Arizer Extreme Q Review & Owner's Guide (2026): Tested, 7.8/10

The Hook: The Tefal Actifry Is Brilliant

The Tefal Actifry is brilliant. Hear me out.

It's cheap. It makes chips that are... fine. Not deep-fried perfection, not triple-cooked gastropub theatre, just reliably okay chips with less oil and less guilt. You put potatoes in, you press a button, you get chips. They're not the best chips you've ever had. But they're good enough. And you didn't spend a small fortune on a proper fryer that would make your kitchen smell like a chippy and require actual maintenance.

The Extreme Q is the same energy.

It's been around since 2010. It costs a fraction of a Volcano. It makes vapour that is... fine. Not Volcano-level density, not ball-vape violence, just reliably smooth extraction through whip or bags. You put herb in, you press some buttons, you get high. It's not the best desktop experience you'll ever have. But it's good enough. And you didn't spend Volcano money.

I bought my Extreme Q after a budget negotiation with Sarah. 'The Volcano Classic costs more than twice as much,' I said. 'The Extreme Q does the same thing.'

Sarah's eyebrows did that thing where they climb toward her hairline without her permission. 'Then buy the cheap one and stop reading forums about it.'

I did. And you know what? She was right. Some nights, Actifry chips are fine. Some nights, the Extreme Q is fine.

I saved the difference. Then I spent it on portables within two months. But that's a different problem.

We stock the Arizer Extreme Q at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing up top, and the owner's guide for heat-soak, bags, temperatures and cleaning is further down.

Vapour Quality 8/10

The Extreme Q is the session musician of desktop vapes. It's competent at everything. It fills in wherever needed. It won't steal the show, but it won't embarrass you either. Whether you're running the whip for solo sessions or filling bags for a group, the EQ delivers consistent, reliable vapour night after night.

A single packed bowl lasts 20–25 minutes of steady pulling through the whip. That's the EQ rhythm — slow, meditative extraction that rewards patience. Load once, settle in, don't think about it.

Bags work. Not Volcano-quality bags — the density is lighter, the fill is less precise — but proper fan-assisted bags that get a room properly stoned. The whip works too. Clean glass path, straightforward draw, solid flavour. The aromatherapy mode works as well, though I've used it approximately once in three years.

The multi-tool nature — bags, whip, aromatherapy — is the selling point. It does all of them adequately, and at this price, 'adequate at everything' is a genuine pitch.

The comparison that matters: if you've used a Volcano Hybrid, you'll notice the difference. Volcano bags are denser, more precise, more satisfying. But if you've only used the Extreme Q? You won't know what you're missing. And honestly? You might not care.

The elbow pack, the load sizes, the grind and the dome screen that makes bag mode work are all in the owner's guide below.

The Strain Test

Nobody judged the Actifry on how many settings the dial had; they judged it on whether the chips were any good. The Extreme Q gets the same treatment — flower and grind locked to the benchmark every other review here uses, leaving the machine as the only thing allowed to move. The Actifry question applies here as much as it does to chips: the Extreme Q does two jobs, so the only thing worth knowing is whether either of them is done properly.

Jack Herer — Sativa

The Flower: Same jar as every other device on this site. Haze × (Northern Lights #5 × Shiva Skunk), around 20% THC, terpinolene-led with caryophyllene and pinene behind it. Pale, spindly, hairy stuff that looks less impressive than it smokes — crack the jar and it's pine needles and lemon peel first, dry green herbs underneath, black pepper right at the back. Old-school in the way that means "aromatic", not "weak". It's the strain that shows you up: the top notes are fragile, and if a vaporiser can't hold them you find out in the first three seconds.

The Pack: 0.18g in the elbow screen, medium-coarse grind, packed loose enough to see light through it. Whip on, fan off, fifteen minutes of heat-soak before the first pull — the glass has to be properly saturated or you waste the top of the bowl finding that out. Fifteen minutes is also long enough for me to go and make tea and come back having forgotten why I was in the kitchen.

