30-Second Verdict
The Smono 4 Pro wins — 7.6 to 7.5, the narrowest margin on this site — and it costs £10 more. But the No.3 keeps the one thing the refresh gave away: the cleanest low-temperature flavour anything under £100 produces. One is the better vaporiser to own. The other is the better vaporiser to taste.
Smono No.3: 7.5/10 | £75.00 Smono 4 Pro: 7.6/10 | £85.00
Buy the Smono No.3 if: - Low-temperature terp clarity is the reason you're buying at all — pure convection through titanium, at seventy-five quid - You vape in evenings and at a desk, where a charging cable is always within reach - You want the simplest possible interface: two buttons, a number, no screen to wash out - You microdose — the 0.2g chamber and single-degree control are built for it
Buy the Smono 4 Pro if: - You want the device to survive a day out without a plan: 8–12 sessions per charge versus 5–6 - You want density as well as flavour — hybrid heating at 190–210°C is where it lives - You want to see the temperature rather than trust it, and 25 seconds beats 30–40 - You want one budget vape that does everything adequately rather than one thing brilliantly
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Smono No.3 | Smono 4 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Pure convection | Hybrid (conduction + convection) |
| Chamber | Titanium, ~0.2g | Ceramic zirconia, ~0.25g |
| Heat-up | ~30–40 seconds | ~25 seconds |
| Battery | 1600mAh sealed, 5–6 sessions, ~120 min charge | 3000mAh sealed, 8–12 sessions, ~90 min charge |
| Display | Small temp readout | Full-colour OLED |
| Weight | ~140g | ~145g |
| Warranty | 3 years | 3 years |
| Price | £75.00 | £85.00 |
The Hook
Every console generation has the same three acts, and everyone who has ever owned one knows them by heart.
Act one is the launch model: the thing that made the platform's name, shipped with the compromises it took to get out of the door. Small battery. Basic screen. A shell that creaks if you hold it wrong. Unloved by reviewers, adored by owners, because whatever it does, it does purely.
Act two, three years later, is the mid-generation Pro. Same family, same badge, a number and a suffix. It fixes the battery. It adds the screen everyone asked for. And somewhere in the bill of materials, quietly, it swaps the display panel for a different supplier's — and within a fortnight there is a forum thread eleven hundred posts long insisting the original panel had better colour. The thread is usually right. It is also usually irrelevant to everyone except the people posting in it.
Act three is you, standing in the shop, working out whether you're one of those people.
The Smono No.3 is the launch model. The Smono 4 Pro is the mid-gen Pro refresh. The panel that got swapped is the heating system: pure convection through a titanium chamber became hybrid heating through ceramic zirconia. Everything else got better. That one thing got different, and depending on how you vape, "different" reads either as "fine" or as the entire argument.
I called the No.3 the Aeropress of vaporisers in its review, and the 4 Pro got the Aldi wine treatment in its own. Both are jokes about price, and both stand. Set them aside. What matters here is that these two come out of the same factory brief with the same three-year warranty, the same plastic shell, the same glass mouthpiece, and a ten-quid gap that no rational buyer should agonise over and every single one of you will.
One of them scores higher. It's the Pro, by a tenth, which is to say by nothing at all — so the rest of this is about which tenth you'd rather have.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Winner: Smono No.3 — 8/10 versus 7.5/10 — and it's the only category the launch model wins.
The No.3 is pure convection: hot air pulled through the herb without touching a hot wall, into a titanium chamber that adds no flavour of its own, out through borosilicate glass. Its review's claim was that at 180°C the terps arrive individually — limonene, then myrcene, then the background notes conduction smears together — with the first five draws even and consistent, no stirring, no technique beyond a medium grind. That survives the comparison intact. So does the caveat: above 210°C the convection can't sustain density and you're left holding warm air. The No.3 has a working range, and it's 175–200°C.
