30-Second Verdict
The Nordampf Relict wins — 8.0 to 7.8 — and it costs £20.01 less. But the Wolkenkraft Äris keeps something the Relict can't take off it: the only fully accessible airpath in portable vaping, and the only vaporiser I own that I am certain is clean. One of these devices does the thinking for you while you draw. The other does the thinking for you after you've finished. Both are German, both are properly made, and they solve completely different anxieties.
Wolkenkraft Äris: 7.8/10 | £129.00 Nordampf Relict: 8.0/10 | £108.99
Buy the Wolkenkraft Äris if: - You think about residue — what's behind the screen, what's in that bend you can't see - You want pure convection through titanium and pyrex, at its best between 175°C and 195°C - You microdose, or you want a 0.15g bowl that concentrates rather than diffuses - You want a five-year warranty from a company that has been co-developing this platform for four years
Buy the Nordampf Relict if: - You want a device that adapts to your draw instead of teaching you one - You use a water pipe — 14/18mm adapter compatibility and an OLED that flips when you invert it - You want a 0.3g bowl, 7–10 sessions a charge, and £20.01 back in your pocket - Quiet matters to you, in your house, with other people in it
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Wolkenkraft Äris | Nordampf Relict | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Pure convection, titanium chamber | Dual hybrid (conduction + convection assist) |
| Heat-up | ~20–30s | ~25–30s |
| Bowl | ~0.15g | ~0.3g |
| Battery | 2600mAh sealed, 6–8 sessions, pass-through | 2600mAh sealed, 7–10 sessions, pass-through TBC |
| Temp range | 100–220°C (1°C) | 160–240°C (1°C) |
| Weight | 133g | 138g |
| Warranty | 5 years | ~2 years (brand founded 2024) |
| Price | £129.00 | £108.99 |
The Hook
There are two ways a German company can decide it has solved your problem, and they don't look anything alike.
The first is the Miele. A vacuum cleaner is one idea taken entirely seriously: dirt is a solvable condition, and the solution is to get underneath it. You go over the carpet and the carpet is not merely tidier, it is a different colour in stripes, and you find yourself doing the hallway as well because now you can see the difference. It is also, and there is no polite way around this, extremely loud. Nobody has ever used a Miele discreetly. The whole house knows. The whole house has always known.
The second is the Thermomix. A machine full of sensors that reads what's happening in the bowl and adjusts before you'd have noticed anything was happening at all. It weighs, it senses, it corrects. You don't learn technique because the machine has already learned it; you just do the thing and the thing comes out right. It is expensive, it is quiet, and people who own one are insufferable about it in a way that turns out to be justified.
The Wolkenkraft Äris is the Miele. The Nordampf Relict is the Thermomix. Both are German engineering doing exactly what it says. They are not solving the same problem.
The Äris review called it the Dyson fan of vaporisers, and the Relict got the Weber treatment in its own — set both aside. What matters for this pairing is that these are two mid-range German devices at almost the same money, scoring within two-tenths of each other, and the actual difference between them is when the cleverness happens. The Relict is clever during the draw. The Äris is clever after the session, with everything laid out on a sheet of kitchen roll.
One of them scores higher. It's the Thermomix. Here's why the vacuum cleaner is still in my cupboard.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Both reviews scored this 8.0/10, and it's the flattest tie on the card — same number, opposite methods.
The Äris is pure convection: hot air pulled through the herb, no wall contact, titanium chamber, pyrex glass path. At 175°C the titanium-glass combination sings — terps arrive individually rather than smeared, limonene then myrcene then the background notes, and the 0.15g chamber concentrates flavour instead of diffusing it. At 190°C density climbs without losing clarity, four to five draws, the fan actively pushing hot air through the load while you inhale. Above 205°C it holds where budget convection thins out. What it doesn't have is heft — its own review was straight about it: the purity matches devices costing twice as much, the density doesn't.
The Relict does it the other way round. Dual heating — conduction from the base, convection assist during the draw — and Intellisense on top of that: airflow sensors that detect the inhale and boost the element mid-draw. It is not a mode you switch on. Draw harder and it heats more; ease off and it backs down. The result at 175°C is measurably denser than the same temperature on a passive device, and at 190°C it runs five draws without the tail-off that usually announces the end of a bowl. Push it to 210–220°C and it keeps flavour presence where most devices are handing you hot flat air.
