30-Second Verdict
The Smono 4 Pro wins — 7.6 to 7.2 — and it costs £14 less. The No.5 doesn't win a single category outright. It ties two and loses five. Same badge, same showroom, same three-year warranty. One of them has a removable battery. The other has a better engine, and the engine is what you drive.
Smono No.5: 7.2/10 | £99.00 Smono 4 Pro: 7.6/10 | £85.00
Buy the Smono No.5 if: - A removable 18650 is genuinely non-negotiable — festivals, long shifts, nowhere to plug in - You want the full-colour OLED and the wider temperature ceiling (160–240°C versus 160–220°C) - Smart Puff draw-detection appeals, and you'd like the heater to compensate while you inhale - You can live with a battery door that develops a rattle somewhere around month six
Buy the Smono 4 Pro if: - You want the better vapour — hybrid heating beats conduction at this money and it isn't close - You'd rather not stir mid-bowl, and you'd rather not think about the device at all - £85 with a 3000mAh sealed cell already outlasts your evening; swapping solves a problem you don't have - You want the best value in the whole Smono line, which on this site's scores is exactly what it is
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Smono No.5 | Smono 4 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Conduction + Smart Puff Identify | Hybrid (conduction + convection) |
| Heat-up | ~20 seconds | ~25 seconds |
| Battery | Removable 18650, 3000mAh Samsung | Sealed 3000mAh, 8–12 sessions |
| Chamber | ~0.3g ceramic | ~0.25g ceramic zirconia |
| Temp range | 160–240°C, degree-by-degree | 160–220°C, degree-by-degree |
| Weight | ~150g | ~145g |
| Warranty | 3 years | 3 years |
| Price | £99.00 | £85.00 |
The Hook
Walk into a dealership and you'll be shown the same car twice.
Same badge on the bonnet, same dashboard, same three-year warranty on the same headed paper. One of them is the hatch: shorter, lighter, cheaper, and — because the range was facelifted in a particular order — fitted with the newer engine. The other is the estate: same nose, longer back, a boot you can put a wardrobe in, a tailgate, and a price list with an extra line on it.
The estate is the sensible one. Everybody knows this. The estate is what you buy when you've thought about it properly, when you've considered the dog and the airport run and the fortnight in Cornwall. It's the grown-up choice, and the brochure knows it, which is why the brochure charges you for it.
But the estate is only the sensible one if you actually use the boot. If the wardrobe never happens, you've bought extra weight, extra length, an extra latch to go wrong — and you've paid the difference for the privilege. The hatch has the better engine and a shorter nose-to-kerb measurement and no tailgate to develop a rattle in year two, because it doesn't have a tailgate.
The Smono No.5 is the estate. The Smono 4 Pro is the hatch. The boot is the removable 18650. The engine is the heating system. And the tailgate — the documented, well-known, month-six tailgate — is the battery door latch.
I called the No.5 the Tesco Finest of vaporisers in its review, and the 4 Pro the Aldi wine, because I was thinking about supermarkets that fortnight. Set both aside. What matters here is that these two come out of the same factory with most of the same parts list — full-colour OLED, glass mouthpiece, ceramic chamber, degree-by-degree control, 3000mAh of stored energy, three years of cover — and they diverge on exactly two things: how the herb gets hot, and whether the cell comes out.
The one with the better engine costs £14 less. Here's how much the boot is worth.
We stock the Smono 4 Pro at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Winner: Smono 4 Pro. 7.5/10 versus 7.0/10.
The No.5 is pure conduction with Smart Puff Identify sitting on top of it. The ceramic chamber heats the herb through contact, the device detects your draw and boosts heater output to hold temperature while air is moving through the bowl. It works — I said so in the review and I'll say it again here, because I did not expect it to. At 180°C the first three draws are genuinely good, the ceramic is neutral with no stainless tang and no aluminium warmth, and Smart Puff buys you a draw or two of flavour window that standard conduction doesn't get. Then draw four arrives and conduction is conduction: the herb by the walls is spent, the middle is raw, and you reach for the stir tool. As the review put it, Smart Puff can't change physics — it can only maintain temperature, not redistribute heat.
