Dennis M. · HerbVape.co.uk · Last updated 26 August 2026
30-Second Verdict
The XLUX Roffu wins — 7.8 to 7.5 — and it costs £34 more. But these two scored identically on vapour quality, and one of them is seventy-five quid. Both are true convection. One has a squad; the other has a starting eleven that plays properly and no bench at all.
Smono No.3: 7.5/10 | £75.00 XLUX Roffu: 7.8/10 | £109.00
Buy the Smono No.3 if: - You want pure convection for the least money anyone charges for it — £75, full stop - Simplicity is the feature: load, set the temperature, draw, no decisions - The 3-year warranty matters more to you than the spec sheet does - You're a micro-doser or an evening user who charges things at home like a normal person
Buy the XLUX Roffu if: - Battery is non-negotiable: 10–12 sessions and a removable 18650 versus five or six and a sealed cell - You want two chambers — quartz for flavour, stainless for density — and will actually use both - On-demand mode matters: button-held micro-hits, not just auto-shutoff sessions - You'll accept a QC lottery and a 12-month warranty in exchange for the better hardware
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Smono No.3 | XLUX Roffu | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Pure convection, titanium chamber | True convection, quartz + stainless chambers |
| Heat-up | ~30–40 seconds | ~15–20 seconds |
| Battery | 1600mAh sealed, 5–6 sessions | Removable 18650, 3200mAh, 10–12 sessions |
| Modes | Auto-shutoff session | Session + on-demand |
| Weight | ~140g (0.2g bowl) | 166g (0.2–0.3g bowl) |
| Warranty | 3 years | 1 year |
| Price | £75.00 | £109.00 |
The Hook
There is a club near where I grew up that has never been in the top two divisions and never wanted to be. One stand older than the manager, a pitch that drains properly, and a way of playing everyone in the town could describe to you. It signs one good player a year, plays him every week because there's nobody else, and finishes eleventh. The ticket is twenty quid. Nobody who goes has ever regretted going.
Then there's the club two junctions up the motorway. Bigger squad, new LED scoreboard, a chairman with a plan and a promotion push that's genuinely on. It's the better football team by any measure you'd write down. It also has a queue outside the treatment room, four players on short contracts, and a back four that gives you a nervous forty-five minutes roughly one Saturday in five.
The Smono No.3 is the well-run League Two club. The XLUX Roffu is the Championship promotion push. Neither is pretending to be Anfield. Both are, in their own division, unusually good at football.
I called the Smono the Aeropress in its review and the Roffu the Kärcher in its own. Set those aside. What matters here is that these are the two cheapest true-convection portables I'd put my name to, they're £34 apart, and they scored the same on vapour quality. Everything that separates them happens off the pitch: batteries, build, warranties, and how much thinking you're willing to do before a draw.
One of them scores higher. It's the Championship club. But look at the wage bill before you decide it's the better buy.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Both reviews scored this 8.0/10, and that number is the whole reason this comparison is interesting.
The Smono No.3 is pure convection through a titanium chamber and out through borosilicate glass, and the titanium is the point: it adds nothing. At 180°C the clarity is remarkable — terps arrive individually, limonene then myrcene then the background notes conduction smears together. At 195°C the density comes up without the flavour going anywhere: five draws with real character from a 0.2g bowl. Above 210°C, though, the heater can't sustain density, the vapour thins, and you're drawing warm air. Push past it and you find out what £75 buys.
The Roffu is true convection too, but with a squad rotation the Smono can't field. The quartz chamber at 180–195°C is where its review parked the superlative — the best flavour experience it had found under £150 — and the zirconia cooling spiral does genuine work, arriving cooler at the lips than a Mighty+ at equivalent temps. Swap in the stainless steel and it becomes a different machine: thicker clouds, slightly less terp definition, a session vape at 200°C+ rather than a tasting one. Its own line for the pair was quartz for detail work, stainless steel for the driveway.
Winner: draw — 8.0 plays 8.0. The Roffu has the higher ceiling and the wider range; the Smono hits the same peak for £34 less and never asks you which cup to use. If you're only ever going to run one chamber at 185°C, you already own the Smono and just haven't paid yet.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
A note first, because honesty is the house style: both were reviewed before the Jack Herer / Wedding Cake control was standardised, so neither has run the site circuit. What follows compares like with like from the reviews as they stand — hybrid against hybrid, then the two Noidecs T20-line medical sativas — and both go back on the bench against the control strains at the next update.