Low Temp (180°C): Five draws, slow ones, the whip taking about eight seconds each. Pine needles landed on the first pull and lemon peel came with them, and both of them were still legible on draw four — which is more than a bag will give you, and I'll come back to that. There's a cooling menthol edge to Jack that only shows up when nothing in the vapour path has an opinion of its own, and an all-glass whip has no opinions. Thin vapour, but honest.

Mid Temp (190°C): Four draws. Black pepper turned up on the second one and then refused to leave, sitting under a dry woody haze that thickened as the bowl caught up. The citrus lift was still faintly there on the first of the four, gone by the last. This is the EQ working at its best: slow, unhurried, one note handing over to the next while you sit there not doing anything about it.

High Temp (200°C): Three draws, and Jack does what Jack does — earth, a bit of leather, the old-school funk at the back. Nothing scorched, nothing bitter, just the flavour flattening out the way this strain always flattens out. AVB came out an even mid-brown across the whole screen.

The Verdict: The whip is the good half of this machine and Jack is the strain that proves it — pine into pepper into earth, in order, legible the whole way down — a bag of the same load at 190°C condensed the pine out entirely, leaving warm green herb and pepper. That asymmetry is a physical fact of balloons, not a fault of this one, but it means half of what the Extreme Q sells you is the wrong half for this flower. Actifry chips, on the whip. Reheated Actifry chips, in the bag.

Wedding Cake — Indica-Leaning Hybrid

The Flower: Same jar as every other device on this site. Triangle Kush × Animal Mints, via Triangle Mints #23 — around 24% THC, caryophyllene first, then limonene and myrcene. Dense, squat, greasy nuggets that leave your fingers tacky and your grinder needing a wash. Nose is vanilla and cream over sweet raw dough, with a peppery earth underneath and a cherry-berry edge that turns up on the exhale more than the sniff. Modern dessert genetics doing exactly what it says on the tin. Where Jack exposes a device, this one flatters it.

The Pack: New screen, fresh elbow, cyclone bowl swapped and the whip tube changed — house rule, you don't taste one strain through the last one's residue. 0.25g in the cyclone bowl this time rather than an elbow pack, because the heavier profile has enough body to survive the bigger load. Whip again, ten minutes back up to temperature.

Low Temp (180°C): Five draws. Vanilla and sweet cream arrived immediately and stayed put, with sweet raw dough sitting under them and a cherry edge showing up on the exhale rather than the inhale. The cyclone bowl gives thinner vapour than an elbow pack at the same temperature, but the flavour is fully formed from draw one. No hunting for it.

Mid Temp (190°C): Four draws and the best part of the session. Butter showed up alongside the dough, black pepper cut through underneath, and — this is the bit worth paying attention to — I could still tell those three things apart. Vanilla, butter, pepper, as three separate items rather than one lump of "sweet". The glass path isn't adding body, so what you get is definition instead of richness. Some people will find that thin. I find it honest.

High Temp (200°C): Three draws into toasted, nutty territory, the caramelised sugar tipping toward a burnt edge on the last one. Peppery pungency at the back. Dessert collapsing into generic warmth, which is exactly where this strain goes at the top of the range and no device on this site avoids it.

The Verdict: Wedding Cake is better on the whip than most people expect from a budget desktop, and it's fine in a bag too — the heavy dessert notes make the trip through the plastic in a way Jack's don't, so if bags are your reason for buying this, this is the flower to buy with it. Where the Extreme Q lands is exactly where the Actifry lands: two strains still tasting like two different plants at the top stage, neither of them tasting like the best version of themselves. It's a delivery device that happens to have a flavour device bolted to the side of it. The session musician plays both parts, neither with any particular flair, and the gig still gets done.