The 4 Pro doesn't need to argue with physics because it brought convection with it. Conduction warms the bowl, convection pulls hot air through it, and the practical result at 195°C is four to five draws with real character and no stirring at all, because the heat is already where the herb is. That's the whole 0.5-point gap in one sentence: the No.5 holds its temperature and the 4 Pro moves its heat. Holding is good. Moving is better.
Neither is a flavour device in the way a true convection portable is, and both reviews said so plainly — the No.3's convection at £75 out-resolves both of these at low temperatures, and neither of these machines pretends otherwise. But between the two on this page, the hybrid is the better heater at every temperature I use, and it's the cheaper one.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's the honest caveat first, because it matters and because I'd rather you heard it from me: neither of these devices has run the site's control pair. Jack Herer and Wedding Cake go through every device on this blog precisely so the strain is fixed and the machine is the variable, and both Smonos were tested before that discipline reached them. The No.5 ran Kush Mints and Curaleaf Orange Skunk T20. The 4 Pro ran Animal Mints and Tilray PT01 T22. I'm not going to invent control data to tidy up a table. What I can do is compare by terpene family, because — happily — the two review sets line up almost strain for strain.
The dessert-hybrid family — Wedding Cake's territory. Both devices ran a minty-cookie-dough hybrid with a diesel exhale, and both are Animal Cookies descendants: Kush Mints (Animal Mints × Bubba Kush, limonene-dominant with caryophyllene and linalool) on the No.5, Animal Mints (Animal Cookies × SinMint Cookies, caryophyllene-dominant with limonene and myrcene) on the 4 Pro. Same three-act structure — mint, then cookie, then diesel — which makes this a genuinely fair read. The No.5 opened at 180°C with mint that was immediate and sharp, three draws of surprisingly bright menthol character through ceramic and glass, and I recorded it as a genuine surprise: above-average terpene preservation for a conduction device, with Smart Puff's temperature-holding doing visible work on the volatile end. Then cookie dough at 195°C, a stir at draw four, two more draws after it, and kush foundation at 210. The 4 Pro's run reads like the same play performed by a bigger cast. Mint at 175°C, two draws, the convection pulling the volatile menthol out first while the conduction warmed the layers underneath. Cookie at 190°C — four draws, each slightly different, which is the phrase I keep coming back to. Diesel at 205. The No.5 captures the progression; the 4 Pro separates the layers. Same three acts, but one device hands you them one at a time and the other lets you hear the handover. And the practical tell is the stir: the No.5 needs one at draw four, the 4 Pro doesn't need one at all, because the hybrid distributes extraction across the bowl instead of eating it from the outside in.
The medical sativa family — Jack Herer's territory. Jack is terpinolene- and pinene-led with fragile top notes, and between these two reviews the 4 Pro drew the closer analogue by some distance. The No.5 ran Orange Skunk T20 — limonene, myrcene, pinene, 20% THC — and handled it well within its limits: bright, immediate, clean orange citrus at 175°C, two draws of good sativa clarity, no chamber interference, the skunky undertone and pinene sharpness arriving at 190°C. The review's summary was that the strong limonene survived the conduction plus Smart Puff treatment and came through clearly enough for a medical patient to taste their prescription — which is a fair result and a slightly defensive verb. The 4 Pro ran Tilray PT01 T22, terpinolene-dominant, and terpinolene is exactly the terpene that dies quietly in budget hardware. At 170°C the floral notes arrived intact: incense-like, aromatic, two draws of something genuinely unusual, and I wrote at the time that it preserved terpinolene better than I'd expected from anything under £150. Pinene sharpness at 185, cap it at 195 before the terpinolene flattens. Limonene is robust; terpinolene is fragile. The No.5 was tested on the sturdy one and passed. The 4 Pro was tested on the breakable one and passed. That is not a like-for-like proof, and I won't dress it up as one — but on the evidence available, the hybrid is the machine I'd trust with a fragile sativa, and the review scores agree with the nose.
The call: on terpene family, the 4 Pro. It layers the dessert hybrid where the No.5 sequences it, and it holds a delicate terpene where the No.5 was only ever asked to hold a hardy one. Both machines are honest about their chambers — neutral ceramic, glass mouthpiece, nothing added — so the difference is entirely the heater. When these two get the control pair, I'll update both reviews and this page with them. Until then, I'd rather flag the gap than paper over it. The methodology is here, and if you want to know where these temperatures come from, the temperature guide explains the stepping.