The hybrid. The Smono took Apple Fritter — Sour Apple × Animal Cookies, 22–28% THC, a strain that genuinely tastes like the pastry. At 175°C through titanium and glass the review recorded apple sweetness that was pure, clean and unmistakable, limonene lifting the fruit, humulene underneath: three draws of artisan flavour out of a plastic device. At 185°C the Animal Cookies half asserted itself — doughy, buttery, four draws each slightly different, because convection passes heat through the flower differently every time. By 200°C it's cinnamon and autumn, two draws, done. The Roffu took Jealousy — Sherbert Bx1 × Gelato 41, 25–30% THC, a profile engineered to test whether a device can resolve anything complicated. Quartz at 175°C: cream, immediately, linalool and limonene without a trace of harshness. At 190°C the gas arrives, caryophyllene under the cream, and flavour was still holding at draws five and six where conduction gives up at three. A fresh bowl in the stainless chamber at 210°C gave the other thing entirely: thick vapour, cream gone, earthy, evenly light-brown ABV. Same conclusion from both benches — convection resolves a dessert hybrid into nameable parts rather than one sweet smear — except the Roffu proved it twice, in two materials, and the Smono proved it once for £34 less.
The medical sativa. Both ran a Noidecs T20 cultivar, which makes this the closest thing to a controlled comparison the two reviews contain. The Smono had Lemon Skunk — 20% THC, limonene-dominant — at 0.15g, deliberately under-filled for micro-dosing. At 170°C came the strongest sentence in that review: the limonene was sharper, brighter and more distinct than through any conduction device tested at any price, terpinolene shimmering underneath in the incense-like way haze genetics do through convection. Two draws, a fuller lemon and skunk at 185°C, one finishing draw at 195°C. The Roffu had Delahaze — 20% THC with 4% CBD — and used it to make a different argument entirely: on-demand. Two button-held draws at 165°C, two more at 180°C with the myrcene filling out, the bowl barely cooking between hits because nothing heats unless you're pulling, then session mode at 195°C to finish. The Smono extracts a medical sativa beautifully, but only in sessions. The Roffu extracts one beautifully and lets you stop halfway without wasting the rest. Its own review called the Roffu-as-precision-tool more compelling than the Roffu-as-session-vape, and for a patient counting draws that's the clearest single thing the £34 buys.
The call: on peak flavour these two are level, and both reviews say so in their own words. On what you can do with the flavour — two chambers, two modes, a bowl you can put down halfway — the Roffu is a division above. If you vape in sessions at one temperature, the Smono has already matched it.
Design & Build
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 7.5/10 versus 6.0/10, and it's the biggest honest gap on the card.
The Smono's shell is budget plastic that flexes when you squeeze it and creaks if you grip it while drawing — set it next to a DaVinci IQ3, its review said, and the material gap is visible from across the room. Inside that shell is titanium and borosilicate, so the parts that touch your herb are the premium ones. It's also a rebadged Fenix Mini carrying a 3-year warranty, a longer contract than PAX offers at twice the money.
The Roffu is anodised aluminium with a colour OLED and haptic feedback, and the chamber swap is the good engineering: twist, pull, click, five seconds. But the QC is documented, not rumoured — glass chamber screens that don't seat securely and fall out during use or cleaning, button presses that don't register, zirconia mouthpiece parts that separate with repeated disassembly. Its review's phrasing was exact: impressive in concept, inconsistent in execution.
The Smono is guaranteed to feel cheap and guaranteed to work. The Roffu is guaranteed to feel good and probably works.
Battery & Charging
Winner: XLUX Roffu — and it isn't remotely close. 8.5/10 versus 5.0/10, the widest margin in this comparison.
The Roffu runs a removable 18650 at 3200mAh: 10–12 sessions per charge, 90 minutes on USB-C, and a spare cell means the runtime question never comes up again. Its review called that the best battery proposition in the mid-range, without hedging.
The Smono has 1600mAh, sealed, five to six sessions, about 120 minutes to full. A heavy user drains it before lunch; a moderate user gets an evening; a micro-doser gets a day. Sealed also means the degradation is permanent, and battery wear isn't a warranty claim even with three years of cover. It's the compromise that funds the £75 price, and the review named it as exactly that.
One club can bring on fresh legs at sixty minutes. The other has to play the same eleven to the whistle and hope it's not extra time.
Ease of Use
Winner: Smono No.3. 8.0/10 versus 7.5/10 — the only category the cheaper device wins outright on the card, and it wins it for the reason it exists.
Plus and minus buttons, degree-by-degree from 160 to 220°C, no app. The 0.2g bowl is so small you can barely overpack it: medium grind, drop it in, don't compress, draw. Its own review's line, which I'll stand behind: the Smono's convection is surprisingly forgiving compared to the Roffu's. It passed the Mum test first go.
The Roffu's interface is the better-designed one — OLED, 1°C steps, haptics telling you when it's ready — and then convection collects its tuition anyway. Grind matters, pack density matters, draw speed matters: too fast and you cool the heater, too slow and you're not pulling enough air through. Three to five sessions and it's natural; until then, expect inconsistency. On top sits a decision the Smono never asks — quartz or steel? Its review logged a straight Mum-test fail: she got as far as "which cup do I put in?" and handed it back.