The 4 Pro is hybrid: conduction warms the load, convection carries it out, through ceramic zirconia that's just as neutral as titanium and rather cheaper to make. Its review found the advantage obvious at 180°C — flavour clarity pure conduction can't reach, density budget convection can't reach — peaking at 195°C with four to five dense, characterful draws and extraction spread more evenly across the bowl. Crucially it keeps going where the No.3 stops: at 210°C the 4 Pro trades flavour for density and stays useful, while the No.3 is finished.
The honest shape of it: the No.3 owns 170–190°C, the 4 Pro owns 190–210°C, and the half-point between them is the price of the top end. If you've never once wanted a thick draw, the No.3's win here is the only score on the card that matters. If you have, the 4 Pro's range is worth more than half a point.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
A flag before anything else, because the alternative is pretending. This site runs Jack Herer and Wedding Cake through every device as the control — same jars, same grinder, strain fixed, device variable. Neither Smono review ran them. The No.3 was tested on Apple Fritter and Noidecs T20 Lemon Skunk; the 4 Pro on Animal Mints and Tilray PT01 T22. That's a genuine gap in the record and I won't paper over it with numbers I don't have.
What I can do is lay the two sessions side by side honestly, because the strains rhyme more than they've any right to. Both hybrids are Animal Cookies-lineage dessert strains. Both medical sativas hang their profile on terpinolene, the most fragile terpene either device will ever be asked to carry. It isn't the control. It's close enough to read.
The dessert hybrids are where the panel swap shows up. Apple Fritter through the No.3's titanium at 175°C gave three draws of apple sweetness the review called artisan-quality — limonene lifting the fruit, humulene underneath, pastry notes delicate and separate. At 185°C the Animal Cookies parentage arrived as vanilla cream, doughy and buttery, four draws each slightly different because convection takes a different path through the load every time. Then 200°C for cinnamon, and out, with a hard stop at 210°C. Animal Mints through the 4 Pro's ceramic did the same trick with more scaffolding: mint at 175°C from the volatile menthol terps, cookie at 190°C as conduction drove myrcene out of the deeper material while convection carried limonene above it, then diesel at 205°C — fuel, earth, caryophyllene warmth — two draws to clear. The No.3 gives you fewer layers, more cleanly; the 4 Pro gives you more layers, slightly thicker. The 4 Pro's session has a third act. The No.3's has a better first one.
The medical sativas are the sterner test, and both pass in different registers. Lemon Skunk at 170°C through the No.3 produced limonene sharp enough to read as citrus peel, terpinolene shimmering underneath — that incense-like note haze strains only give up to convection — and the review's verdict was blunt: brighter and more distinct than any conduction device it had tested at any price. The 4 Pro's PT01 is terpinolene-dominant, a harder brief still, and at 170°C the floral notes arrived intact and aromatic, with the review crediting the zirconia's neutrality for not colouring them. Both preserve the fragile terpene. The difference is that the No.3 preserves it and stops, while the 4 Pro preserves it and still has 195–205°C in hand for the days you want the dose rather than the tasting note. One comparative observation follows from both reviews and is worth stating plainly: neither chamber material adds anything. Titanium and ceramic zirconia are both doing the job a chamber is supposed to do, which is nothing. The flavour difference here is the heating system, not the metal.
The call: the No.3 is the better flavour device below 190°C and the 4 Pro is the better device above it. That's the whole comparison in one line, and everything else on this page is about how often you go above it.
Design & Build
Winner: Smono 4 Pro — 6.5/10 versus 6/10 — the two lowest build scores on this site, and both honestly earned.
Both are plastic. Both feel like what they cost. The No.3's shell flexes when squeezed and creaks if you grip it while drawing; the 4 Pro's plastic is measurably better — less flex, less creak — but its own review stopped well short of calling it nice. Set either next to anodised aluminium and the gap is visible from across the room.
The half-point is the OLED: full colour, live temperature, battery and session state, crisp indoors, washed out in direct sunlight — the sort of annoyance you notice twice a summer. The No.3 answers with a small readout and two buttons, which never washes out and never tells you anything either.