Design & Build 7.5/10

The Extreme Q's body is solid. The electronics are reliable. The heater has been running the same basic design since 2010. My mate Dave's had his Volcano Classic since 2008, and that thing has survived everything — but plenty of EQ owners have similar stories. Units lasting a decade of daily use. The guts just sit there like a bored space heater while time passes around them.

The glass, however, is not a tank. The glass is consumable.

Here's my disaster story: three months into ownership, I cleaned my Extreme Q thoroughly — ISO soak, screen replacement, the works. Put everything back together, turned it on, and... nothing. Well, not nothing. Heat, but no vapour. Couldn't figure it out. Checked the temperature. Checked the herb. Checked the fan.

Turns out I'd put the whip elbow on backwards after cleaning. The basket screen was facing the wrong direction, blocking airflow completely. Twenty minutes of troubleshooting because I reassembled it like a sleep-deprived idiot at midnight.

The point: the EQ has a lot of glass parts. Most glass parts can go on multiple ways. Not all ways are correct. Pay attention when reassembling.

The heater cover — that sacrificial glass condom over the element — is the part that breaks most often. Pull a bowl wrong and it cracks. Cheap to replace. Budget for a spare. The cyclone bowls crack too, usually from thermal shock (cold ISO, hot element, sad cracking noise).

The good news: Arizer designs with replaceable glass in mind. Break something, order a replacement, carry on. The dual-wall stainless steel body stays cool even during extended sessions. It's only the glass that betrays you — and it's the only thing the three-year warranty doesn't cover.

Materials:

• Body: Dual-wall stainless steel tower with ceramic heater
• Vapour path: All-glass (borosilicate cyclone bowl + whip/bag adapters)
• Whip: Silicone tubing with glass mouthpiece
• Display: Digital temperature readout with remote control

Ease of Use 8/10

Turn it on. Set the temperature. Wait for heat-up. Attach whip or bag kit. Inhale. Done.

The Extreme Q's interface is straightforward desktop simplicity. Digital display, clear controls, no app required. The learning curve is essentially flat for basic operation. Bags and whip modes each have their quirks, but nothing that takes more than a session or two to figure out.

The fan has three speeds for bag filling. Most people settle on medium — balances density with extraction time. Low is too slow. High is too aggressive and can blast herb around the bowl.

Temperature stepping works, and the dial goes to 260°C, but Arizer's 180–220°C guidance is the sensible working window — the extra range is headroom, not an invitation. The routine I run is in the temperature settings below.

The remote control is surprisingly useful. Adjusting temperature and fan speed without getting up from the sofa is the kind of lazy luxury that matters more than you'd think. I've got preset temps dialled in and rarely touch the unit itself during sessions.

The main ease-of-use complaint: heat-up time. The EQ takes 3–5 minutes to reach full temperature, and experienced users recommend leaving it on for 10–15 minutes before serious sessions to ensure the glass is fully heat-soaked. This isn't a quick-hit device. It's a 'turn it on, go make tea, come back ready' device. Why the wait matters so much is explained in the owner's guide.

Cleaning & Maintenance 7/10

The Extreme Q has a lot of glass parts. All of them get dirty. All of them need cleaning.

The cyclone bowl: resin builds on the screens. Weekly ISO soaks for regular users. The elbow adapters: the basket screens collect residue fast. Swap or clean every few days if you're elbow packing. The whip tubing: gets gunky inside. Replace every few months for hygiene — it's cheap, budget for replacements. The bags: wear out. They're not permanent. Stock up on spares.

The cleaning isn't difficult, just time-consuming. More parts than a simple portable. More surfaces for resin to accumulate. More opportunities to crack something during disassembly.

Critical warning: don't let the glass fuse to the heater. If you leave your cyclone bowl parked on the heater too long — weeks of use without removal — the resin can basically weld it in place. Same issue I covered in my V-Tower review. Same solution: clean regularly, don't let it get that bad.

The full schedule and the deep-clean steps are in the cleaning section below.

