30-Second Verdict
The XLUX Roffu wins — 7.8 to 7.2 — and it costs exactly £10 more. Both take the same removable 18650. Both have a colour OLED. Both are made in China and priced like they shouldn't be this good. The difference is what sits above the cell: one of them spent the money on a heater, and the other spent it on the battery compartment, then fitted a latch that wobbles by month six.
Smono No.5: 7.2/10 | £99.00 XLUX Roffu: 7.8/10 | £109.00
Buy the Smono No.5 if: - You want the specific trio of OLED, Smart Puff draw-detection and a swappable 18650, and nothing else offers all three at £99 - You want load-and-go: conduction asks nothing of your grind or your draw speed - A three-year warranty matters more to you than a better bowl - You'd rather have one chamber to think about than two
Buy the XLUX Roffu if: - You want true convection — hot air through the herb, not hot walls against it — for the price of a decent takeaway round - Flavour that survives to draw five or six without a stir is the point - You want session and on-demand in one body, plus quartz and stainless chambers for two different jobs - You can accept a QC lottery and a 12-month warranty as the cost of that
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Smono No.5 | XLUX Roffu | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Conduction + Smart Puff Identify | True convection |
| Chamber | ~0.3g ceramic, one | 0.2–0.3g, dual: quartz + stainless |
| Temp range | 160–240°C, degree-by-degree | 100–220°C, 1°C precision |
| Heat-up | ~20 seconds | 15–20 seconds |
| Battery | Removable 18650, 3000mAh Samsung | Removable 18650, 3200mAh, 10–12 sessions |
| Weight | ~150g | 166g |
| Warranty | 3 years | 12 months |
| Price | £99.00 | £109.00 |
The Hook
Walk into any DIY shed in January and you'll find two cordless drills sitting a tenner apart, and only one of them is being sold to you honestly.
The first is the battery deal. The box shouts about the cells: two batteries included, a charger, a moulded case with a cut-out for everything. It looks like more tool for the money because there is visibly more stuff for the money. You get it home, drive a dozen screws into a stud wall, and it does the job. Then, some months later, you notice the chuck has developed a bit of play. Not enough to stop it working. Just enough that you hear it every time you pull the trigger, and every time you hear it you think about the tenner you saved.
The second is the brushless one. Smaller box. Fewer accessories. One battery, sometimes none. What it has is a better motor — and the thing nobody tells you in the aisle is that both tools take the same cells. The battery was never the difference. The battery is the floor. The motor is the tool.
The Smono No.5 is the battery deal. The XLUX Roffu is the brushless motor. They run on the same 18650. Only one of them does something interesting with it.
I called the No.5 the Tesco Finest of vaporisers in its own review, and the Roffu got the pressure-washer treatment in its own. Set both aside — they were arguments about price versus expectation, and this is a narrower fight. These two devices are ten pounds apart, share a battery format, share a display technology, and share the awkward fact that both of them have a documented physical part that comes loose. What separates them is heating, and heating is most of what a vaporiser is.
One of them scores higher. It's the Roffu. Here's the tenner, itemised.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 8.0/10 against 7.0/10, and this single category is where the whole £10 goes.
The No.5 is conduction with Smart Puff Identify layered on top — the ceramic chamber heats the herb by contact, and the device detects your draw and boosts output to hold temperature while air is passing through. It genuinely works, which I did not expect. At 180°C the first three draws through the ceramic-and-glass path are clean, neutral and reasonably flavourful; there's no stainless tang, no aluminium warmth, nothing added. Smart Puff buys you an extra draw or two of flavour window over ordinary conduction. And then, at draw four, physics turns up. The herb against the walls is spent, the middle isn't, and you stir. Its own review put the ceiling on it in one line I've not been able to improve on: Smart Puff can't change physics — it can only maintain temperature, not redistribute heat.
The Roffu doesn't need to redistribute anything, because nothing is sitting against a hot wall in the first place. It's true convection: your draw pulls heated air through the flower and the extraction happens everywhere at once. The practical consequence is the one you feel — flavour holds from the first draw to the fifth or sixth, and the ABV comes out evenly light brown rather than dark at the edges. Add the dual chambers and it stops being one device: quartz at 175–190°C for terpene separation, stainless steel at 200°C+ for density. Its review's summary of that was that the dual-chamber system isn't a gimmick, it's two meaningfully different devices in one housing, and having run both back to back against a single ceramic bowl, I'd say that's the honest reading.