Two ownership notes worth more than the scores. Early 4 Pro runs shipped with a loose mouthpiece fit — later runs fixed it, but Tom's went wobbly at eight months, which is Tom's luck with hardware doing exactly what Tom's luck with hardware does. And the No.3 is a Fenix Mini rebadge with a three-year warranty stapled on. Neither is a scandal. Both are the sort of thing you'd rather read here than discover.
The mid-gen Pro has the better shell and the newer fault. The launch model has the older shell and the longer track record.
Battery & Charging
Winner: Smono 4 Pro, and this is not a category, it's a rout. 9/10 versus 5/10.
3000mAh against 1600mAh. Eight to twelve sessions per charge against five to six. Ninety minutes to full against roughly a hundred and twenty. The 4 Pro carries more battery than a Mighty+ does at three times the money, and its review's line stands up in daily use: it outlasts your desire to keep vaping.
The No.3's 1600mAh is, in its own review's words, the price of admission for £75 pure convection. A moderate user gets an evening. A microdoser gets a day. A heavy user is hunting a plug before lunch. Both cells are sealed, so both degrade permanently and neither can be swapped — but only one starts small enough that degradation becomes a problem inside the warranty.
Four points is the largest gap on the card by some distance, and it's the reason the Pro refresh exists at all. Mid-gen consoles are never really about the graphics. They're about not having to think about the thing.
Ease of Use
Dead heat: 8/10 apiece, and they get there by opposite routes.
The No.3 is simple by subtraction. Plus and minus, a number, a chamber so small you almost can't overpack it, and convection its own review called forgiving — no stirring, no technique, no modes. It passed the Mum test first time: "Plus and minus? Even I can do that, love."
The 4 Pro is simple by information. Set 190°C, see 190°C, draw at 190°C twenty-five seconds later, five-minute auto-shutoff, done. Mum called it "the smart one" because of the screen — "At least I know what it's doing" — which is the whole argument for an OLED on a budget device, made better than any spec sheet manages.
One honest mark against the Pro: draw resistance is moderate. You pull slightly harder than on a pure-convection device, the No.3 included. Noticeable, not obstructive — but if you've any chest history at all, worth knowing before you buy.
For ADHD specifically — and I'm the case study here — the two solve the same problem at opposite ends. The No.3 demands nothing because there's nothing to demand. The 4 Pro demands nothing because it answers the question before you ask it. I've stopped believing there's a winner in that.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Dead heat again: 7/10 apiece, for the same reasons and with the same flaw.
Both have a small chamber that brushes clean in seconds, a glass mouthpiece that comes out of an ISO soak spotless, and an airpath that isn't properly accessible — which is exactly why neither scores higher. Titanium resists staining better than stainless or ceramic; zirconia builds residue less aggressively than metal. Pick your material argument: in practice it's a brush every few sessions, a soak weekly-ish, a pipe cleaner through the airpath, and a monthly strip-down.
The No.3's 0.2g bowl leaves marginally less residue per session. The 4 Pro's mouthpiece pops off more conveniently. Coming from a cooling-unit teardown, both are a holiday. Neither is thirty seconds.
Portability
Dead heat: 7/10 apiece. 140g versus 145g. Five grams.
Both are compact handhelds that go in a jacket pocket without comment, both are beaten on pure smallness by lighter devices, and both put glass at your lips — so both want a case rather than loose pocket carry. Stealth is moderate for the pair, with one asterisk in the Pro's column: the OLED lights up in the dark and wants a palm over it. The launch model, having no screen worth the name, has nothing to hide.
Value for Money
Winner: Smono 4 Pro — 9.5/10 versus 9/10 — the two highest value scores on this site, ten pounds apart.
This is the strangest section I've written, because both devices are right. The No.3 at £75 puts pure convection, titanium, glass and single-degree control under the price of a pair of trainers, and nothing else in the catalogue does that at all — the nearest true-convection alternative is £109. That's a defensible best-in-class claim.
