30-Second Verdict
The Mighty+ wins — 8.7 against 8.3 — and it wins where it's always won: extraction, consistency, and two decades of never letting anyone down. The honest truth in one line: for four pounds' difference you're not choosing on price at all, you're choosing between the most thorough session vape in the shop and the only one that disappears into skinny jeans.
Mighty+: 8.7/10
PAX Flow: 8.3/10
Buy the Mighty+ if:
- You vape mostly at home and want the benchmark session experience
- You're a first-timer or a medical user who needs boring reliability
- Extraction thoroughness matters more to you than anyone noticing the device
- You'd rather clean more and worry less
Buy the PAX Flow if:
- The device has to leave the house and stay invisible while it's out
- Discreet Mode in semi-public spaces is a genuine use case, not a novelty
- You want USB-C fast charging that refills half the tank over a starter
- You run dessert strains more often than fragile sativas
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| PAX Flow | Mighty+ | |
|---|---|---|
| Heat-up | 25–35s | ~60s |
| Battery | Sealed 2000mAh, 4–6 sessions | 2× 18650 (sealed), 6–8 bowls |
| Bowl | ~0.4g side-loading oven | 0.25g (0.15–0.2g sweet spot) |
| Weight | 135g | 227g |
| Warranty | 2yr UK standard | 2yr, 3 with registration |
| Price | Check current price | Check current price |
The Hook: The Reformed Band and the Band That Never Split
Every reunion tour shares a bill with a band that never needed one.
Take That came back in 2006 and shocked everyone by being good — I built the whole PAX Flow review around that comeback, the Patience era, the critics quietly putting their knives away. It's a great story. Redemption always is. The brand that became a punchline engineered its way back to respectability, and I stood there at the merch stand with everyone else, admitting I'd been wrong.
But here's the thing nobody puts on the tour poster. While Take That were splitting, reforming, doing the documentary and the tearful reunion special, there was another band that just... kept playing. No farewell tour, because they never said farewell. No comeback single, because they never went anywhere. Album, tour, album, tour, twenty years, same lineup, and every single record went platinum because the fans knew exactly what they were getting and exactly why they wanted it.
That's the Mighty+. I called it the Land Rover Defender of vaporisers two years ago and it's still the device that lives on my kitchen counter. It has never needed a redemption arc because it never had anything to redeem. It has been the benchmark since before the PAX Flow's designers had a whiteboard.
And now they're four pounds apart. Near enough the same money for the comeback act and for the band that never split. That price gap is a gift, honestly — it strips every excuse out of the decision. Nobody is choosing between these two on budget. You are choosing, nakedly, between two philosophies: the band with the better story, or the band with the better back catalogue.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Mighty+: 9.0/10. PAX Flow: 8.5/10. The Mighty+ wins, and its own half-decade of headline slots is why.
The Flow's 8.5 is a genuinely earned number — the redesigned chamber with its claimed six-times airflow fixed the blocked-straw problem that haunted every previous PAX, and the hybrid heating puts it comfortably in the same conversation as the Veazy and Crafty+. That was the whole comeback: vapour that finally didn't need an apology. But its own review drew the line clearly — "it's not Mighty+ territory, let's not get carried away."
The Mighty+'s 9.0 is about what happens after draw one. Convection for flavour, conduction for consistency, and that oversized cooling unit making everything gentler than it has any right to be. Five to twelve draws across a ten-to-fifteen-minute session, every one of them the same draw you'd have got last Tuesday. It doesn't extract the hardest in the shop — the on-demand crowd and the Venty take that — but nothing matches it for showing up identically, bowl after bowl, without asking anything of you.
The Flow's structural weakness is the flavour window: spectacular first two or three draws, fading by five or six, roasty by ten. The Mighty+ doesn't have a window. It has a session. If the question is which device gets more out of the same 0.2g of flower, the Mighty+ wins every time it's asked.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Same jars, same grinder, both devices run through the full protocol in their own reviews — the Flow across its 180/190/200°C modes, the Mighty+ across 180/190/200°C on the dial. For once the temperature ladders line up almost exactly, which makes this the cleanest side-by-side on the site.
Jack Herer
The diagnostic strain — fragile terpinolene top notes that tell you within three seconds whether a device can hold something delicate.
On the Mighty+, the pine arrives softened — warm pine rather than fresh pine, the cooling unit taking the needle-point off before it reaches you — but it keeps arriving. The citrus lift is still detectable on draw four, the pepper turns up at 190°C properly defined, and the whole bowl runs in the right order at the right stages. The review's verdict: Jack survives the Defender rather than shining in it. A good pine instead of a great one, but all twelve draws present and correct.