The gap in plain English: the No.5 gives you three or four good draws and then asks for a stir. The Roffu gives you five or six and doesn't ask for anything. The Roffu also reaches lower — down to 100°C against the No.5's floor of 160°C — which matters if you like starting under the terpene boiling points. The No.5 reaches higher, to 240°C, and its review is straight about why: that top end exists for extraction completeness, not flavour.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's where I have to be plain rather than tidy. Neither of these devices has run the site's control pair. The No.5 was tested on Kush Mints and Curaleaf Orange Skunk T20; the Roffu on Jealousy and Noidecs T20:C4 Delahaze. There is no Jack Herer bowl and no Wedding Cake bowl on either card, so I'm not going to pretend there is one. What I can do is line the four strains up by terpene family, because the families overlap almost neatly enough to be useful — and flag exactly where they don't.
The dessert-and-gas hybrids: Kush Mints against Jealousy. Both are limonene-led with caryophyllene, linalool and myrcene underneath — the same broad family as the site's Wedding Cake control, which is to say sweet, layered, and the sort of profile that either resolves into nameable parts or smears into "nice". The No.5 resolved more of it than I expected. At 180°C the mint came through immediate and sharp, a clean cool menthol opening, three draws of genuinely distinctive character — the volatile top notes survived because the start was low and Smart Puff held the temperature through the inhale. At 195°C the Animal Cookies side arrived, buttery and doughy, and then came the stir at draw four and two more draws after it. Its review's conclusion was that for a conduction device this is above-average terp preservation, and that's fair. The Roffu's Jealousy run reads differently in one specific way: at 175°C through quartz, the cream arrived immediately and stayed for four draws, and at 190°C the caryophyllene gas layered in underneath with the flavour still holding at draws five and six. Same terpene family, same three-act structure — mint-to-cookie-to-diesel, cream-to-gas-to-earth — but the No.5 hands you the acts in three-draw instalments with an intermission, and the Roffu runs them continuously. Neither device blurs the profile. Only one of them needs a stir tool to get to the third act.
The bright citrus sativas: Orange Skunk against Delahaze. Closer on paper, further apart in practice, and this is the pairing where the families genuinely diverge, so read it carefully. Orange Skunk is limonene, myrcene and pinene — punchy citrus over skunk and a piney finish. Delahaze is myrcene, limonene and pinene plus terpinolene, and 4% CBD alongside the THC. That terpinolene is the interesting absence: it's the dominant terpene in the site's Jack Herer control, the fragile incense-pine top note, and the Roffu is the only one of these two devices with any terpinolene observation on its card at all. So: not a like-for-like, and I won't score it as one. What each device did with the limonene it did have is comparable, though. The No.5 at 175°C gave two draws of clean, honest citrus — no chamber interference, nothing added by the ceramic — then a skunkier, pinier three draws at 190°C and one to finish at 200°C. The Roffu ran its haze through the quartz chamber in on-demand mode: two button-held draws at 165°C, two more at 180°C, then a switch into session mode at 195°C for three draws to finish. The on-demand detail is the one worth stealing — because the bowl isn't cooking between hits, nothing is quietly being spent while you're not drawing. The No.5 has no equivalent; it's a session device with clever draw detection, which is not the same thing.
The call: on flavour, the Roffu, on both families, without much argument. But the honest caveat is that the No.5 punches above conduction's weight thanks to Smart Puff, and if you started low and stirred on schedule you'd be happy — right up until you tasted the same terpene family through quartz.
Design & Build
Winner: XLUX Roffu, but this is the ugliest category on the card. 7.5/10 against 6.0/10, and both devices are being marked down for a part that comes loose.
The No.5 looks the part: colour OLED, glass mouthpiece, a battery compartment that closes with a satisfying click on day one. The latch that produces that click is its documented weak point. It wears with use, and daily users report a rattle somewhere between month three and month six. It doesn't stop the device firing — the cell still makes contact — but it feels fragile and it sounds fragile, and at £99 you shouldn't have to tolerate anything. The glass mouthpiece gasket goes the same way with frequent removal; budget for a replacement annually.
The Roffu's problem is a lottery rather than a timeline. Anodised aluminium body, bright OLED with haptic feedback, and a chamber-swap mechanism that twists, pulls and locks in about five seconds and works reliably even when other parts don't. The other parts are the issue: chamber screens that don't sit securely in every production batch, button presses that don't always register, zirconia mouthpiece components that separate after repeated cleaning. Its review's own summary — brilliant when it's assembled properly and frustrating when it's not — is the correct framing. There's also the packaging foam, which needs two or three burn-off sessions before the device smells of nothing.
So: a device that will probably go wrong slowly, against a device that has either already gone wrong or won't. The Roffu takes the score because a good unit is a genuinely nice object and a bad one can go back inside the return window. The No.5's wobble arrives after everyone's return window has closed, which is the part that annoys me.
