30-Second Verdict
It's a draw. Both score 7.5/10, and the Smono No.3 costs £34 less — which sounds like it should settle it, and doesn't. Each device wins three categories outright, ties the other two, and the two things they're best at are things the other one can't do at all. One of them makes the better vapour. The other one is the one that actually leaves the house.
Smono No.3: 7.5/10 | £75.00 PAX Mini 2: 7.5/10 | £109.00
Buy the Smono No.3 if: - Flavour per pound is the whole brief — pure convection through titanium at seventy-five quid - You want degree-by-degree control from 160–220°C, not four fixed modes - You microdose: a 0.2g chamber that pulls a 0.3g conduction bowl's worth of effect - You want a 3-year warranty and you genuinely do not care what it looks like
Buy the PAX Mini 2 if: - It has to disappear — 89g, closed fist, and nobody in the room works out what it is - You want the best-designed portable on the shelf and you know that's what you're paying for - You want zero learning: one button, lip sensing, motion standby, done - Consistency matters more to you than peak flavour — every bowl tastes the same
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Smono No.3 | PAX Mini 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Pure convection, titanium chamber | Conduction, stainless steel oven |
| Heat-up | ~30–40 seconds | ~22 seconds |
| Temperature | 160–220°C, degree-by-degree | 4 fixed modes: 180 / 193 / 204 / 215°C |
| Battery | 1600mAh sealed, 5–6 sessions, USB-C ~120 min | Sealed (unpublished), 7–8 short sessions, dock ~90 min |
| Bowl | ~0.2g | 0.5g full / 0.25g with half-pack lid |
| Weight | ~140g | 89g |
| Warranty | 3 years | 2 years, 3 with registration |
| Price | £75.00 | £109.00 |
The Hook
There are two ways to buy coffee on a Tuesday, and the argument between them is older than either of these vaporisers.
The first is the back-street roastery. Hand-painted sign, three mismatched tables, a bloke who roasts in the back and will tell you about it if you make eye contact. The chairs are plastic. The floor is whatever the last tenant left. And the cup is genuinely, unarguably better than anything within a mile of it, for less money, because every pound went into the beans and none of it went into the room.
The second is the chain on the high street. Same cup in Manchester as in Leeds as in Basingstoke. Warm lighting, clean loos, an app, staff trained to a script. It costs more and it's never the best coffee in the city — but you have never once stood outside it wondering whether today it'll be any good, and that is a feature people pay a genuine premium for, every day, in enormous numbers.
The Smono No.3 is the back-street roastery. The PAX Mini 2 is the chain. Both are correct answers. They are answers to different questions.
Its own review called the Smono the Aeropress of vaporisers; the PAX's called it the AirPods of vaporisers. Set both aside — those were arguments about each device on its own. Put them side by side on a desk and a different, blunter thing happens: the £75 plastic one makes better vapour than the £109 aluminium one, and the £109 aluminium one is the only one of the two that's ever gone to dinner.
They both score 7.5. That is not a fudge — it's the most honest number on this page. Here's where each of them earns it.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Winner: Smono No.3, and it's the biggest gap on the card. 8.0/10 versus 6.5/10.
The Smono is pure convection through a titanium chamber into a borosilicate glass mouthpiece. Hot air pulled through the herb without touching a hot wall — nothing added by the chamber, nothing interfered with by the path. Its review's line stands: what you pack is what you taste. At 180°C the terps arrive individually rather than as a chord, and 195°C is its sweet spot — density with the brightness intact, five draws with real character. It has one hard limit and the review is blunt about it: above 210°C the heater can't sustain density, the vapour thins, and you're drawing warm air. Stay under 210 and it punches two weight classes up. Push past and you find the seventy-five quid.
The PAX is conduction done about as well as conduction can be done at 89 grams. The 3D oven screen distributes heat more evenly than the original Mini's flat one — fewer hot spots, more consistent extraction — and Mode 2 (193°C) is the mode you'll live in: visible vapour, reasonable flavour, four draws with character. Mode 1 is a terp whisper, Mode 3 buys density with nuance, Mode 4 is cleanup. What it gives you instead of peak flavour is predictability: bowl after bowl, no technique variance, no convection learning curve, the same experience every time. Its own review priced that trade honestly, and named the Smono as the device that makes the point.