On the PAX Flow, Discreet Mode at 180°C produces the brightest opening any PAX has ever given this jar — pine and lemon peel, clean, a proper citrus lift on the exhale. Two genuinely good draws. Then the hot walls take over and the pine doesn't hand over to the pepper, it just stops being there. Four satisfying, non-diagnostic draws at 190°C; savoury roast at 200°C. The review called it a respectable cover version, not the original recording.
Side by side: the surprise is that the Flow's first draw beats the Mighty+'s first draw — brighter, sharper, less rounded. The Mighty+ wins draws two through twelve. The Flow front-loads its brilliance and spends it by draw four; the Mighty+ never sparkles and never falters. If you microdose two draws and stop, the gap nearly vanishes. If you finish bowls, it's a rout.
Wedding Cake
The flatterer — dense dessert genetics that hot walls were practically built for.
On the PAX Flow, this is the reason the device exists. The 190°C sweet spot separates butter cleanly from dough — two things, not one blurred sweetness — with the cherry deepening towards jam. The review called it the best conduction rendering of dessert genetics I'd put the jar through, and the single most impressive thing the machine does.
On the Mighty+, the same separation happens — vanilla, butter, warm baked cake, early pepper, four distinct items — with one extra quality the Flow can't match: body. The cooling unit gives Wedding Cake a plushness and weight that a 135g pocket device physically doesn't have room for. And at 200°C the Mighty+ could still tell the two strains apart — Jack in leather and light fuel, Cake in caramelised sugar — where the Flow's review admitted both jars had converged into the same brown roast.
Side by side: on Wedding Cake at mid-temp, these two are nearly level, and that's the comeback's proudest result. The gap opens at the extremes: the Mighty+ holds resolution at the top of the range and the Flow doesn't. An oddity from the archives — Sarah has independently wandered through a Wedding Cake bowl on both of these devices and asked whether something was baking. Same jar, same question, two years apart. The strain is the control; apparently so is Sarah.
The call: the Mighty+ is a flavour device with the corners filed off — its own review's phrase, and the strain test here re-earns it. The PAX Flow is a delivery device with a flavour window: genuinely excellent for the first third of a dessert bowl, blended thereafter. One of these keeps two plants distinct at 200°C. That's the whole test, and only one passes it.
Design & Build
The Flow scored 9; the Mighty+ scored 9. Same number, opposite religions.
The Flow is the object: anodised aluminium, polished-pebble minimalism, a side-loading magnetic oven that turns loading into a one-handed act you can do walking down the street. The honest caveats from its review stand — more interior plastic than the price suggests, and a grip that gets properly warm at the top modes, uncomfortable in Bong Mode after five or six minutes, with the silicone sleeve sold separately.
The Mighty+ is the tool: medical-grade PEEK plastic, Fisher-Price aesthetics, and the build story that matters — mine went off the kitchen counter onto tile mid-tea-making and didn't take a scratch. Two years of daily use and the only wear is cosmetic discolouration on the chamber rim. Sarah christened it "the brick" long ago and the nickname was never an insult, exactly.
Winner: draw on the numbers; pick your philosophy. The Flow is designed to be admired. The Mighty+ is designed to be dropped. Twenty years of S&B field data says the second design brief ages better.
Battery & Charging
Closer than you'd think. The Mighty+ does 6–8 bowls per charge against the Flow's 4–6 sessions — a real win but not a rout, and the Mighty+'s catch is that its fast charging needs the S&B Supercharger, sold separately, which is a cheek at this price. On a standard phone charger it takes four hours.
The Flow's counterpunch is genuinely good: 50% in twenty minutes from any USB-C source, full in under forty. Plug it in during dinner and you've got the evening covered. That's the best charging story of any PAX ever, and it partially forgives the modest 2000mAh tank.
Both are sealed — the Flow's cell outright, the Mighty+'s pair of 18650s soldered beyond a user swap — so both put you on a degradation timer from day one. Dave, who has been through five Mighty+ units in two years on the error-code lottery (every one replaced under warranty within a week, a story covered in full in the Mighty+ review), texted his verdict on this whole comparison when I told him the prices: "Four quid? That's a meal deal. Buy the one that'll still work in 2030." He is, as usual, annoyingly hard to argue with.
Winner: Mighty+ on capacity, Flow on charging speed — Mighty+ overall, 8 plays 8 on the scoresheets but the extra two bowls decide it.
Ease of Use
Both scored dead level — 8.5 for the Flow, 9 for the Mighty+ — and both are genuinely easy, just differently.
The Mighty+ is two buttons, up and down, a screen showing actual degrees across 40–210°C, and a vibration when it's ready. It's the vape I hand to first-timers and the one I'd give my mum for her arthritis. The Superbooster double-tap (+15°C for 90 seconds) is the only "feature" you ever need to learn.