How I Actually Use This

The Extreme Q sits on my office bench, three feet from my monitor. It's been there for three years. It's become furniture.

My actual use pattern: about once a week, usually when I'm at the desk all evening. Mix of whip and bags depending on mood. Solo sessions get the whip — I elbow-pack 0.15g, set it to 190°C, and pull slowly while working or watching something. The occasional film night with Sarah gets bags — fill two or three, pass them back and forth, proper lazy evening ritual.

Default setup: elbow pack at 190°C for whip, cyclone bowl at 195°C for bags. I turn it on when I sit down at the bench, let it heat-soak for ten minutes while I settle in, then the session starts naturally. No rushing. No decisions. Just the hum of the heater and the slow draw.

My mate Tom — classic Tom luck with electronics — has been anxious about his EQ's fan since I mentioned that fan failures happen. His has been fine for two years. Most are fine. But Tom worries.

Cleaning frequency: ISO the elbow screens every Sunday. Swap whip tubing every couple of months. Replace bags when they get cloudy. It's low-maintenance when you stay on top of it, and a disaster when you don't.

The Volcano Hybrid handles the lounge. The Extreme Q handles the office bench — it's the multi-tool, the Swiss Army knife, the Actifry that does chips and wedges and whatever else you throw in it.

Medical Use Notes

For pain management, the Extreme Q's versatility is the advantage. The whip delivers sustained relief across 20-minute sessions — slow, steady dosing that manages chronic pain without the intensity spikes that on-demand devices produce. The bags allow me to pre-fill and medicate at my own pace, which matters on bad pain days when the act of drawing from a whip requires more coordination than I've got.

The elbow-pack technique is genuinely useful for medical dosing. At 0.15g per pack, you get consistent, predictable sessions. I know exactly how many draws I need, at what temperature, to manage an evening's pain. That consistency matters more than raw power when you're managing a chronic condition.

For ADHD, the evening bag ritual has become part of my wind-down routine. The repetitive process — fill bag, inhale, exhale, wait, repeat — provides the kind of structured, low-demand activity that helps my brain transition from work mode to rest mode. Wedding Cake at 190°C through bags has become my default evening prescription.

Value for Money 8.5/10

A budget desktop that does bags AND whip. That's been the pitch since 2010, and it still works.

The Volcano Classic costs more than twice as much. The Volcano Hybrid costs more again. The Extreme Q delivers maybe 80–85% of the Volcano bag experience for a fraction of the price. You're not getting the same precision, the same build quality, or the same 'I've bought a proper German appliance' satisfaction. But you're getting real bags, real whip capability, and a desktop that'll last a decade if you don't drop it.

The value calculation is simple: if Volcano Classic money feels steep, the Extreme Q is the answer. If you'd rather have the best and can afford it, buy the Volcano. But for most people? 'Good enough' at a budget price beats 'premium' at more than double.

The XQ2 question: the XQ2 costs a bit more — faster heat-up, prettier design, improved bag attachment with a sealing cap. If you're buying new, the XQ2 is probably the smarter choice. But if you already own an Extreme Q that works? Keep it. These things are tanks.

One caveat: the fan can die. Fan failures do happen — usually after years of use, sometimes within the three-year device warranty. If it goes, you're left with whip-only operation (which is still perfectly functional) or a replacement. It's not common, but it's real.

The Verdict (The Bookend)

Three years in, I still use my Extreme Q about once a week. Not every night. Not as my primary device. The Solo 3 v2 handles flavour chasing. The Mighty+ handles everything in between. But when I want to fill a bag for a lazy evening, when I want to run the whip while watching something mindless on telly, when I want 'good enough' without thinking about it? The Extreme Q is right there on the bench, warm and ready.

The Actifry sits in my kitchen. I use it 2–3 times a week. It's not as good as proper deep-fried chips. It's not as healthy as just eating vegetables. But it's good enough, and it's always there, and I don't feel guilty about having spent too much on something that just makes chips.