Chain coffee is not bad coffee. It's coffee that has decided never to surprise you in either direction. The Smono makes the better cup. The PAX makes the same cup. If flavour is what you're buying, this category ends the conversation before the other six start.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's where I have to be straight with you, because this site's whole method depends on it. The PAX Mini 2 has run the control pair — Jack Herer and Wedding Cake, same jars, same grinder, same scales as every other device here. The Smono No.3 has not. Its review ran Apple Fritter and a Noidecs T20 Lemon Skunk, both good tests, neither of them the control. So this is not a like-for-like lap chart, and I'm not going to pretend it is. What I can do honestly is compare by terpene family — the bright fragile terpinolene-and-citrus end, and the caryophyllene-led dessert end — and tell you what each device did with its own plant at that end.
The bright, fragile end — Jack Herer against Lemon Skunk. Jack is terpinolene-led with pinene and caryophyllene behind it, and its top notes are the most fragile thing in the control set. The PAX gets shown up politely. At Mode 1 (180°C) the pine needles and lemon peel are genuinely present on draw one — thin, but present — with citrus lift still there on draw two, handing over to green herb by three and warm dry herbs by four. Four draws, two of them good; that's the honest count. At Mode 2 the pepper turns up well-defined and durable, woody haze underneath, and what the oven hands you is one blended thing rather than a sequence of layers, which is conduction working exactly as designed. The killer detail from that review: there is no 185°C to hide in, only Mode 1, Mode 2, and thirteen degrees of nothing between them. The Smono's nearest neighbour is the Lemon Skunk — limonene-dominant with terpinolene and myrcene, so the same bright volatile family, a different plant. At 170°C the limonene came through as sharp as citrus peel with the terpinolene shimmering underneath, two draws of extraordinarily clean sativa flavour; at 185°C the myrcene base filled out and the skunk arrived, three more draws. Note the temperatures. The Smono's best work on that family happened at 170 and 185 — two numbers the PAX cannot select. That's not a flavour observation, it's an interface one, and on fragile top notes the interface is the flavour.
The dessert end — Wedding Cake against Apple Fritter. These two plants are close relatives on paper: caryophyllene first, limonene and myrcene behind, vanilla-cream-dough over peppery earth, with humulene adding an herbaceous line to the Apple Fritter that Wedding Cake doesn't have. And this is where the gap narrows to almost nothing, because hot walls and dessert genetics want the same things. The PAX's Wedding Cake is the device at its best and its review says so without hedging: vanilla and sweet cream thick from draw one at Mode 1, cherry on the exhale, four draws that don't thin out; butter, baked cake and warm dough at Mode 2 with pepper arriving late and welcome. The caveat is precise — rich rather than resolved. You get warm sweet cream as one satisfying thing rather than vanilla, butter and dough as three separate ones. The Smono's Apple Fritter goes the other way at every step: apple sweetness pure and unmistakable at 175°C with the pastry notes delicate and distinct, then vanilla cream and doughy butter at 185°C across four draws that were each slightly different from the one before — which is convection's actual party trick, the air finding a different route through the load each time. The PAX blends a dessert strain into something warm and lovely; the Smono takes the same kind of plant apart and hands you the pieces in order. Whether that's a win depends entirely on whether you wanted the pieces.
The call: on the dessert family this is genuinely close, and the PAX earns that — 89 grams of aluminium turning greasy indica into something thick and warm without asking you to learn anything is not nothing. On the bright fragile family it isn't close, and neither the fixed modes nor the stainless oven can be argued out of it. Caveat restated so nobody quotes me wrongly: the Smono has not run Jack Herer or Wedding Cake, and until it does, this section is a family resemblance, not a head-to-head.
