairing: cheap devices are flattered by simple flower and punished by complicated flower, confirmed from both ends of the bracket.
The call: the Slick extracts more per session and tastes marginally cleaner doing it — 0.4g is a proper dose in one loading. The Lanza gets you medicated for thirty-one pounds less, with a capsule doing some of the work. On flower at £5–7 a gram, both are honest tools, and neither is a reason to choose the other.
Design & Build
Winner: Flowermate Slick. 7/10 versus 6.5/10.
The Slick is carbon-fibre-coated aluminium and genuinely doesn't feel like a £79 object — textured, grippy, fingerprint-resistant, with a pod system that clicks in and out with a satisfaction the price doesn't warrant. Herb pod, concentrate pod and stirring tool all live in the carry case: a complete kit. The glass mouthpiece is the best thing on it and the most breakable, and with the device discontinued a replacement is a search rather than a purchase.
The Lanza is soft-touch silicone over something the marketing calls diamond-cut and I'd call unidentified. It has edges. They look fine. At 204g nothing creaks and the dosing capsules are proper stainless rather than tin. Two things count for it and one against: it survived a fortnight with Jake, which given his record with a TinyMight stem and an XQ2 is a materials-science result in itself; and it collects lint like it's being paid to, which Sarah noticed within a week of it living in a trouser pocket.
Better object: the Slick, comfortably. Object you'd worry about less: the Lanza, obviously.
Battery & Charging
Winner: Flowermate Slick, and it's the widest gap on the card. 8/10 versus 5.5/10.
The Slick's 18650 comes out. That's the entire argument and it's a strong one: 2500mAh, 60+ minutes per cell, swap in seconds, and when the cell fades after 300 cycles you buy a £5 replacement rather than a £79 device. Dave's three-Slicks-and-a-drawer-of-charged-cells arrangement, documented in the review, is that design's logical endpoint. The catch is USB standard rather than USB-C, via cradle or cable.
The Lanza's own review called its sealed 1000mAh a glorified countdown timer, which is fair — three sessions, four if you're gentle, and the cell is the device's expiry date about a year out. The bright spot is USB-C PD3.0, an hour from empty on a decent brick, which nobody had any right to expect at £48. Fast charging is a good answer to a problem the Slick doesn't have.
Ease of Use
Winner: XVAPE Lanza, and it's the reason it wins the whole thing. 8/10 versus 6/10.
The Lanza is one button and five LED dots. Click on, click through, draw — that's the manual, explained in its review in the time it takes to say "press the button, wait for the light, breathe in." The bowl is too small to overpack. It wants a mid-session stir like every conduction device; nothing else can be got wrong.
The Slick is one button too, and somehow harder. Three presets cycling through colour-coded LEDs, no display, no degree control — want 200°C and you get 196 or 206, no third option. Battery level is LED colour guesswork, and the Mum test ended with "Is green the hot one or the cool one?", a question the device should answer and doesn't. Add the stirring ritual and the draw resistance — you pull harder than seventy-nine quid should ask, cooling the chamber and costing density — and the Slick wants more attention while offering fewer options.
Two points doesn't sound like much. When the buyer is a first-timer or a converted joint-smoker, it's the difference between a device that gets used and one that lives in the drawer.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Winner: XVAPE Lanza. 7/10 versus 6/10.
The Lanza has a ceramic chamber, a mouthpiece that unscrews, and nothing else. Brush after each bowl — ten seconds — and ISO the mouthpiece weekly. Ceramic darkens more slowly than steel and there are no tiny screens to lose down the sink.
The Slick's pod system is a genuinely good idea: resin builds on the pod rather than in the device, so you brush a pod after each session and ISO pods and glass every five to seven sessions. Then there's the airpath, less accessible than either of us would like — pipe cleaner weekly, full disassembly monthly. That's the extra minute, and why the score is lower.
Coming from a Mighty+ cooling unit teardown, both are a holiday. Between them, the Lanza is the one you'll keep on top of.
Portability
Winner: XVAPE Lanza. 8.5/10 versus 7/10 — and this is the one line on the card I'd argue with.