Sarah looked at the bench the other day. 'You still use that thing?'

'Every week.'

'See? You didn't need the expensive one.'

Score Breakdown

Category	Score	Summary
Vapour Quality	8/10	Competent at bags and whip — session musician energy, not soloist
Design & Build	7.5/10	Electronics are tanks; glass is consumable. Budget for spares
Ease of Use	8/10	Remote control is brilliant; heat-soak time requires patience
Cleaning & Maintenance	7/10	Lots of glass parts, all need attention. Elbow screens clog constantly
Value for Money	8.5/10	Bags and whip at a budget price — years of proven budget logic
Overall	7.8/10	The Actifry — not the best, but good enough, and that's genuinely enough

No Battery or Portability scores — this is a mains-powered desktop device, stationary by design.

Vs the Competition

The Extreme Q's pitch has always been simple: Volcano capability at a fraction of the price. Every comparison starts there.

The XQ2 is what happens when Arizer modernises the formula — faster heat-up, cleaner design, better bag mechanics with a sealing cap. Same heater underneath, but the refinements matter. If your EQ is still going strong after a decade? Keep it. Tanks are tanks. If you're buying new? The XQ2 is the smarter choice — a bit more money gets you 'actually modern' instead of 'good enough from 2010.'

The Volcano is better. Dave's has lasted since 2008, denser bags, precision engineering that costs money. The EQ delivers maybe 80% of the bag experience plus a whip you'll actually use, for less than half the money. The real question: do you need the Volcano or just want it? The EQ is the 'good enough' answer. The Volcano is the 'I've decided I'm a bag person' answer.

The V-Tower is for whip-only monks. The EQ is for people who want options. Same heater, but the EQ adds bags, a three-speed fan and a digital display for a few pounds more — which makes the maths easy rather than clever. Only ever use a whip? The V-Tower is simpler and marginally cheaper. Think you might want bags one day? The difference is not a decision, it's a rounding error.

The Plenty is the sledgehammer; the EQ is the Swiss Army knife. Direct-draw power versus hybrid versatility, and the Plenty costs a fair bit more. The Plenty clears sessions faster and produces denser clouds. The EQ does bags, whip and aromatherapy half-measures. Different tools for different missions — pick the one that fits yours.

Head-to-heads: Extreme Q vs Volcano Classic goes deeper on the bag question. For the wider desktop field, see Volcano Classic vs Plenty, the best desktop vaporisers round-up, or browse all comparisons.

Owner's Guide: Getting the Most From Your Arizer Extreme Q

Everything above is the review: whether to buy one. Everything from here down is for when it's already on your bench. If you remember one sentence, make it this: the display reaching your set temperature and the machine being ready are two different events, ten minutes apart. Nearly every "my Extreme Q is disappointing" email I get resolves to a five-minute wait that should have been fifteen.

First Use and Setup: Your First Hour

1. Unbox and count the glass. You should have a cyclone bowl, heater cover, whip elbow, whip tube with glass mouthpiece, balloon kit, dome screen, spare screens and the remote. Most of those parts will assemble more than one way, so lay them out once, put it together properly, and photograph it assembled. It's the most useful ten seconds you'll spend on this machine.
2. Run one empty burn-off at 200°C for twenty minutes, with the whip attached, nothing in the bowl and a window open. The new ceramic element and silicone tubing have a faint new-appliance smell on the first run that never comes back.
3. Put the batteries in the remote now, not in week three. It's what makes temperature stepping actually happen, because nobody gets up off the sofa three times a session.
4. Register it the day it arrives using the serial on the base, and keep your invoice. The warranty runs from the date of purchase.
5. Give it its own socket. It's mains-only and takes 110–240V in (19V DC to the unit), so abroad you need a plug adapter, not a voltage converter. It's a heating element with a fan on it, and it doesn't enjoy being sixth in line on a cheap extension lead under a desk.