Design & Build
Winner: Smono 4 Pro, 6.5/10 to 6.0/10 — and this is the closest thing to an interesting section on the card, because both devices lose points for opposite sins.
The No.5 is the better-looking object. The full-colour OLED is bright and genuinely informative — real-time temperature, battery level, Smart Puff status — and it looks like it belongs on something twice the price. The glass mouthpiece feels premium. The removable battery system is clever, considered, modern. And then there's the latch. The battery door mechanism wears with daily use, daily users report a rattle by month three to six, and it is the single most-cited complaint about this device. It doesn't affect function — the cell still makes contact, the vape still fires — but it feels fragile and it sounds fragile, and a £99 device shouldn't need tolerating. That's the tailgate. Everything forward of it is fine.
The 4 Pro's sin is honest and static: the housing is plastic, it scratches if you look at it wrong, and it flexes slightly. It looks like an £85 device because it is one. But plastic doesn't get worse. Plastic on day one is plastic on day four hundred. Tom's mouthpiece loosened at eight months — later production runs tightened the fit, so check the manufacture date if you're buying old stock — and even Tom conceded those eight months were brilliant.
Winner: 4 Pro on score, and on nerves. One device is cheap where you can see it. The other is expensive where you can hear it.
Battery & Charging
A dead heat: 9.0/10 apiece — the only category where both reviews landed on the same number, and the only one where the No.5's headline feature gets a fair hearing.
The No.5's removable 18650 is the best swappable-cell system in the budget range. A 3000mAh Samsung, out in seconds, spares in a pocket, an external charger that's faster and healthier than charging through the device, and a £5 replacement when the chemistry fades in three years. Dave's three-cell rotation — use one, charge two — is documented in the review and works exactly as advertised. If you're at a festival, on a long shift, or anywhere a plug isn't, this is unmatched under £120.
The 4 Pro answers with brute capacity: 3000mAh sealed, 8–12 sessions per charge at 190°C, ninety minutes to full over USB-C. More battery than a Mighty+ carries at three times the money. The 4 Pro will outlast your desire to keep vaping before it outlasts its charge.
So: identical scores, opposite philosophies, and the tie-break is your postcode. Swappability matters on the day you're stranded. Capacity matters on the other three hundred and sixty-four. Neither device recommends pass-through, for what it's worth.
Ease of Use
Winner: Smono 4 Pro. 8.0/10 versus 7.0/10, and the full point is earned three separate ways.
The 4 Pro's proposition is that there's nothing to learn. OLED, degree-by-degree control, 25-second heat-up, five-minute auto-shutoff, no app, no experience modes, no mode cycling. Set 190°C, get 190°C, see 190°C. And no stirring, because the hybrid distributes the heat for you.
The No.5 asks for three small things. You stir mid-bowl, because conduction. You open and close a battery door, which is a step simpler devices don't have. And you learn Smart Puff, which occasionally false-triggered on earlier firmware — drawing without inhaling would wake the heater. Firmware v5.4 mostly resolves it and new units should ship with it, but "mostly" is the operative word and the reports haven't fully stopped.
Worth saying: for ADHD specifically, I rated the No.5 mixed in its own review — the OLED and the just-draw simplicity of Smart Puff pull one way, the door mechanics and the stirring pull the other. The 4 Pro I rated as needing minimal executive function, full stop. That distinction is not a rounding error if you live on the wrong side of it.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Winner: Smono 4 Pro. 7.0/10 versus 6.0/10.
Neither is a joy. Both have a less-accessible airpath than I'd like and both want a monthly disassembly. But the 4 Pro's ceramic zirconia resists staining better, residue builds up less aggressively than on metal chambers, and my honest cleaning frequency on it is every four or five sessions — a brush, an occasional mouthpiece soak, done.
The No.5 wants a brush after every session, an ISO soak every five to seven, a weekly wipe of the battery door contacts — a maintenance task that exists solely because the door exists — and, crucially, an annual gasket replacement. The mouthpiece connection loosens over time as the gasket degrades, and frequent removal for cleaning accelerates it. That's a consumable the 4 Pro doesn't have.