Tom handled both on my desk last month. He found the No.5's battery door in roughly four seconds — picked it up, gave it the small experimental shake he gives everything, and said "is it meant to do that?" It is not. He then shook the Roffu, found nothing, and looked mildly disappointed. I've stopped treating this as a party trick and started treating it as a service: if a thing on a device is going to come loose, Tom will locate it before I've finished making the tea.
Battery & Charging
Winner: Smono No.5 — and it's the only category it wins. 9.0/10 against 8.5/10.
Both take a removable 18650. Both charge over USB-C in about ninety minutes. Neither is recommended for pass-through. And here I'm going to argue with my own scorecard, because the No.5's cell is a 3000mAh Samsung and the Roffu's is a 3200mAh rated at 10–12 sessions per charge — the Roffu is carrying more capacity and more sessions, and it still comes second on the card. The half-point comes down to the No.5's battery system being the whole point of the device rather than a feature of it: it's the best swappable-cell implementation in the Smono range, external-charger friendly, and a fresh cell costs about a fiver when the old one fades.
Which brings us back to the drills. Both tools take the same battery. Buying the one whose main selling point is the battery is how you end up owning the worse tool. The No.5's counter-argument — the honest one — is that if you're genuinely away from power for days, at festivals or on site, a device built entirely around cell-swapping with a three-year warranty behind it is a rational purchase. The Roffu will do the same trick with a spare in your pocket. It just doesn't put it on the box.
Worth noting the irony while we're here: the part that makes the No.5's best category possible is the part that eventually rattles.
Ease of Use
Winner: XLUX Roffu on score — 7.5/10 against 7.0/10 — and the No.5 on your first evening.
This is the one category where the numbers and the lived experience point different directions, so treat the half-point with suspicion. The No.5 is conduction: pack the ceramic chamber, pick a temperature on a clear OLED, draw, stir at halfway. Grind consistency barely matters. Draw speed barely matters. Smart Puff removes a decision entirely — you don't time anything, you just draw. Against that: early firmware false-triggered the heater on draws that weren't really draws, largely fixed in v5.4, and the battery door adds a step simpler devices don't have.
The Roffu asks more of you and gives more back. Convection is technique: medium grind (fine clogs, coarse under-extracts), a pack that's loose but not airy, a draw that's neither fast enough to cool the heater nor slow enough to under-pull. Its review put the learning curve at three to five sessions, which matches what I found, and until you're through it expect inconsistency. Then there's the second decision the No.5 never asks: quartz or steel, flavour or clouds.
Both reviews ran the Mum test. The No.5 got a moderate — the display makes things clear, but she couldn't see why a battery would want to come out at all. The Roffu got a straight fail: she'd get as far as which cup goes in and hand it back. If the device is going to be used by anybody other than you, that's your answer, and it's not the higher score.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 7.0/10 against 6.0/10, in the sense that a marathon beats a sprint you have to run twice.
Neither is a joy. The No.5 is a brush of the ceramic chamber after every session, an ISO soak of the glass mouthpiece and screens every five to seven, a weekly check of the battery-door contacts and a monthly full strip. The gasket-degradation clock is the annoyance: cleaning the mouthpiece is what wears the gasket that the cleaning requires you to remove.
The Roffu has more parts — two chambers, their screens, mouthpiece components, the zirconia cooling spiral — and therefore more total minutes, but the exposed design makes everything reachable and the frequency is lower per part. Its own review's fix is the one I'd repeat to anyone: use dosing capsules and your deep-clean cycle drops from weekly to fortnightly, because the capsule takes the resin instead of the chamber.
Neither of these is a thirty-second device. If cleaning is the thing that decides your purchases, this is not the price bracket where that gets solved.
Portability
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 8.0/10 against 7.0/10, which surprised me, because the Roffu is the heavier of the two.
The No.5 is ~150g and compact — jacket pockets easily, jeans at a push. Its penalties are the glass mouthpiece, which is a fragile thing to have loose in a pocket, and an OLED that struggles in direct sunlight, which is a genuinely irritating thing to discover in a beer garden.
The Roffu is 166g of anodised aluminium with the removable cell adding no bulk, and it reads as "electronic gadget" rather than "vaporiser" to anyone glancing over. Its penalty is heat: both chambers get properly hot, and after a full-temperature session you're waiting ten minutes or more before pocketing it. That's a real constraint on a walk. It's also a constraint that ends, whereas glass stays breakable.
Neither is stealth. Both are jacket devices. Pick on whether you're more likely to be in a hurry to leave or in direct sunlight.