Day-to-day storage: leave it assembled and upright, but with the cyclone bowl removed and empty. A bowl left parked on the element for weeks can resin-weld itself in place. For long storage, strip and clean the glass and keep it in a drawer. Store balloons flat and out of the sun, because UV makes the plastic brittle and a brittle bag splits mid-fill.

Loading and Technique

Grind medium-coarse: coarse sea salt or roughly cracked pepper, distinctly coarser than a portable wants. The screens are fairly open and on the whip the airflow comes from your lungs, so fine grind does two bad things at once. It clogs the elbow screen, which causes most "no airflow" complaints on this device, and it compacts into a bed the hot air channels around rather than through. Three or four turns of a decent grinder, not a dozen. Hand-breaking a bud works well here. Don't tip kief back into the load (it falls through onto the element and burns), and skip electric blade grinders. The herb prep guide covers the rest.

The elbow pack. For solo whip sessions, skip the cyclone bowl and put 0.15–0.2g straight into the basket screen inside the whip elbow. The herb sits in a shallower bed with a shorter path, so you get thicker vapour from less material. Drop it in, tap the elbow gently on the bench to settle it, and don't tamp. It should be loose enough to see light through. If the draw feels restricted, you've packed it too tight, not too much. For longer sessions or bags, load 0.2–0.25g in the cyclone bowl. It holds around 0.7g, but there's rarely a reason to fill it.

The knack: heat-soak, then draw slowly.

1. Turn it on when you sit down, not when you want to vape. The element hits temperature in three to five minutes. The bowl, heater cover and elbow take another ten. Put the kettle on.
2. Whip mode: fan off, eight-second draws. Draw slowly enough to hear the air move. This is pure convection and you're the pump, so hard, fast, bong-style draws give you the least vapour.
3. Step the temperature with the remote (routine below), and stop when the vapour genuinely thins. That's usually seven to fifteen draws over ten to fifteen minutes, with the AVB an even mid-brown right across the screen.
4. End-of-bowl trick: when the vapour thins, switch to short, rhythmic two-second puffs. On an exhausted bed a long pull doesn't remobilise anything, but short ones do. That's two or three extra draws for free.

Sarah has a running joke about this. She hears the fan in the office and shouts from the kitchen, "is it soaked yet?", usually about four minutes in and purely to be annoying. It is never soaked at four minutes.

Balloons: Filling a Bag Properly

Find the dome screen. Somewhere in the accessory bag is a small domed stainless screen, and plenty of owners bin it with the packaging. Dave picked mine up, turned it over twice and asked whose lid it was. It sits inside the cyclone bowl, domed side up, capping the herb, and it stops the fan lifting light material into the elbow, bag or whip. If airflow suddenly feels restricted after you fit it, it's upside down and pressing the bed flat, so turn it over. They clog like any other screen, so treat the dome screen pack as a consumable.

Fan speeds. Low fills so slowly that the vapour cools and condenses in the bag before it's full, so save it for aromatherapy or topping up a nearly-full bag. Medium is the setting: start there and stay there. High is only for a dense, sticky, heavily packed bowl, and only with the dome screen fitted, because on light material it blasts herb round the bowl.

Filling. Seat the balloon adapter fully. It's a friction fit, and most "my bag fills slowly" reports are an adapter that isn't pushed home rather than a fan problem. Fill hot and use the bag promptly, because vapour condenses inside the plastic from the moment it enters. Leave thirty seconds between bags and stir the bed between fills. Running the fan continuously cools the element faster than it recovers, and the fan carves a hot channel through the middle of the bowl. Stirring does more for bag quality than any other adjustment, and almost nobody does it.

Both on one load: load 0.25g in the cyclone bowl with the dome screen, fill one bag at 195°C to take the top off it, then switch to the whip and finish the same load slowly at 205°C. You get a group hit and a solo tail-end from one load, and it's the fastest way to taste the difference between the two delivery systems.