More parts, more upkeep. That's estates for you.
Portability
A draw: 7.0/10 each, and honestly the specs barely move. 150g against 145g, both compact handhelds, both pocketable in a jacket and manageable in jeans, both carrying a glass mouthpiece that you should not sit on. Both OLEDs wash out in direct sunlight, which is a shared family trait rather than a differentiator.
The 18650 adds a touch of bulk to the No.5 versus a sealed cell, and the 4 Pro's slim profile is marginally friendlier. But if you can pocket one you can pocket the other, and no one is buying either of these for stealth — a PAX Mini 2 is 89g and a Flowermate Aura is 90g, and neither of those is in this conversation.
Value for Money
Winner: Smono 4 Pro, and this is where the match stops being competitive. 9.5/10 versus 8.0/10 — the widest gap on the card, with the £14 price difference running the same direction.
The 4 Pro's 9.5 is the easiest value verdict I've written. Hybrid heating, ceramic zirconia, glass mouthpiece, OLED, degree control, 3000mAh, USB-C, three-year warranty, £85. Pound for pound it's the best value in portable vaping I've tested, and it is not a close-run thing.
The No.5's 8.0 is not a bad score — the spec list at £99 is competitive and the warranty is identical. The problem is geography. At £99 it sits in no-man's-land: the 4 Pro does hybrid heating for £14 less, and the XLUX Roffu does true convection with dual chambers and a removable 18650 for £109, a tenner more. The No.5's value lives entirely in one specific combination — OLED plus Smart Puff plus swappable 18650 — and if you're flexible on any single one of those three, something cheaper or better is standing right next to it.
Fourteen quid more for the boot. And the boot is the bit that rattles.
Score Comparison
| Category | Smono No.5 | Smono 4 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 7.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Design & Build | 6.0/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 9.0/10 | 9.0/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 6.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Value for Money | 8.0/10 | 9.5/10 |
| Overall | 7.2/10 | 7.6/10 |
Read it honestly and there's not much to argue about. The No.5 does not win a single category. It draws two — battery and portability — and loses the other five. The 0.4 gap in the overall is, if anything, generous to the estate.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Smono No.5 if the removable cell is a requirement rather than a preference. That's a real buyer and I've met him: festivals, twelve-hour shifts, camping, a job where plugs aren't a given, or simply a deep and reasonable objection to owning hardware whose lifespan is decided by a sealed lithium cell. If that's you, the No.5 is the only device at this money that gives you a swappable 18650 alongside a full-colour OLED and Smart Puff, and the wider ceiling to 240°C is yours as a bonus. You will need to make peace with the door.
Buy the Smono 4 Pro if you want the better vaporiser, which is most of you. It's the one I recommend by default to people who want good vapour and don't want to think about the device: hybrid heating, no stirring, a battery that outlasts your evening, an interface with nothing on it to get wrong, and £14 left in your pocket. For medical patients on a budget it's the strongest recommendation I have under £100 — the terpinolene result is the reason why.
The wrong buyer for the No.5 is anyone who chose it for the OLED, because both have one. The wrong buyer for the 4 Pro is the person who genuinely cannot charge things, and that's the entire list.
How I Actually Choose
The rotation data doesn't lie, and I keep rotation data, because ADHD.
The 4 Pro is the one that gets used. It's the device I reach for when I want good vapour and don't want a project — 190°C, 0.2g medium grind, slightly under-full, five-minute session, four or five draws, no stirring, no decisions. Dave has never stopped being insufferable about it and I have never stopped deserving it.
The No.5 comes out when I know I'm away from a plug. Three cells, three rotations, zero anxiety — that was true when I wrote the review and it's still the only sentence I'd fight for on the No.5's behalf. It's a specific tool for a specific day, and on that day nothing under £120 touches it.
Jake, who has held his No.5's battery compartment together with a rubber band since roughly the day he got it, asked me last month whether he could just take the door off entirely and leave the band on permanently. Not as a repair. As the design. I told him that's not a modification, that's a lifestyle. He's thinking about it, which tells you everything about how much the door is worth to the people who own one.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody test-drives the estate and the hatch and comes away thinking the boot was the interesting difference.