The 4 Pro's is simply broader. Ten pounds adds hybrid heating, nearly double the battery, an OLED, a faster heat-up and a slightly bigger bowl, and removes exactly one thing: half a point of low-temperature flavour. Per pound spent that's the best trade in the bracket, and it's why the Pro takes the higher value score despite being the dearer device.
Here's the sentence that decides it for most people: £10 is not a budget decision. At this end of the market, ten pounds is a takeaway. It shouldn't be why you buy the launch model — and if it is, you've made a decision about £10 that you'll live with for three years of warranty.
Score Comparison
| Category | Smono No.3 | Smono 4 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 8.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Design & Build | 6.0/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 5.0/10 | 9.0/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 7.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Value for Money | 9.0/10 | 9.5/10 |
| Overall | 7.5/10 | 7.6/10 |
Three draws, one win each side, one four-point chasm. The No.3 wins the category enthusiasts care about most; the 4 Pro wins the category owners notice most. A tenth of a point separates them because those two facts very nearly cancel out — and "very nearly" is why there's a winner at all.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Smono No.3 if flavour below 190°C is the entire brief. You're the launch-model owner: you bought the platform for the one thing it did better than anything at the price, and the refresh changed that thing. You vape at a desk or in an evening, near a cable. You microdose, or you're a medical user targeting terpene activation temperatures with single-degree control on a 0.2g load. You'd rather have two buttons than a screen. And you accept — genuinely accept, not "I'll manage" — that five to six sessions is what you get.
Buy the Smono 4 Pro if you want one budget vaporiser and you'd like to stop thinking about it. It's the right answer for all-day users, for anyone who leaves the house with it, for anyone who wants density as well as clarity, and for medical patients who need multiple sessions a day without charging anxiety — which its review named the strongest recommendation under £100, and I'll stand behind that. It's also the right answer for most first-time buyers, because a device that's always charged gets used and a device that's always flat gets shelved.
The wrong buyer for the No.3 is anyone who travels with their vape. The wrong buyer for the 4 Pro is the low-temp obsessive who'll spend three years wondering about titanium.
How I Actually Choose
The rotation data doesn't lie, and I keep rotation data, because ADHD.
The 4 Pro at 190°C is the one I hand people. It's on the desk more days than not, it's the one that goes in the bag without a charging plan, and it's the device I've recommended more times this year than anything else on the sub-£100 shelf. Its review called it the vape equivalent of a reliable car with a comfortable seat and a full tank, and that's still the most accurate sentence about it.
The No.3 comes out for the first bowl of a new medical jar at 175°C, before I know what I've got. Pure convection through titanium is the most honest report on a strain seventy-five quid can buy, and I want that report before the hybrid starts adding density to the picture. Then it goes back down and the 4 Pro does the rest of the week. That's not a knock — that's precisely what launch models become: the thing you keep for the one job the refresh does slightly worse.
Both reviews carry their own witnesses and I'm not re-telling either; Tom's unfixed Mighty+ and Dave's blind-test routine are on record where they happened. What's new is Jake, who came round, found both Smonos on the desk, picked them up in turn and asked the only question anyone has ever asked about a mid-generation refresh: "Do the capsules work in both?"
They do. The Smono Dosing Capsule Set is the one accessory that carries across the generation gap. Jake looked genuinely relieved, put both devices back down, and bought neither.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody who bought the mid-gen Pro thinks they bought a different console. They think they bought the same console with the annoying bits sanded off, and they're right, and that's exactly what happened here.
The Smono 4 Pro is the better buy for almost everyone: 7.6 to 7.5, hybrid heating that works from 175°C right through to 210°C, a 3000mAh battery that turns charging into a non-question, an OLED that tells you what the thing is doing, and a value score this site hasn't beaten. Ten pounds. Pay it.
But the launch model keeps its crown, and the forum thread is right about the panel: nothing under £100 renders a terpene at 175°C as cleanly as pure convection through titanium, and the Smono No.3 is the only device at seventy-five quid that offers it at all. If that sentence is why you're here, no tenth of a point will move you, and it shouldn't.