Design & Build
Winner: PAX Mini 2, by three full points. 9.0/10 versus 6.0/10.
The PAX Mini 2 is the best-designed portable vaporiser I've held. 93 × 30.7 × 21.6mm of anodised aluminium that feels milled from one block, no visible seams from the front, haptics that pulse politely when it's ready. Sarah bought the Greenstone without asking me — the review covers that, and it remains the only time any vaporiser in this flat has been purchased on looks alone.
The Smono is budget plastic that flexes when you squeeze it and creaks if you grip it while drawing. Set it next to a DaVinci and the material gap is visible across the room. But the chamber is titanium and the mouthpiece is real borosilicate: the exterior is B&M, the interior is John Lewis, and the interior is the part your lungs meet. It's also, worth knowing, a Fenix Mini rebadge with a longer warranty — not a scandal, just a fact, and the Fenix platform has a decent record behind it.
The chain spent the money on the room. The roastery spent it on the beans. Neither is lying to you about which.
Battery & Charging
Dead heat — 5.0/10 apiece, and both of them deserve it.
The Smono has a 1600mAh sealed cell good for five to six sessions at moderate temperatures, three to four if you run hot, and about 120 minutes on USB-C. A heavy user drains it before lunch; a microdoser gets a day. The sealed cell also means degradation is permanent — after twelve to eighteen months of daily use expect less, and the 3-year warranty won't cover wear.
The PAX won't publish a capacity, which tells you most of what you need. Call it an hour of real use, seven to eight short sessions, ninety minutes to full on the magnetic USB-C dock. Motion-sensing standby genuinely helps — it cools when you put it down and reheats when you pick it up — but no software trick fixes a cell that small.
Neither can be trusted with a full day out. The PAX charges faster; the Smono lasts marginally longer if you're gentle with it. If all-day runtime is a requirement, this entire comparison is the wrong page and both reviews said so.
Ease of Use
Dead heat again — 8.0/10 apiece, earned in opposite directions.
The PAX is the most intuitive portable I've tested. Press the button, wait twenty-odd seconds, draw; the lip sensor fires the heater when it touches your mouth, so there's no button to hold and no timing to learn. Four modes instead of a temperature range, which experienced vapers will hate and beginners will quietly appreciate, because "mild, medium, strong, maximum" is a sentence and "193°C" isn't. Its one real trap is loading: the oven is small, and Tom demonstrated in the review what happens when you put 0.5g into something that wants 0.25g and the half-pack lid.
The Smono gets to the same number by being unfussy rather than clever. Plus and minus buttons, a small display, degree-by-degree control, no app. Its convection is forgiving — no stirring, no technique beyond a medium grind and a sensible pack — and the 0.2g chamber is so small you almost can't overpack it. Mum managed the temperature buttons first go: "Plus and minus? Even I can do that, love."
One removes decisions. The other hands you all of them and makes them easy. Pick the failure mode you'd rather live with.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Winner: PAX Mini 2, narrowly. 8.0/10 versus 7.0/10.
The 3D oven screen is the Mini 2's most underrated upgrade — the original's flat screen was a resin magnet that wanted soaking and scraping, and this one lifts out cleanly. Brush and wipe every three or four sessions, ISO the screen and mouthpiece weekly, pipe cleaner through the path monthly. The oven stains cosmetically and works fine.
The Smono's titanium chamber brushes clean in seconds and resists staining better than stainless or ceramic, and the glass mouthpiece comes out of an ISO soak spotless. It loses the point on the airpath, which is the least accessible part of either device — pipe cleaners or compressed air, weekly, and a full disassembly monthly if you're being good about it.
Small bowls both, so neither builds up quickly. Neither of these is a chore. If you've come from a cooling-unit teardown, both are a holiday.
Portability
Winner: PAX Mini 2, and this is the widest gap on the card. 10/10 versus 7.0/10.
Eighty-nine grams. Closed fist. Clutch bag, shirt pocket, coin pocket. From any distance it reads as a small speaker or a sleek lighter, the flat mouthpiece doesn't protrude, and one of Sarah's friends thought it was a lipstick while the rest never noticed it at all. It is the most portable named-brand vaporiser you can buy and the score is not generous, it's arithmetic.