Purity below 180°C: Äris, and its own reviewed rival concedes it — the Relict's review names the Äris as the cleaner device under 180°C, because the conduction plate adds warmth that pure convection avoids. Density, consistency and anything above 200°C: Relict. Same score, and both earn it.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's the honest bit before anything else: neither of these two carries the site control. Jack Herer and Wedding Cake go through every device I review, and these two reviews predate that discipline landing on the German mid-range — the Äris ran Gelonade and Curaleaf Gorilla Girl T24, the Relict ran Motorbreath and Rokshaw T20. I'm not going to invent control data to make a tidier table. What I can do is line the two up by terpene family, because between them they cover the same two problems Jack and Wedding Cake exist to test: a delicate volatile top end, and a dense resinous load.
The delicate end — terpinolene and citrus. This is the Jack Herer problem under another name: the most volatile terpenes, the ones that die if you're careless. The Äris took Gelonade at 170°C and delivered pure lemon through titanium and pyrex — sharp, bright, unmistakable zest, with the terpinolene shimmering underneath like incense, three draws of it before the Gelato parentage arrived with cream at 180°C. The Relict took Rokshaw T20 at 168°C, which is the more surgical version of the same test: terpinolene alone, no citrus to hide behind, and its review's line on it stands as the strongest single claim either device makes — the 1°C control and glass mouthpiece preserved terpinolene better than any device under £150 tested. The tell is what each device needed to get there. The Äris needed nothing but a sensible grind and a gentle pack, because convection doesn't cook what it isn't pulling through. The Relict needed a specific number — 168°C captures it, 175°C begins to degrade it — and enough patience for the base plate to distribute heat before the first draw. The Äris protects fragile terps by construction; the Relict protects them by precision. One is a design decision, the other is a setting, and the setting is only as good as your willingness to read the display.
The dense end — caryophyllene and resin. Gorilla Girl T24 and Motorbreath are the same species of test: pungent, resinous, 24%-plus, the kind of flower that leaves evidence. Both devices handled the extraction properly and both reviews said so — Gorilla Girl through the Äris at 175–190°C gave earthy pine, peppery GG4 warmth, clear diesel without harshness, and precise medical dosing from 0.15g; Motorbreath through the Relict at 175–190°C gave diesel first, then a bright limonene lift, four draws of increasing potency across a 0.3g load with no stirring and no hot spots. The difference is what happened afterwards. The Relict's review noted no residue concerns beyond normal cleaning. The Äris's review noted the resin building visibly on the chamber walls at 190°C — and then cleaned the entire coated airpath in under two minutes, because it can. The resinous strain is where the Relict does the better job and the Äris does the better housekeeping. Same flower family, two different questions answered.
The call: on flavour these are honestly level — that's what two 8.0s mean and I'm not going to manufacture a gap. Delicate profiles at low temperature are the Äris's home ground and the Relict's review admits it. Dense loads, big sessions and high-temperature extraction belong to the Relict, and Intellisense pulls character out of aggressive terpene profiles that passive heating leaves in the bowl. If your jar is fragile, buy the convection. If your jar is sticky, buy the sensors. Both reviews to be redone against Jack Herer and Wedding Cake when these two come back through rotation — flagged.
Design & Build
Both scored 8.0/10, and both feel like their price.
The Äris is 133g, compact, with a gold-plated mouthpiece ring that does nothing except tell you somebody cared, a crisp OLED, a titanium chamber and a pyrex mouthpiece. It is also, and this is the whole story of the device, a Fenix Pro under a different badge — four-plus years of co-development, not a scandal, and frankly a credibility gain: the platform has a track record. Its own review's Mum test came back split down the middle, and I'd repeat it here without changing a word: the cleaning delighted her, the noise did not.
The Relict is 138g of anodised aluminium in a plain cylinder, stainless steel internals, and a 45mm borosilicate mouthpiece that is both the nicest thing about it and the thing you'll eventually break. Every decision on it reads as a decision somebody argued about: 45mm because shorter mouthpieces cost you flavour, steel capsules because plastic ones taint it, a display that auto-rotates because the people who designed it knew perfectly well you'd be inverting it into a bong. That last detail is the review's, along with the week Tom spent doing exactly that — I'm not retelling it, but it's the reason the feature is in this article at all.