Temperature Settings

The dial runs 50–260°C. Arizer's guidance is 180–220°C, and the extra range is headroom, not an invitation. Above about 225°C you aren't extracting more. You're making an acrid mess and shortening the life of your screens.

Setting	What you get	When to use it
150–175°C	Raw, green, barely there	Sampling a new jar's nose; aromatherapy mode
175–188°C	Full terpene profile, thin vapour, clear head	Whip sessions, daytime, flavour chasing
188–198°C	Deeper and warmer; density arrives	Bags, evenings, general use
198–210°C	Roasted, caramelised, body-heavy	End of the bowl, group bags
210–225°C	Burnt sugar, acrid edge	Flogging a spent bowl. Reload instead
225°C+	Scorched	Don't. The dial goes there; you shouldn't

The routine I actually run: set 185°C and heat-soak for 10–15 minutes, which is where the session is won or lost. Take four or five slow draws at 185°C, where the strain lives. Step to 195°C when the top notes fade, usually around draw four or five. Density jumps, most of the session's work happens here, and it's where bags should be filled. Finish at 205°C for the last two or three draws. Stop when the AVB is even mid-brown, not black, because black residue makes your next bowl worse too. For bags, run the whole ladder 5°C higher (190/200/210°C) to compensate for what the balloon condenses out.

By flower type: terpinolene-led sativas go on the whip only, starting low. As the strain test above shows, a bag at 190°C condenses the pine out of Jack Herer entirely. Caryophyllene-forward dessert hybrids like Wedding Cake are your bag strains. Keep limonene-heavy citrus under 188°C for the first four draws. Myrcene-heavy indicas are the most forgiving: start at 190°C and bags are fine. For dry or older herb, drop 5°C, pack looser and draw slower. The theory is in the temperature guide, and what to do with the leftovers is in the AVB guide.

Cleaning and Maintenance

None of the cleaning is difficult. All of it is time-consuming, because there's a lot of glass. The cleaning guide covers the principles. Here's the routine for this machine.

How often	What to do	Time
After every session	Pull the bowl while it's still warm, empty the AVB, brush the screens. Warm resin wipes; cold resin is a job	30 seconds
Every 10–15 sessions (every few days if you elbow-pack daily)	Swap or clean the elbow screen, wipe the glass with an isopropyl-damp bud	2 minutes
Every 25–30 sessions	Full isopropyl soak of all the glass (steps below)	40 minutes, mostly waiting
Every 50+ sessions	Replace the whip tubing, check the balloons for cloudiness	5 minutes

The deep clean:

1. Unplug it and let everything cool completely. Cold isopropyl on hot glass is the number one cause of cracked bowls.
2. Strip it: cyclone bowl, heater cover, elbow, basket screen, dome screen, glass mouthpiece, whip tubing.
3. Soak the glass in 90%+ isopropyl for 30 minutes, in a glass jar rather than a plastic tub. A spoon of coarse salt helps get into the cyclone's fins.
4. Give the screens their own soak and a soft brush. If one is still visibly clogged afterwards, bin it.
5. Wash the whip tubing in warm soapy water, not isopropyl, which degrades silicone over time. Rinse and hang it to dry.
6. Rinse everything in warm water and dry it completely. Trapped isopropyl in a glass joint tastes exactly as bad as you'd expect.
7. Wipe the element housing with a dry cloth only. Never wet it.
8. Reassemble and check the elbow orientation against your photo. Then run one empty cycle at 200°C for ten minutes before you load it.

Never soak the base unit. Don't use anything but isopropyl on the glass: acetone attacks the printing and seals, and washing-up liquid leaves a film you'll taste. Never force a stuck bowl while it's cold. And don't run it with a clogged screen hoping it'll clear, because it won't.