If this is your first proper vaporiser, the Smono is the one still in use come March.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Dead level: 7.0 apiece, for opposite reasons.
The Smono has almost nothing to clean — a titanium chamber that brushes out in seconds, a glass mouthpiece that comes out of an ISO soak spotless, a small bowl laying down less resin in the first place. The mark against it is the internal airpath: least accessible part of the device, pipe cleaner, weekly.
The Roffu has the opposite problem — everything is accessible and there's a lot of it. Two chambers, screens for both, mouthpiece components, a zirconia cooling spiral. Dosing capsules genuinely fix it, dropping deep-cleans from weekly to fortnightly — a solution the Smono doesn't need because it doesn't have the problem. Neither is a chore. The Smono is quicker; the Roffu is more thorough because it has to be.
Portability
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 8.0/10 versus 7.0/10 — and this is the one place the scores look wrong until you read the reasons.
The Smono is the lighter device, 140g against 166g, and still scores a point lower. The reason is the glass mouthpiece: pocket carry risks it, and glass on a kitchen floor has a known outcome.
The Roffu is heavier but takes a pocket without fear, and the removable battery adds no bulk. Its handicap is heat: both chambers get seriously hot, and you're waiting ten-plus minutes after a high-temp session before it's pocket-safe.
The Roffu is the one I'd carry. The Smono is the one I'd carry in a case, which is a different sentence.
Value for Money
Winner: Smono No.3, and this is the category the whole argument turns on. 9.0/10 versus 8.5/10, with a £34 price gap running the same direction.
Pure convection, titanium chamber, glass mouthpiece, degree-by-degree control, 3-year warranty, £75. Its review called that pound-for-pound the best value in portable vaping, and having run the two side by side I'm not softening it. Nothing else with genuine convection comes in under a hundred quid, and the Smono doesn't merely arrive at the price — it matches the Roffu's vapour score on the way.
The Roffu's 8.5 is no criticism: that spec sheet at £109 is one you'd guess at £150–180. But it carries an asterisk the Smono doesn't. A well-assembled Roffu is one of the best values in portable vaping; a Roffu with a loose screen and a moody button is a £109 frustration with twelve months of cover. The Smono's failure mode is a flat battery. The Roffu's failure mode is a returns email.
Score Comparison
| Category | Smono No.3 | XLUX Roffu |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 8.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 6.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 5.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 7.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Value for Money | 9.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Overall | 7.5/10 | 7.8/10 |
Three categories to two, two drawn — and the three-and-a-half point battery gap does more work than everything else combined. Take battery out of the table and these two finish level. You can't take battery out of the table, which is precisely the point.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Smono No.3 if flavour is the entire brief and the budget is real. You vape in the evening, at home, near a plug. You want one temperature, one chamber and no decisions between opening the jar and the first draw. You're micro-dosing 0.15–0.2g, so the small bowl is a feature. It's also the right first serious vaporiser for anyone stepping off conduction who wants to hear what convection does without learning technique at the same time.
Buy the XLUX Roffu if it has to keep up with a day, or if on-demand is a requirement rather than a curiosity. Ten to twelve sessions and a swappable cell makes it the one that leaves the house on a Saturday. The dual chambers are real — quartz for the first bowl, steel for the evening — and button-held hits for breakthrough pain are a control the Smono structurally cannot offer. You're accepting a QC lottery and a one-year warranty to get there, so buy somewhere that takes returns and check the chamber screen on day one.
The wrong buyer for the Smono is anyone out of the house for twelve hours who doesn't carry a cable. The wrong buyer for the Roffu is anyone who wants to be handed a device and told what to do with it.
How I Actually Choose
The rotation data doesn't lie, and I keep rotation data, because ADHD.
The Roffu is a Friday-evening device here: quartz chamber, 185°C, good flower, the bowl I've been looking forward to. It's also the one that comes out for breakthrough pain in on-demand mode — three quick button-held draws at 190°C and put it down, which I do several times a week and can't do on the Smono without wasting the rest of the bowl. The bore factor its review confessed to has not receded.
The Smono No.3 is what I reach for when I want convection and nothing else — no chamber decision, no grind anxiety, no thinking. Load, 185°C, four or five draws, done. It gets used more often than the score suggests and less often than it deserves, and the reason is the 1600mAh battery: it's a device I use in the room where its charger lives. Tom, meanwhile, is still using the one he bought as a "temporary replacement," and his Mighty+ still has the Post-it on it — that story's in its review and it's only got funnier.