The caveat sits on the Relict side and it's a real one: Nordampf was founded in 2024 by the team behind Germany's biggest vape review portal, and they scored their own products highly. I can't verify those reviews are impartial. I can verify mine. There's also no five-year reliability data, because there haven't been five years.
Winner: draw on score; Äris on paperwork. Five years of warranty versus roughly two from a two-year-old company is not nothing.
Battery & Charging
Winner: Nordampf Relict. 7.5/10 versus 7.0/10.
Identical cells — 2600mAh, sealed, USB-C, no swapping on either — and the difference is entirely what they're feeding. The Relict does 7–10 sessions at 190°C off a 0.3g bowl; the Äris does 6–8 off a 0.15g bowl, which means the real-world gap is wider than the session count suggests, because two Äris bowls are one Relict bowl. Charging goes the other way: the Äris is done in about eighty minutes and supports pass-through, so it never really stops working at a desk. The Relict takes about two hours and its pass-through status is listed as TBC in its own review — I've not been able to confirm it either way, so treat it as unconfirmed rather than absent.
Neither battery is replaceable. At this money the Roffu will sell you a removable 18650 and both reviews say so.
Ease of Use
Winner: Nordampf Relict, and this is where the match is actually decided. 8.0/10 versus 7.0/10.
The Relict's Intellisense is the closest thing to a genuine ease-of-use innovation I've tested under £150. Most vaporisers ask you to learn a draw — slow, steady, paced — and quietly punish you for months while you get there. The Relict measures the draw and moves the heater to meet it. First-timers get dense vapour with no coaching, which is a sentence I don't get to write often. Add a three-button interface, a display that tells you everything, and capsules that make loading a two-second job, and there's very little left to get wrong. Its own quirk is small: conduction at low temperatures wants about thirty seconds of patience after the beep, while the base plate spreads its heat.
The Äris has more features and less ease. 1°C precision from 100°C, capsules, haptics, a stealth mode — and the stealth mode is where the joke writes itself, because the fan is audible across a quiet room at roughly the volume of an electric shaver. The Äris review's Mum reaction and Sarah's dentist-drill verdict both live in that review and both stand. Dimming an OLED does not help. Beyond the noise, the 0.15g chamber genuinely requires attention: don't overpack it, because packing tight strangles the airflow that makes convection work in the first place.
Could someone use the Relict with no instruction? Demonstrably. Could they use the Äris? Yes — right up until they turn it on.
Cleaning & Maintenance
The widest gap on the card, and the Äris's entire argument: 10/10 plays 7.0/10.
The ECA — Easy Care Airpath — is the best cleaning system in portable vaping, and I've written that with no qualifier in front of it before and I'll do it again here. Every component of the airpath separates. Every surface is reachable. Every millimetre from chamber to lips can be wiped, soaked, brushed and looked at. There is nowhere for gunk to hide, which means the maintenance question stops being "did the ISO get in there" and starts being "yes, it's clean, I watched it happen." The mouthpiece screen still clogs after about five days of regular use and needs its own attention — that's the one bit of the device that behaves like every other device.
The Relict is fine here and nothing more. Capsules stop most buildup before it starts, the glass mouthpiece pops off and soaks beautifully, the steel chamber brushes out with the included tool. But the airpath is not fully accessible, so somewhere past the chamber there's a bend you're taking on trust. Its own review is honest about the comparison and names the Äris directly.
Three whole points. It is the only category on this card where either device is in a different class.
Portability
Winner: Nordampf Relict. 7.5/10 versus 7.0/10, on five grams and a technicality.
They're near enough the same object to carry — 133g against 138g, both jacket-pocket devices, neither one disappearing into jeans. The Relict's slim cylinder doesn't announce itself and needs a cap or a case because 45mm of borosilicate sticking out of your pocket is a matter of when, not if. The Äris is the visually discreet one and the audibly hopeless one: pocket it happily, and then accept that using it is a public act. Park bench, fine. Library, absolutely not. If stealth is the brief, this is a one-horse race and the horse is quiet.
Value for Money
Winner: Nordampf Relict. 8.5/10 versus 8.0/10, with the £20.01 price gap running the same way.