Value for Money
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 8.5/10 against 8.0/10, with a £10 price gap running the wrong way — and it still wins.
The No.5's value case is precise and narrow, and its review states it plainly: nobody else puts a colour OLED, working draw-detection and a swappable 18650 together at £99. If you want all three, it's the only device that delivers. The trouble is what its own review calls no-man's-land pricing — the Smono 4 Pro sits below it with hybrid heating, and the Roffu sits £10 above with true convection. Flexibility on any single feature and the No.5's argument thins out fast.
The Roffu's case needs no qualifiers except one big one. True convection, dual interchangeable chambers, a 3200mAh removable cell, colour OLED with haptics, 1°C control, session and on-demand, all under £110. Read that list without the price attached and you'd guess £150 to £180. The asterisk is the QC lottery and the 12-month warranty behind it — a shorter net than I'd like under a device with documented assembly issues. Buy from somewhere with a proper returns policy, inspect it the day it lands, tip both chambers over the table before you use them.
Score Comparison
| Category | Smono No.5 | XLUX Roffu |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 6.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 9.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 6.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Value for Money | 8.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Overall | 7.2/10 | 7.8/10 |
Six categories to one, and the one is the battery — on a pair of devices that take the same battery. That's the whole review in a table.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Smono No.5 if the combination is genuinely the point. You want a colour OLED so you can see exactly what temperature you're dosing at, you want draw-detection so the device meets you rather than the other way round, and you want a cell you can swap in seconds — and you want all three in one body at £99. You're happy with conduction and a stir at halfway. You'd rather have a three-year warranty and a fault that arrives slowly than a twelve-month warranty and a fault that might arrive in the box. Medical users on a routine should note the specifics: the OLED gives repeatable dosing temperatures, and a swappable cell means the device is never flat when a pain episode isn't asking permission.
Buy the XLUX Roffu if you want the best flavour available for this kind of money. You're prepared to learn a grind and a pack over three to five sessions, you like the idea of two chambers doing two jobs, and on-demand mode for controlled microdosing sounds like a feature rather than a complication. You'll inspect the unit on arrival and use the returns window if you've drawn a bad one.
The wrong buyer for the Roffu is anyone who wants to load it and forget it, or anyone buying it for someone else to use. The wrong buyer for the No.5 is anyone who'd be flexible on even one of its three headline features — because the moment you are, either the Smono 4 Pro below it or the Roffu above it is the better purchase, and its own review says so out loud.
How I Actually Choose
The rotation data doesn't lie, and I keep rotation data, because ADHD.
The Roffu gets reached for on evenings when I've got something worth tasting — good flower, no rush, quartz chamber, 185°C. It's not my most-used device by a distance, but it wins a specific kind of evening outright at a price that still makes me slightly indignant on behalf of everything costing three times as much. Its review documented Dave — a man who has never knowingly bought a budget anything — ordering one after a single Sunday afternoon with the quartz chamber, and that remains the most persuasive data point I have about this device, because it wasn't my money and it wasn't my opinion.
The No.5 gets reached for when charging isn't going to be available and I don't want to think about it. That's the honest use case, and it's a real one — a device built entirely around cell-swapping is a genuinely useful thing to own for days out. But I notice that when I pick it up, I'm choosing a logistics solution rather than a vaporiser, and I notice the door.
Between them, the tell is what I do when both are charged and sitting on the desk. I reach past the No.5. Not because it's bad — 7.2 is not a bad score, and the Smart Puff mint at 180°C was a genuine surprise — but because ten pounds ago there was a version of this decision where I got convection, and I took it.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody who has owned both kinds of drill talks about the batteries afterwards.
They talk about the motor. They talk about the tool that drove forty screws without complaint versus the one that made a noise every time they pulled the trigger. The cells outlived both, got swapped, got replaced for a fiver, and were never the story — because the battery is the floor, not the tool.
The XLUX Roffu is the better vaporiser, 7.8 against 7.2, for £10 more. True convection, flavour that lasts to draw five, two chambers doing two jobs, session and on-demand in one body. It's the one I'd hand you if you asked which sub-£150 device makes flower taste like itself. The QC lottery is real, the 12-month warranty is thin, and I'd inspect it on the doorstep — but a good one is one of the best-value objects in this entire catalogue.
The Smono No.5 keeps one honest crown: the best swappable-battery system in the budget range, in a device that also gives you an OLED and draw-detection at £99. If those three things together are what you're shopping for, buy it, use an external charger, and accept that the latch will start talking to you around month six.
The battery deal is fine. It's just not what you're buying. Buy the motor.