The Flow is one button and five modes — Discreet 180 through Bong 225 — with haptics and an optional app. Simpler to describe, slightly less capable in practice: no per-degree control without the app, and Bong Mode hides behind a ten-to-thirteen-click cycling ritual that feels like entering a cheat code. Its heat-up (25–35s) roughly halves the Mighty+'s sixty seconds, which matters more often than you'd expect.
Winner: Mighty+, narrowly — real temperature control beats mode roulette, and the score gap agrees. But if "usable one-handed at a bar" is in your definition of easy, flip it.
Cleaning & Maintenance
The Flow's clearest category win, and it's not close: 8.5 against the Mighty+'s 5.
The Mighty+'s cooling unit is a gunk magnet requiring a full teardown every two or three weeks — the maze, the screens, the O-rings (I have personally donated one to the sink drain, as chronicled in the review). The hot Q-tip method and a second cooling unit in rotation make it bearable. Nothing makes it enjoyable.
The Flow's side-loading oven opens the whole chamber and path to a brush, the stainless path resists build-up, and a proper clean is ten minutes every 15–20 bowls with a thirty-second wipe-down between. Best cleaning experience PAX has ever shipped.
Winner: PAX Flow, comprehensively. If maintenance faff is what stands between you and a premium slab of German engineering, this category is your permission slip to buy the Flow.
Portability
The other Flow landslide: 9.5 against 6.5.
The Mighty+ is a 227g brick that fits a jacket pocket, your dad's holiday cargo shorts, and nothing else. Zero stealth — it looks like something a nurse hands you in a corridor, and the vapour lingers.
The Flow disappears. 135g, flat sides flush against your leg, matte finish reading as generic tech. The Manchester gig story from its review — four minutes on Discreet Mode at the bar during the support act, zero visible vapour, nobody any the wiser — is a use case the Mighty+ cannot attempt at any temperature, in any pocket, on any night.
Winner: PAX Flow, in a walk. This is the category the near-identical price tags exist to make you think about.
Value for Money
The Mighty+ scored 8; the Flow scored 6.5, and the Flow's own review named the reason: the Mighty+ at the same money extracts better, which makes the Flow's premium positioning genuinely hard to defend on performance grounds.
What the Flow sells that the Mighty+ can't: invisibility, twenty-minute half-charges, and a cleaning routine that doesn't require a Sunday afternoon. What the Mighty+ sells that the Flow can't: a twenty-year ecosystem, a warranty machine that replaces failed units inside a week, resale value that holds, and the extra bowl-and-a-half per charge.
Winner: Mighty+. When prices tie, value is just performance, and the Defender extracts more from the same flower with a longer track record behind it.
Score Comparison
| Category | PAX Flow | Mighty+ |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 8.5/10 | 9.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8.5/10 | 9/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 8.5/10 | 5/10 |
| Portability | 9.5/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Value for Money | 6.5/10 | 8/10 |
| Overall | 8.3/10 | 8.7/10 |
Two draws, three Mighty+ wins, two Flow wins — but look at the margins. The Mighty+ wins its categories by half a point; the Flow wins cleaning by 3.5 and portability by 3. If your life happens to run through those two categories, the overall scores are lying to you personally.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Mighty+ if the device's job is at home. Evening sessions, pain management, shared bowls on the sofa, the first serious vape you hand a nervous beginner. It is the safest premium purchase in the category — the recommendation I've made more times than any other, to more people, with fewer regrets. Medical users especially: when a device is your daily medicine, boring reliability beats exciting design every single time, and the Mighty+'s two decades of S&B infrastructure is the closest thing this industry has to a guarantee.
Buy the PAX Flow if the device's job is out there. Gigs, pubs, weekends away, anywhere a medical-looking brick with lingering vapour is a social liability. The Flow is the only device at this price that pairs genuine stealth with genuinely good vapour — its review's exact claim, and this comparison hasn't dented it. Buy it too if the Mighty+'s cooling-unit teardown is a dealbreaker for your brain or your hands; that 3.5-point cleaning gap is the biggest in the whole table.
Do not buy the Flow as a home daily driver to save nothing — you'd be taking less extraction for the same money to gain stealth you'll never use. And don't buy the Mighty+ for nights out. It's been tried. It's a brick.
How I Actually Choose
The Mighty+ has lived on my kitchen counter for two years and covers about 30% of everything I vape — it was 60% before the Solo 3 v2 arrived, which tells you what it takes to demote it. Loaded around 8pm most nights, two or three bowls, pain management duty. It is the band whose album I put on when I don't want to think about what to put on.
The Flow runs four or five bowls a week in the going-out slot, where it's been muscling in on territory the Crafty+ used to own. Friday nights, gigs, weekends away. Sarah watched me pack it for the third weekend running and delivered the review's closing line — "You're actually using that one" — with the surprise of a woman who has heard me declare PAX finished at least twice.