£108.99 buys dual hybrid heating, Intellisense, a 45mm glass mouthpiece, an auto-rotating OLED, 1°C control across 160–240°C, steel capsules, 14/18mm bong compatibility and 138g. That is an absurd spec sheet for the money and it's why the Relict takes this category — it's the most capability-per-pound in the £100–150 bracket, full stop.
The Äris's counter is arithmetic on a longer timeline. £129.00 with a five-year warranty is under £30 a year, and a device whose airpath can be fully cleaned ages differently from one that can't. Cleaning is maintenance; ECA is prevention. It's a real argument. It's just an argument that pays out in year four, and the Relict's pays out on day one — with a brand-risk asterisk pointing the other way, because a five-year warranty is only worth what the company behind it is worth in five years, and one of these companies is two years old.
Score Comparison
| Category | Wolkenkraft Äris | Nordampf Relict |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 8.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 8.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 7.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 10/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Value for Money | 8.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Overall | 7.8/10 | 8.0/10 |
Read that table honestly and you get an unusual shape. The Äris wins exactly one category — and wins it by three points, the biggest single-category margin I've recorded between two devices at similar money. The Relict wins four, all of them narrowly, all of them in the places you notice every single day. Two-tenths is what that adds up to, and two-tenths is the correct answer.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Wolkenkraft Äris if the airpath is what you think about. You're the person who cleans a vaporiser and still isn't sure it's clean. You rotate strains — medically or otherwise — and you don't want last week's terpenes in this week's dose. You microdose, or you like what a 0.15g bowl does to flavour concentration. You want pure convection with nothing between the hot air and the flower, and you've read the word "loud" three times now and decided you can live with it. If you vape at home with music on, you can. If you vape at home with people in the room, ask them first.
Buy the Nordampf Relict if you want the better vaporiser rather than the better airpath — which, at 8.0 against 7.8 and £20.01 less, is exactly what it is. It's the right answer for anyone who uses a water pipe, anyone who doesn't want to learn a draw technique, anyone who wants a session-sized bowl rather than a microdose, and anyone whose living room has other people in it. It's also the right answer for most people at this money, which is what the scores mean in English.
The wrong buyer for the Äris is anyone who needs to be quiet, or who'll be annoyed by reloading twice in an evening. The wrong buyer for the Relict is someone who wants a proven brand with a decade of RMA history behind it — that history doesn't exist yet, and pretending otherwise would be doing you a disservice.
How I Actually Choose
The rotation data doesn't lie, and I keep rotation data, because ADHD.
The Relict is the one that gets picked up without a decision being made. Bong nights, evening sessions, anything where I want to draw naturally and not think about pacing — 185°C, capsule in, done. It's about four sessions to the Äris's one over a typical fortnight, and almost none of that is because it tastes better. It's because it never requires me to check who's in the house.
The Äris comes out for the first bowl of a new jar at 175°C, and after any strain that leaves evidence. That's its actual job in my rotation: it's the clean-room vape and the reset button. When I've spent a week on something resinous through everything else and I've stopped trusting what I'm tasting, the Äris tells me what the flower actually smells like, because I know — not believe, know — that the path it came down is bare titanium and glass.
Jake found it mid-clean on the kitchen table, entirely in pieces on a sheet of kitchen roll, and asked what it had done. Nothing, I said. That's the point — it comes apart like that on purpose. He looked at the parts for a while, then at his own vape, then said he'd rather not know. He's not wrong. That's precisely the anxiety the Äris is built to answer, and precisely the anxiety most people would rather leave unopened.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody who owns a vacuum cleaner and a food processor thinks they own two of the same appliance.
The Miele does one thing, does it completely, does it loudly enough that everyone hears, and leaves you certain. The Thermomix does forty things quietly and correctly and never asks you to learn any of them. The Nordampf Relict is the better device for almost everyone: denser vapour, a bowl twice the size, a sensor that adapts to your draw instead of grading it, water pipe compatibility, more battery, and £20.01 left over. That's what 8.0 over 7.8 at the lower price means, and I'd hand it to anyone who asked without a caveat beyond the brand's age.
But the Äris keeps its one thing, and it deserves saying plainly: it is the only portable vaporiser I own where I am certain — actually certain — that the airpath is clean after maintenance. Ten out of ten in that category is not a generous score, it's an accurate one, and no other device on this site is close. If that certainty is why you're here, no score table is going to talk you out of it, and it shouldn't.