The estate is the sensible one right up until you total the ownership: the extra length you park with, the extra latch you listen to, the extra line on the price list, and the engine that isn't the newer engine. The Smono 4 Pro is the better vaporiser — better heating, better ease, better cleaning, better value, £14 cheaper — and it wins or draws every category on the card. That's what 7.6 against 7.2 means in English.
But the No.5 keeps one thing that no amount of hybrid heating can take off it: the best swappable-cell system in the budget range, and the only one at this money that comes with a colour OLED bolted to it. If your life has plugs in it, that's a boot you'll never fill. If it doesn't, it's the whole reason you're here.
The hatch for the driving. The estate for the day you need the boot. If you're buying one — buy the hatch, and put a spare charger in the glovebox.
FAQ
Smono No.5 vs Smono 4 Pro — which should I buy? The 4 Pro for most people: it scores higher (7.6 vs 7.2), costs £14 less (£85.00 vs £99.00), uses hybrid heating instead of conduction, needs no stirring, and has no battery door to wobble. Buy the No.5 only if a removable 18650 is genuinely non-negotiable.
Is the battery door really that bad? Not immediately. Day one it's fine, month three you'll notice, month six it rattles. It doesn't stop the device working — the cell still contacts, it still fires — and it doesn't happen to every unit. But it's documented often enough that I won't pretend otherwise, and it's the single reason the No.5's build score sits at 6.0.
Is hybrid heating actually better than conduction? Yes, measurably. The convection component extracts more evenly and preserves more terpenes, which is why the 4 Pro doesn't need stirring and the No.5 does. It's not as flavour-pure as full convection at low temperatures — the Smono No.3 still edges both at 175–190°C — but it's denser and more consistent across the range.
Does Smart Puff make up the difference? No, but it's not nothing. It detects your draw and boosts heater output so the temperature holds while air is moving through the bowl, which buys the No.5 an extra draw or two of flavour window. It maintains heat; it can't move heat. That's the ceiling.
Which battery is better? They tied at 9.0/10 for good reason. The No.5's 18650 swaps in seconds, spares cost £5, and an external charger is kinder to the cell. The 4 Pro's sealed 3000mAh does 8–12 sessions per charge and refills in ninety minutes. Swappability wins the day you're stranded; capacity wins every other day.
They both have an OLED — is one better? The No.5's is full colour and shows Smart Puff status alongside temperature and battery; the 4 Pro's is the same idea with one less thing to report. Both wash out in direct sunlight. It is not a reason to spend £14.
Should I just buy the Smono No.3 or the Roffu instead? Fair question, and the reason the No.5's pricing is awkward. The No.3 at £75 is pure convection with a titanium chamber and better low-temp flavour than either device here, at the cost of a 1600mAh battery that runs about thirty minutes. The Roffu at £109 gives you true convection, dual chambers and a removable 18650. If you want flavour, look down the range; if you want capability, look up. The 4 Pro is the one that's hardest to argue with.
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 now seen both Smonos on the same desk and asked why one of them had a rubber band on it, and whether that was normal.
Dennis has never owned an estate car. He has, twice, borrowed one to move furniture, and on both occasions returned it having concluded that he should probably own an estate car. He does not own an estate car.
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.5 Review: The Tesco Finest of Vaporisers → - Smono 4 Pro Review: The Aldi Wine of Vaporisers →
More Comparisons: - All head-to-heads →
How I Test: - Methodology →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide →
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, if you want the packing done before you leave the house.
Smono No.5 — £99.00 The No.5 isn't currently on the HerbVape product list, so there's no direct link from this page. If you want one, email me and I'll tell you whether it's back in.
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: neither of these two devices has yet run this site's control pair — Jack Herer (sativa, terpinolene/caryophyllene/pinene, pine-citrus-pepper with fragile top notes) and Wedding Cake (indica-leaning hybrid, caryophyllene/limonene/myrcene, vanilla-cream-dough over peppery earth) — so the comparison above is made by terpene family, using each review's own tested strains: Kush Mints and Curaleaf Orange Skunk T20 for the No.5, Animal Mints and Tilray PT01 T22 for the 4 Pro. Both reviews will be re-run on the control pair and this page updated. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing here 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.