The Smono is ~140g and compact — pocketable, genuinely, but the glass mouthpiece means pocket carry is a risk you're taking rather than a thing you do casually. Stealth is moderate: not pen-shaped, not Mighty-sized, middle ground. It's fine in a bag. It's fine in a jacket. It is not invisible, and invisibility is the PAX's entire product.
Value for Money
Winner: Smono No.3, by the same three points the PAX won on design. 9.0/10 versus 6.0/10, with a £34 price gap running the same way.
Pure convection, titanium chamber, glass mouthpiece, degree-by-degree control, USB-C, three-year warranty, seventy-five pounds. Read the spec list, then read the price. Its review called it the best value in portable vaping and I've seen nothing since to move it.
The PAX's own review does the maths against itself, which I respect: at £109 the PAX tax is roughly thirty per cent of what you hand over — call it thirty-odd quid for the design and the badge, which is, to the penny, the gap between these two devices. That's not an accusation, it's a receipt. You're buying the room, and the room is very good.
The chain's flat white costs more than the roastery's and always will. Nobody who buys it thinks they're getting better coffee.
Score Comparison
| Category | Smono No.3 | PAX Mini 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 8.0/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Design & Build | 6.0/10 | 9.0/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 5.0/10 | 5.0/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 10/10 |
| Value for Money | 9.0/10 | 6.0/10 |
| Overall | 7.5/10 | 7.5/10 |
Three categories each, two dead heats, and a genuine 7.5 apiece. Note what the mirror is made of: the PAX's margins are bigger where they exist, but they're in the categories you notice while carrying the device, and the Smono's are in the ones you notice while using it. That's the whole disagreement, and it's why the arithmetic refuses to break the tie.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Smono No.3 if the vapour is the purchase. You're the roastery customer: you'd rather have the better cup in a worse room, you're not embarrassed by plastic, and the phrase "titanium chamber for seventy-five quid" did something to you. It's the right answer for flavour chasers on a budget, for microdosers who want a 0.2g chamber and degree-by-degree targeting, for medical users who want to sit on a specific temperature rather than near one, and for anyone whose vaping mostly happens at home. Buy it knowing the battery is five to six sessions and the plastic creaks.
Buy the PAX Mini 2 if the carrying is the purchase. You're the chain customer, and there is nothing wrong with that: you want the same reliable thing every time, in a beautiful object, that vanishes into a pocket and never once makes you the topic of conversation. It's the right answer for stealth-first users, for beginners who want premium simplicity, for anyone medicating in public who'd rather nobody clocked it, and for people who will genuinely use a nice thing more often than a good thing — which is most people, and which is not a character flaw.
The wrong buyer for the Smono is anyone who needs a device to be discreet or handsome. The wrong buyer for the PAX is anyone who'll spend the next year reading about convection and resenting the oven.
How I Actually Choose
The honest split in this flat is that these two devices belong to different people.
The Smono No.3 is mine, it lives at 185°C, and it gets a full auto-shutoff cycle of four or five draws whenever I want flavour without thinking about technique. The PAX is Sarah's — the Greenstone, bought without consultation, covered in its review, still going. I reach for it when the device needs to be invisible and look good doing it: dinner out, mates who don't know, anywhere a full-size vape would draw stares. At home I don't touch it, because at home the seventy-five-quid one makes better vapour and there's a plug socket.
Then last month I tried to settle it properly. The Greenstone was on the dock and Sarah wanted to go out, so I handed her the Smono, fully charged, 185°C already dialled in. She took two draws, thought about it, and said: "That is nicer, actually." Then she put it down on the counter and waited forty minutes for the PAX to finish charging rather than take the better one out of the house.
I have thought about that more than I'd like to. She wasn't wrong about the vapour and she wasn't wrong about the decision. She just weighted the categories differently to me, and the score table says she's entitled to.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Everybody says they prefer the independent. The chain is still there, on every high street, full.