Marcus, who has never once looked at a device before looking at its price, weighed the two spec sheets against the gap and said: "So thirty-four quid gets me a battery and a spare cup." Which is, annoyingly, most of it — and also completely misses that one of those two things is the difference between a device that lasts a day and one that doesn't.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody who follows a well-run lower-league club thinks they're supporting a worse sport.
The League Two side plays proper football, sells you a ticket for twenty quid and never once takes the piss. The Championship club has the bigger squad, the better scoreboard and a genuine shot at going up — plus four lads in the treatment room. Only one of them is going anywhere. Only one of them will still be exactly what it is in five years.
The XLUX Roffu is the better device, 7.8 to 7.5, and the gap is a battery and a squad. Ten to twelve sessions against five or six, a cell you can swap, two chambers, two modes. If you'll use what the extra £34 buys, buy it — and inspect the chamber screen the day it arrives, because that's the sentence every honest Roffu recommendation has to end with.
But the Smono No.3 keeps the thing it came for: the same vapour quality score, for seventy-five pounds, through titanium and glass, with three years of warranty behind it. Its review called it the value champion and this comparison hasn't shifted that by a decimal place. It doesn't need a bigger stadium. It needs a plug socket and someone who knows what they came for.
Buy the promotion push if you need the season. Buy the League Two club if you just wanted the football.
FAQ
Smono No.3 vs XLUX Roffu — which should I buy? The Roffu for most people: it scores higher (7.8 vs 7.5) and the £34 buys a removable 3200mAh 18650 good for 10–12 sessions, a second chamber and on-demand mode. Buy the Smono No.3 if you vape at home in the evenings, want the simplest possible convection device, and would rather keep the £34 — the vapour quality score is identical.
They both scored 8.0 on vapour — is the flavour genuinely the same? At their respective sweet spots, close enough that neither review could separate them. The Smono's titanium at 175–195°C and the Roffu's quartz at 175–190°C both resolve terps individually rather than blending them. The Roffu has more range; the Smono's best work happens between 175 and 200°C and thins noticeably above 210°C.
Which battery lasts longer? The Roffu, by a factor of two: 3200mAh removable 18650, 10–12 sessions, 90-minute charge, and a spare cell resets the clock. The Smono is 1600mAh sealed, five or six sessions, about 120 minutes to charge, and when it degrades there's nothing you can do about it.
Is the Roffu's QC problem a dealbreaker? Not universally — plenty of units are fine — but loose glass chamber screens, inconsistent button registration and separating zirconia mouthpiece parts are documented across enough units to warrant caution. Inspect yours on arrival and buy somewhere with a proper returns policy.
Which is easier for a beginner? The Smono No.3, comfortably. Forgiving convection, a 0.2g bowl that's almost impossible to overpack, and a Mum test passed first time. The Roffu wants the grind, the pack and the draw speed right, then adds a chamber choice on top — it failed the Mum test at "which cup do I put in?"
Can either one micro-dose properly? Both, differently. The Smono under-packs beautifully — 0.15g at 170°C was the sharpest limonene either review recorded — but it runs an auto-shutoff session, so once you start, the bowl is cooking. The Roffu's on-demand mode only heats while you're drawing, so you can take two hits and walk away with the rest untouched. For dose-counting patients, that's the deciding feature.
What temperature should I run either at? Keep the Smono between 175 and 200°C; above 210°C its convection can't sustain density. Run the Roffu's quartz at 175–190°C and its stainless at 200°C+ for extraction. Both step in 1°C increments, and the temperature guide explains what's happening at each one.
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 still refers to the Roffu's chambers as "cups" and has quietly accepted that there are two of them.
Dennis supports a club that has never finished above eleventh in his lifetime and would like it noted that this has no bearing whatsoever on his scoring methodology. He is aware nobody believes him.
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 → - XLUX Roffu Review: The Kärcher Pressure Washer →
More Comparisons: - All Head-to-Heads →
How I Score: - Methodology →
New to Convection? - The Temperature Guide →
Get Them at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Smono No.3 — £75.00 Product page not currently live — check the reviews hub for availability.
XLUX Roffu — £109.00 Product page not currently live — check the review for availability.
If you do get the Roffu, budget for a spare 18650 and a set of dosing capsules — the first doubles the day, the second halves the cleaning.
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: Both devices were reviewed before the site-wide Jack Herer / Wedding Cake control was standardised. Smono No.3: Apple Fritter (hybrid, Sour Apple × Animal Cookies, ~22–28% THC) and Noidecs T20 Sativa Lemon Skunk (sativa medical, ~20% THC). XLUX Roffu: Jealousy (hybrid, Sherbert Bx1 × Gelato 41, ~25–30% THC) and Noidecs T20:C4 Delahaze (sativa medical, 20% THC / 4% CBD). Both will be re-run against the control strains at the next update. 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.