The honest tell: in six months of owning both, neither has once done the other's job. The price has never entered a single decision. The front door is the decision.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
The reformed band put on a genuinely great show. I paid for a ticket, I sang along, I've said in print that I was wrong about them. The Patience era is real, and the PAX Flow deserves every word of its comeback coverage.
But when the tour's over and you're choosing what to actually live with, you buy the back catalogue. The Mighty+ wins this one, 8.7 to 8.3, for four pounds less — more thorough extraction, real temperature control, and the deepest reliability record in the category. The band that never split doesn't have a redemption story to tell you, because it never needed one. That's the whole recommendation.
Unless your life happens in pockets and public places — in which case the Flow isn't the runner-up, it's the only one of the two that can play your venue. Buy for where you vape, not for the four quid. The four quid is a rounding error. The front door isn't.
FAQ
PAX Flow vs Mighty+ — which should I buy?
The Mighty+ for home use, first-timers, and medical users: better extraction (9.0 vs 8.5 vapour), real temp control, twenty years of reliability, same money. The PAX Flow if you need stealth and pocketability — it wins those categories by miles, and nothing else at this price combines invisibility with 8.5/10 vapour.
Is the price difference relevant at all?
No — and that's the useful part. No. At near-identical prices the decision is purely about use case: home session power versus pocket stealth. Anyone choosing between these on price has misread the question.
Which has the better battery?
The Mighty+ holds more (6–8 bowls vs 4–6 sessions), but the Flow charges far faster from any USB-C source — 50% in twenty minutes, versus the Mighty+ needing the separately sold S&B Supercharger to fast-charge at all. Both are sealed; neither lets you swap cells.
Which is easier to clean?
The Flow, decisively — 8.5 against 5. Its side-loading oven opens everything to a brush, while the Mighty+'s cooling unit demands a full teardown every 2–3 weeks. The hot Q-tip method and a spare cooling unit make the Mighty+ manageable, but the Flow is simply less work.
Can I use them with a bong or water piece?
Both, differently. The Flow has a dedicated hidden Bong Mode at 225°C that disables motion standby for water-pipe sessions — mind the warm grip. The Mighty+ works through a water piece with the right adapter and handles concentrates in a pinch via a steel mesh pad at max temp.
Which is better for Jack Herer-style fragile sativas?
Neither is a glass-stem Arizer, but the Mighty+ holds the profile longer — citrus still detectable on draw four, everything in the right order across twelve draws. The Flow's opening two draws are actually brighter, then the profile blends. Sippers of whole bowls want the Mighty+; two-draw microdosers will barely see the gap.
Which is more reliable long-term?
The Mighty+ has twenty years of S&B data, a mature warranty machine, and replacement units that arrive within a week — my mate Dave has personally stress-tested that system five times. The Flow is too new for long-term data, has more interior plastic than the price suggests, and carries only the 2-year UK warranty (the 4-year registration extension is US-only).
About Dennis M.
Dennis M. has been vaping daily for the best part of a decade — since an original Mighty in 2018 — and has tested 50+ devices for this site. He works in IT, has ADHD, and uses cannabis for chronic pain management. He lives in Manchester with his partner Sarah, who has now asked whether he was baking during a Wedding Cake bowl on both of these devices, two years apart, and refuses to accept that this is data.
He has seen one reformed band live and owns the complete discography of a band that never split. He maintains that both purchases were correct, which is also his final answer on this comparison.
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
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Head-to-Head Comparisons:
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Get Both at HerbVape.co.uk
Mighty+ — the band that never split: the benchmark session vape and the safe money.
Buy the Mighty+ →
Worth grabbing with it: Mighty Cooling Unit — keep a spare in rotation and halve the teardown misery.
PAX Flow — the comeback act: genuine stealth with vapour that finally backs it up.
Buy the PAX Flow →
Worth grabbing with it: PAX FLOW Grip Sleeve — the answer to the warm-grip problem, especially in Bong Mode.
Just one more bowl.
Last updated: 25 September 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: Jack Herer — sativa (Haze × Northern Lights #5 × Shiva Skunk), ~20% THC, terpinolene/caryophyllene/pinene-dominant, pine-citrus-pepper profile with fragile top notes. Wedding Cake — indica-leaning hybrid (Triangle Kush × Animal Mints, via Triangle Mints #23), ~24% THC, caryophyllene/limonene/myrcene-dominant, vanilla-cream-dough dessert profile over peppery earth. Same two strains, same jars, across every vaporiser reviewed on this site — the strain is the control, the device is the variable. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing in this article 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 — Sapphire, Cantourage and Zerenia are three of the larger ones. 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.