That's not hypocrisy, it's honesty about how the week actually goes. The roastery is better and you know it's better, and some mornings you still want the one that's on the way, that's open, that has somewhere to sit, that will hand you exactly what it handed you last time without any part of the transaction requiring an opinion. The Smono No.3 is the better vaporiser: pure convection through titanium and glass, degree-by-degree control, a three-year warranty, £34 less. On flavour per pound nothing at this price is close.
And the PAX Mini 2 keeps the thing the Smono can't take off it: 89 grams that disappear into a closed fist, in the best-designed portable body anyone currently sells. If your vaping happens where other people are, that is not a luxury, it's the specification.
Seven and a half each. The roastery for the cup. The chain for the walk. If you only buy one, buy for the place you'll be standing when you use it — and if you're standing in your own kitchen, buy the plastic one.
FAQ
Smono No.3 vs PAX Mini 2 — which should I buy? They tie at 7.5/10, so it's not a score decision. Buy the Smono No.3 (£75.00) if vapour quality and value are the point — it wins vapour 8.0 to 6.5 and value 9.0 to 6.0, and costs £34 less. Buy the PAX Mini 2 (£109.00) if portability and design are the point — it wins those 10 to 7.0 and 9.0 to 6.0. Battery and ease of use are dead heats.
Is the PAX tax worth £34? That's exactly what it is, and the PAX's own review says so: roughly thirty per cent of the price is design and badge, which is precisely this gap. You're buying 89 grams, an aluminium body and near-perfect stealth. You're not buying better vapour — the Smono's convection wins that clearly.
Which is better for flavour? The Smono No.3, without much argument. Pure convection through titanium into glass beats a stainless conduction oven, and the degree-by-degree control lets you sit at 170 or 185°C rather than picking between fixed modes thirteen degrees apart. The PAX's best flavour work is on dessert-leaning strains, where hot walls flatter the plant.
Do they both run the site's control strains? No, and it matters. The PAX Mini 2 has run Jack Herer and Wedding Cake on the standard protocol. The Smono No.3's review used Apple Fritter and a Noidecs Lemon Skunk instead, so the comparison above is by terpene family — bright terpinolene/citrus and caryophyllene-led dessert — not a like-for-like control test. I'll update this when the Smono runs the control pair.
Which battery lasts longer? Both score 5.0/10 and neither will do a full day. The Smono gets five to six sessions from 1600mAh and charges in about 120 minutes; the PAX manages seven to eight short sessions, roughly an hour of actual use, and charges in about 90 minutes on the magnetic dock. Both are sealed.
Which is easier for a complete beginner? The PAX, marginally, despite the identical 8.0/10. One button, lip sensing, motion standby and four named modes remove every decision. The Smono is just as simple mechanically but asks you to pick a number — which is trivial once you've read a temperature guide, and one more step than the PAX asks for.
Is the Smono No.3 really a Fenix Mini? Essentially, yes — same platform, Smono badge, three-year warranty instead of the usual coverage. Its review treats that as a point in its favour rather than against: the platform has a track record, and the warranty is longer than the PAX's standard two years.
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 owns one of the two devices in this comparison and has never once asked what a terpene is.
Dennis would like it recorded that he has a favourite independent coffee place, walks past it roughly twice a week, and has been known to end up in the chain anyway because it was raining. He is aware of what this does to the argument above.
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: - Smono No.3 Review → - PAX Mini 2 Review →
More Comparisons: - All head-to-heads →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide →
How I Test: - Review Methodology →
Get Both at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Smono No.3 — £75.00
PAX Mini 2 — £109.00
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: 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. The PAX Mini 2 has run both; the Smono No.3's review predates that protocol and used Apple Fritter (hybrid, ~22–28% THC, caryophyllene/limonene/myrcene/humulene) and Noidecs T20 Sativa Lemon Skunk (sativa, ~20% THC, limonene/terpinolene/myrcene), which is why the strain section above compares by terpene family. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing in this review 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.