The Pro for the week. The No.3 for the first bowl of a new jar. If it's one device and one device only — buy the Pro, and stop reading the thread.
Just one more bowl.
FAQ
Smono No.3 vs Smono 4 Pro — which should I buy? The 4 Pro for most people: it scores higher (7.6 vs 7.5), carries nearly double the battery (3000mAh, 8–12 sessions against 1600mAh and 5–6), adds hybrid heating, an OLED and a faster heat-up, all for £10 more (£85.00 vs £75.00). Buy the No.3 only if low-temperature flavour purity is specifically what you're paying for.
Is the No.3 really the better flavour device if it scores lower overall? Yes, and both reviews say so. Pure convection through titanium wins the vapour quality category outright on terp clarity from 170–190°C. The No.3 loses overall because it loses four full points on battery, and battery is the thing you notice every day.
Which battery actually lasts? Only one of them. The 4 Pro does 8–12 sessions per charge and refills in about 90 minutes. The No.3 does 5–6 and takes roughly 120. Both are sealed, so neither can be swapped, and both will lose capacity over 12–18 months of daily use — which is a bigger problem for the smaller cell.
Is hybrid heating worse than pure convection? Not worse — narrower at one end and wider at the other. Below 190°C the No.3's pure convection gives cleaner terp separation. Above 190°C the 4 Pro's hybrid gives density that budget convection can't sustain, and above 210°C the No.3's vapour thins out entirely. Read the temperature guide if you're not sure which half of that range you live in.
Titanium or ceramic zirconia — does the chamber material matter? Less than the marketing suggests. Both are neutral, and both reviews credit the material with doing nothing, which is the job. The flavour difference here comes from the heating system, not the chamber.
Are these the same device with different badges? No — different platforms. The No.3 is a Fenix Mini rebadge with Smono's three-year warranty; the 4 Pro is Smono's own hybrid design. They share the shell material, the glass mouthpiece, the warranty and the dosing capsules, which is why they feel like two generations of one product.
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 observed that two plastic vaporisers costing £160 between them now occupy more desk space than the ones that cost £600, and has declined to elaborate.
Dennis owned a launch-model console for six years and bought the mid-gen refresh a fortnight before the next generation was announced. He does not wish to discuss it, and notes only that he still has both.
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: The Aeropress of Vaporisers → - Smono 4 Pro Review: The Aldi Wine of Vaporisers →
More Comparisons: - All head-to-heads →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide → - How I score devices →
Get Them at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Smono 4 Pro — £85.00 Buy the Smono 4 Pro → Worth grabbing with it: the Smono Dosing Capsule Set — pre-loaded bowls, and the one accessory that works in both generations.
Smono No.3 — £75.00 Not currently listed on the shop, so there's no product link to give you — the full review has the detail in the meantime.
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.
A note on strains: this site normally runs Jack Herer and Wedding Cake through every device as a fixed control. Neither Smono was tested on that pair. The No.3 was assessed on Apple Fritter (hybrid, ~22–28% THC, caryophyllene-dominant) and Noidecs T20 Lemon Skunk (sativa medical, ~20% THC, limonene-dominant); the 4 Pro on Animal Mints (hybrid, ~22–28% THC, caryophyllene-dominant) and Tilray PT01 T22 (sativa medical, ~22% THC, terpinolene-dominant). The comparison above pairs like with like — two Animal Cookies-lineage dessert hybrids, two terpinolene-carrying medical sativas — but it is not the control, and I'd rather say so than pretend. Both devices are due a proper Jack Herer and Wedding Cake run. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing in this comparison constitutes medical advice, and I am not a medical professional. Cannabis is a controlled substance in the UK; medical cannabis is legal only on prescription from a registered specialist clinic. HerbVape.co.uk sells vaporiser hardware only: we do not sell, prescribe, or recommend cannabis or cannabis products. Vaporisers are sold for use with legal dry herbs and legally prescribed medical cannabis. You must be 18 or over to buy one, and cannabis law varies by jurisdiction — check yours.
Last updated: 26 August 2026.