Warranty: Arizer covers the heating element for the life of the device and the rest of the unit for three years. Glass is excluded, as are the whip tubing, balloons and screens. To claim through us, email info@herbvape.co.uk with your order number, the serial and a description of the fault. A short video is worth a thousand words for anything fan-related. Full terms are on the warranty page.

Troubleshooting

There's no battery, no app and no firmware, so every fault is mechanical, thermal or a warranty claim.

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Heat but no vapour at all	Whip elbow assembled backwards, screen blocking the airflow	Strip the elbow, check the basket screen's orientation, reassemble. The classic EQ fault, and I've made it myself
Thin, wispy vapour	Not heat-soaked long enough, or drawing too fast	Wait the full 10–15 minutes, and use eight-second draws. Fix these two before anything else
Almost no airflow through the whip	Elbow screen clogged by grind that's too fine	Swap the screen and grind coarser. Cleaning a badly clogged screen rarely restores it
Uneven AVB, green in the middle	Packed too tight, so the air channels round the bed	Pack looser, stir mid-session, don't tamp
Bags fill slowly or arrive weak	Fan on low, glass not soaked, or adapter not fully seated	Fan to medium, add 5°C for bags, push the friction fit home
Third bag much weaker than the first	Continuous fan use cools the element faster than it recovers	Thirty seconds between bags; stir the bowl between fills
Herb blowing around the bowl	Fan on high, light material, no dome screen	Dome screen in, domed side up; drop to medium
Restricted airflow right after fitting the dome screen	It's upside down, pressing the bed flat	Turn it over
Cyclone bowl stuck to the heater	Resin has fused the joint	Power on briefly to soften it, switch off, cool a minute, twist gently with a little isopropyl round the joint. Never force it cold
Cracked bowl or heater cover	Thermal shock, or force on a stuck part	Replacement only, because glass isn't covered. Keep spares
Fan doesn't spin	Fan motor failure	Not user-serviceable. It's a warranty claim within three years. Either way, you keep full whip operation
Whip tastes stale on a clean machine	The silicone has absorbed odour for good	Replace the tubing. It's a consumable
Display on, element not heating	Loose DC connection, or a power supply or element fault	Check the DC plug at the base first. It works loose far more often than the element fails. The element is covered for life
Remote does nothing	Batteries, or line of sight	Fit new batteries, then point it squarely at the display

Still stuck? Why isn't this working covers the failure modes every session device shares.

Parts and Accessories That Fit

The electronics are a tank and the glass is a shopping list, so buy spares alongside the vape rather than on the night you need them.

• Glass Elbow Adapter w/ Glass Screen: the most-used part on the machine if you elbow-pack. Glass sheds resin more cleanly than mesh. Run two, one in use and one soaking.
• Cyclone Bowl: the part that cracks from thermal shock. Own a spare.
• Dome Screen Pack and Multi-Screen for Arizer Desktops: screens cost pennies and make more difference to your vapour than any technique change.
• Silicone Hose Tubing or a spare 3 ft Whip for XQ2 & Extreme Q: tubing absorbs smell permanently, so stop pretending you can clean it back to new.
• Replacement Balloon Set: bags go cloudy and stiff. Replace them rather than nursing them.
• Extreme Q Remote Control: if yours has gone the way of all remotes.
• Situational: the glass connoisseur bowl for filling bags for more than two people without reloading (it's wrong for solo use). The glass mini whip or its glass-screen version for quick draws and low-temperature tasting, but drop 5–10°C, because you lose three feet of cooling. The aromatherapy dish runs with the fan on low, under 175°C, with no whip or bag attached. I've used it once.

A spare heater cover is worth owning too, because without one the device doesn't work at all. It isn't currently listed on our site, so buy genuine Arizer. Skip unbranded marketplace glass (the joint tolerances aren't generous), "upgraded" fine-mesh screens (they clog faster on a device whose main failure is a clogged screen), water-pipe adapters (it already has an all-glass path and three feet of cooling) and travel voltage converters. The accessories guide covers the wider kit.