The Thermomix for the cooking. The Miele for the aftermath. If your budget only stretches to one, buy the Relict — and clean it more often than you think you need to, because you won't be able to see whether you got it all.
FAQ
Wolkenkraft Äris vs Nordampf Relict — which should I buy? The Relict for most people: it scores higher (8.0 vs 7.8), costs £20.01 less (£108.99 vs £129.00), has twice the bowl, better battery life, draw-detection that removes technique entirely, and it's quiet. Buy the Äris if a fully cleanable airpath, pure convection under 180°C, or a five-year warranty is specifically what you're paying for.
Is the Äris really that loud? Yes. About the volume of an electric shaver, audible across a quiet room from three metres. It is the single most consistent complaint about the device and it's in the review's cons list for good reason. If you vape with music on you'll forget about it; if you vape in silence, or near a sleeping household, you won't.
Does Intellisense actually do anything, or is it marketing? It does something measurable. Airflow sensors detect the inhale and boost the heating element mid-draw, so the vapour is denser than the same temperature on a passive device and later draws don't tail off. Draw harder and it heats more. It's not a mode you enable — it's always on, and it's the reason the Relict outscores the Äris on ease of use.
Which one is better for flavour? Level on score, split on conditions. Under 180°C the Äris's pure convection through titanium and pyrex is cleaner — the Relict's own review concedes this, because its conduction plate adds warmth that convection avoids. Above 200°C, and on dense resinous flower, the Relict holds character where most devices give up. Set your temperature preference first and the answer picks itself. The temperature guide is the place to start if you're unsure.
Can I use either with a bong or water piece? The Relict, yes and enthusiastically — 14/18mm adapter compatibility, and the OLED auto-rotates when you invert it, which is the kind of detail only people who actually use vapes think of. The Äris has no bong adapter compatibility listed. If water is your main route, this section is the whole decision.
Is the ECA cleaning system worth the extra £20.01? Depends entirely on your relationship with residue. ECA means every airpath surface separates, gets wiped and gets inspected — the difference between believing it's clean and knowing it's clean. If that distinction has never occurred to you, save the money. If you've ever binned a mouthpiece because you couldn't be sure, it's the cheapest peace of mind in the bracket. The mouthpiece screen still clogs about every five days regardless.
Should I worry that Nordampf is a new company? Worth knowing about, not worth panicking over. Founded 2024, no five-year reliability record, roughly two years of warranty, and it was founded by the team behind Germany's biggest vape review portal — who scored their own products highly, which I can't independently verify. My own experience with the device has been trouble-free, but the Äris's five-year cover is a genuine point of difference and it belongs on your list.
Full scoring method: how I test and score. More pairings: the head-to-head hub.
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 already registered her position on the Äris's fan noise and sees no reason to revisit it.
Dennis owns a vacuum cleaner he uses twice a week and thinks about considerably more often than that. He does not own a Thermomix, on the grounds that he knows exactly what would happen if he did.
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: - Wolkenkraft Äris Review: The Dyson Fan of Vaporisers → - Nordampf Relict Review: The Weber BBQ of Vaporisers →
More Comparisons: - Every head-to-head, in one place →
New to Vaping? - The Temperature Guide →
How I Score: - Testing and scoring methodology →
Get Both at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Wolkenkraft Äris — £129.00 Not currently on the shop — the Äris product page isn't live at the time of writing, so there's no link here. Read the full review in the meantime.
Nordampf Relict — £108.99 Buy the Nordampf Relict → Worth grabbing with it: the stainless steel dosing capsules, which are the difference between a 7/10 cleaning score and a much worse one.
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: this pairing predates the site-wide control on these two devices. The Wolkenkraft Äris was tested on Gelonade (sativa hybrid, ~22–26% THC, limonene-dominant) and Curaleaf Gorilla Girl T24 (sativa hybrid medical, ~24% THC, caryophyllene-dominant). The Nordampf Relict was tested on Motorbreath (indica-dominant, 24–28% THC, caryophyllene-dominant) and Rokshaw T20 (sativa, 20% THC, terpinolene/myrcene/pinene). Comparisons above are made by terpene family, not by identical flower, and both devices are queued for a re-test against Jack Herer and Wedding Cake — the site's standard control pair. 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.