The Lanza disappears. Jacket, jeans, bag; soft silicone means it doesn't clank against keys, and its review's framing was the festival test — lose it and you're down forty-eight quid and a bit of dignity. It went to a hen do and came back intact.
Here's the thing, though: the Slick is 120g and the Lanza is 204g. The lighter, slimmer device scores a point and a half lower, and the reason is glass — pocket carry risks the mouthpiece. That's the right call on balance, because fragility in a pocket is a real cost and 84 grams isn't. But if you carry a case anyway, the Slick is the smaller thing to carry, and the scores don't reflect it.
Value for Money
Winner: Flowermate Slick. 8/10 versus 7.5/10 — and this is the category that makes the overall result interesting rather than obvious.
Per pound of hardware the Slick is the better deal and it isn't close: £79 buys a removable 18650, a glass mouthpiece, carbon fibre over aluminium, a 0.4g bowl, two pods, a stirring tool, a case and a two-year warranty. Nothing else under eighty pounds combines glass and a swappable cell, and once these are gone, nothing will. Its review's warning stands, mind — the Smono 4 Pro at £85 buys more device unless that battery is what you came for.
The Lanza's value case is different in kind: not more for your money, a lower number. £48 is a takeaway, and the answer to "do I really need to spend two hundred quid to stop smoking?" No. Forty-eight. Ceramic, USB-C PD3.0 and stainless capsules in the box are decisions that cost the manufacturer money; the unpublished warranty is the corner cut instead.
Score Comparison
| Category | Flowermate Slick | XVAPE Lanza |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 6.0/10 | 6.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 7.0/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 8.0/10 | 5.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 6.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 6.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Value for Money | 8.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Overall | 6.5/10 | 6.8/10 |
Three categories each and a draw at the top. The tell is which three: the Slick wins what you read about before buying — build, battery, value — and the Lanza wins what you live in afterwards. That's why an 8 for battery doesn't rescue a 6 for ease of use.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Flowermate Slick if the removable battery is the point. You're the person with opinions about Sony VTC6 versus LG HG2, who keeps charged cells in a case, and who resents a £250 device dying because a sealed pouch cell got old. Buy it if you want glass rather than ceramic at this money, if a 0.4g bowl suits how you medicate, and if you're comfortable with no support and no replacement mouthpieces once stock runs out. Buy it soon: "discontinued" is not a marketing line here.
Buy the XVAPE Lanza if the point is getting someone vaping. Yourself, a mate still rolling joints, a newly-prescribed patient staring at £200 price tags and quietly deciding not to bother. Its review converted two people at exactly this price and both upgraded within a month — the job done, not failed. Buy it as a festival device, a lending device, a nothing-else-is-charged device. Don't buy it as a daily driver; three sessions a charge will make that decision for you within a fortnight.
The wrong buyer for the Slick is anyone who wants to be looked after by their device. The wrong buyer for the Lanza is anyone who already owns a vaporiser they're happy with — its own review says so, in those words.
How I Actually Choose
Neither of these is my daily anything, and pretending otherwise would be the sort of thing they don't pay me for.
The Slick lives in the festival bag. Glastonbury, Parklife, a wedding in the Peaks — survived all three, the glass taking a knock at the last and holding. That's its category: places I might lose a vape and don't want to care. The Lanza lives in the lending rotation, a different drawer for a different purpose — the one that leaves the house in somebody else's hand and sometimes doesn't come back, which at £48 is a gift rather than a gamble.
The interesting thing is what happens with both on the table. Marcus picked the Lanza up in a beer garden in July, checked the price on his phone, and said: "That's two rounds. Buy two." He'd got to the real argument faster than I did: at this end of the market a second device is a better feature than any single feature on the first. Two Lanzas cost £96 and solve the problem the sealed cell creates; one Slick costs £79 and solves it properly with a £5 spare — more elegant, considerably less fun.
Asked what to buy for under fifty quid, I say the Lanza and it takes no thought. Asked for under a hundred, it's neither of these — it's the Smono 4 Pro at £85, which both reviews are honest enough to point at. The Slick's £79 is only the right £79 for someone who has already decided a swappable battery is non-negotiable.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody has ever gone home disappointed with chips and gravy.