FAQ
Smono No.5 vs XLUX Roffu — which should I buy? The Roffu for most people: it scores higher (7.8 vs 7.2), delivers true convection rather than conduction, offers quartz and stainless chambers plus session and on-demand modes, and costs only £10 more (£109 vs £99). Buy the No.5 only if the specific package of colour OLED, Smart Puff draw-detection and a swappable 18650 at £99 is exactly your brief, or if you want the longer warranty.
Both have a removable 18650 — so why does the No.5 win the battery category? On the card, by half a point, and I'd argue with it. The Roffu carries the larger cell (3200mAh against 3000mAh) and is rated at 10–12 sessions per charge. The No.5's higher score reflects how completely the device is built around cell-swapping — best-in-class implementation, external-charger friendly, roughly £5 for a replacement cell. In daily use you will not notice a difference. Both charge over USB-C in about ninety minutes, and neither is recommended for pass-through.
Is the Roffu's QC problem a reason to avoid it? Not to avoid it, but to buy it carefully. Loose chamber screens, inconsistent button registration and separating mouthpiece components are documented on enough units to matter, and the warranty is only twelve months. Inspect everything the day it arrives, test both chambers, and use your returns window if something's wrong. Also expect two or three burn-off sessions to clear the packaging smell before the first real bowl.
How bad is the No.5's battery door, really? Day one it's fine. Month three you'll notice. Month six it rattles — not on every unit, but frequently enough that its review leads with it. It doesn't stop the device working; the cell still makes contact and it still fires. It just feels and sounds cheaper than the price tag, and it arrives after the return window has closed.
Which is better for flavour? The Roffu, on both terpene families tested. Convection holds flavour to the fifth or sixth draw and the quartz chamber separates terpenes rather than blending them. The No.5 gives you three or four good draws and then wants a stir — genuinely above average for conduction, thanks to Smart Puff holding temperature through the inhale, but conduction all the same.
Neither review used Jack Herer or Wedding Cake — how comparable is the strain testing? Partly, and I've flagged it in the section above rather than papering over it. Kush Mints (No.5) and Jealousy (Roffu) share a limonene-caryophyllene-linalool-myrcene family close to the site's Wedding Cake control, so that pairing is a fair comparison. Orange Skunk (No.5) and Delahaze (Roffu) both run limonene, myrcene and pinene, but Delahaze adds terpinolene and 4% CBD, which Orange Skunk has neither of — so treat that pairing as indicative, not like-for-like. No control-strain data exists for either device, and I'm not going to invent it.
Which temperatures should I actually start at? Roffu: 175–185°C in the quartz chamber for flavour, 200°C+ in the stainless for density; it'll go down to 100°C if you want to work under the light terpenes. No.5: start at 180°C for the volatile top notes, step to 195°C, stir at draw four; 190°C is the best single all-round setting. Its range runs to 240°C, but that top end is for finishing a bowl, not tasting one. More on the reasoning in the temperature guide.
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 never once referred to the Roffu's chambers as anything other than "cups" and does not intend to start.
Dennis owns two cordless drills. One of them came with three batteries and a moulded case, and it is not the one he reaches for. He accepts that this comparison was always going to end where it ended.
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 → - XLUX Roffu Review: The Kärcher Pressure Washer of Vaporisers →
More Comparisons: - All head-to-head comparisons →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide →
How I Score: - Testing methodology →
Get Both at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Smono No.5 — £99.00 XLUX Roffu — £109.00
Neither device has a live product page on the site at the time of writing — prices above are the current listed prices from each review. If you're buying the Roffu, buy a spare high-drain 18650 and a decent grinder with it: convection lives and dies on grind consistency, and a second cell turns a good day into a long one. If you're buying the No.5, buy the external charger first and the cells second.
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. Full scoring criteria on the methodology page.
Strains Used: this comparison draws on each device's own review testing. Smono No.5 — Kush Mints (hybrid, 22–27% THC, limonene/caryophyllene/linalool/myrcene, minty cookie dough with diesel exhale) and Curaleaf Orange Skunk T20 (sativa medical, 20% THC, limonene/myrcene/pinene, bright orange citrus with skunky-piney finish). XLUX Roffu — Jealousy (hybrid, 25–30% THC, caryophyllene/limonene/linalool/myrcene, creamy and gassy) and Noidecs T20:C4 Delahaze (sativa medical, 20% THC + 4% CBD, terpinolene/myrcene/limonene/pinene, hazy citrus). Neither device has been run on the site's Jack Herer and Wedding Cake control pair; comparisons above are by terpene family and are labelled as such. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Last updated: 26 August 2026.
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.