That's not a compliment about the chips. It's a fact about expectations, and it's how a cheaper, worse-specified vaporiser beats a better-equipped one by three-tenths of a point. The XVAPE Lanza wins — 6.8 to 6.5, at £31 less — because it never asks anything of you: one button, ten-second cleaning, a pocket it disappears into, and a price low enough that losing it is an anecdote rather than an event. It is not a good vaporiser. It's an entirely honest one, and at £48 those turn out to be the same thing.
The Slick is the better hardware and the record should show it: glass and a swappable 18650 under eighty pounds is a combination about to stop existing, and when the last one sells there's nothing to point people at. If that sentence is why you're here, buy it this month rather than next, with a spare cell and a case.
The pie is better dinner. The chips are always open. If this is your first one — get the chips, and see whether you're still hungry.
FAQ
Flowermate Slick vs XVAPE Lanza — which should I buy? The Lanza for most people: it scores higher (6.8 vs 6.5), costs £31 less (£48.00 vs £79.00), cleans in ten seconds and has no learning curve. Buy the Slick only if a removable 18650 or a glass mouthpiece is specifically what you're paying for — and buy it soon, because it's discontinued.
The Slick has better specs. How does it lose? Because three of its wins are on the box and three of the Lanza's are in your hand. Build, battery and value to the Slick; ease, cleaning and portability to the Lanza, vapour tied. Devices at this price get bought by people who want to not think about them, and thinking is what the Slick's three presets, colour-guess LEDs, stirring ritual and stiff draw all cost you.
Which has better vapour? Neither, by the scores — both took 6.0. The Slick's glass keeps the first three draws cleaner and its 0.4g bowl sustains flavour longer after a stir; the Lanza's ceramic opens surprisingly well and fades faster from a 0.15g load. Both are conduction and both need stirring.
Which battery is better? The Slick's, by the biggest gap on the card: a removable 2500mAh 18650 doing 60+ minutes per cell, with £5 replacements forever. The Lanza's sealed 1000mAh manages three to four sessions — but recharges over USB-C PD3.0 in about an hour, while the Slick has a cradle and no fast charging.
Is the Slick worth buying if it's discontinued? For the right buyer, yes, with eyes open: no support, and a glass mouthpiece whose replacements are already scarce. Drop it on a tiled floor in 2027 and you may not be able to fix it. That's the trade for the only sub-£80 device with glass and a swappable cell.
Which would you give to someone who's never vaped? The Lanza, and both reviews reached that independently. One button, five dots, a bowl you can't overpack, and a price where a gift doesn't feel like a gamble.
Should I spend a bit more instead? Often, yes — the Smono 4 Pro at £85 is six pounds more than the Slick and better in almost every direction, and both reviews say so themselves. But the exceptions are real: if your budget stops at £48 the Lanza is an answer rather than a compromise, and if you need a swappable battery the Slick is the only one of the three offering it. More 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 has been notably calmer about both of these purchases than about anything else that has arrived in a padded envelope this year.
Dennis maintains that the correct order at a chip shop is chips, gravy and a wooden fork, and that anyone asking for a plate has misunderstood the format. He accepts this is also his entire position on budget vaporisers.
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 Slick Review: The Disposable Camera → - XVAPE Lanza Review: The Primark Work Shoes →
More Comparisons: - Every head-to-head on the site →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide → - How I score and test →
Get Them at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Flowermate Slick — £79.00 Buy the Flowermate Slick → Worth grabbing with it: a spare Sony VTC5A 18650, so the swappable battery does the job it exists to do, and a small carbon-lined case — the only thing between that glass mouthpiece and a tiled floor.
XVAPE Lanza — £48.00 Not currently listed at HerbVape.co.uk, so there's no link to give you. When it lands, it'll be here.
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: this pairing is the exception to the site's control — no strain is shared between the two reviews, so the comparison above reads behaviour rather than tasting notes. Slick: Grape Ape (indica, 18–21% THC, myrcene-dominant, grape candy over musky berry) and Tilray Warlock T22 (indica medical, 22% THC, earthy-spicy with citrus). Lanza: Runtz (hybrid, 19–29% THC, limonene-led, candy-sweet tropical) and Noidecs T14 Shishkaberry (indica medical, 14% THC, berry-forward, ~£5/g). 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.