Pod Battle Royale!

SMOK Trinity Alpha Vs. GeekVape Frenzy Vs. Lost Vape Orion Q

Or, more accurately, cartridge Battle Royal! 2018 was the year of pod devices and it looks like that trend is rolling over into 2019 as well. And why not? Pod devices are fantastic to use! They’re more portable, more effective, and sometimes even better designed than most full sized devices. Over the past 12 months or so we’ve seen several new pod device innovations hit the market, but only three of those devices are worthy of the best pod device title!

In this showdown we’ll take a look at the SMOK Trinity Alpha, the GeekVape Frenzy, and the Lost Vape Orion Q. All of these devices are around the same price point on EightVape, but which one gives you the most bang for your buck?

I’ll be judging each of these pods on looks, performance, and most importantly flavor.

The Looks

Each of these devices are built with a metal alloy frame and chic body panels for decoration. The Orion Q does lose some points in the looks category however, because they use faux carbon fiber body panels in their base model.

But the Orion Q does make up some of those points with its sleek size. It’s only slightly thinner than the other devices, but that makes a big difference in ergonomics. Speaking of ergonomics, I also noticed that the Orion Q has rounded edges all along the bottom and sides of the device. This is a miniscule detail, one that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t have all three devices in front of me. But if you’re holding these devices for any amount of time you’d notice that the Trinity Alpha, with straight edges, digs into your palm just a little bit more than the other pods.

The GeekVape Frenzy and the SMOK Trinity Alpha both get full marks from me in the style category. Both of these devices are available in several colored metal frames along with colorful resin body panels. Out of all three devices though, only the SMOK has separate LED lights to display power mode and a button for cycling through said fire modes.

It’s a tough call, but overall I’d have to say the Geekvape Frenzy wins in the looks category. They have a great selection of colors to choose from, and the resin panels give the device some fantastic color accents. Not to mention the slightly rounded edges makes it more comfortable to hold than the Alpha.

The Performance

This is always my favorite part of these comparisons! Chain vaping different pod systems back to back probably isn’t the best for your health, but sometimes we have to suffer for the sake of advancing science!

I’ve been using all three devices on and off for a few weeks now so I have a pretty good understanding of where each pod performs best and where they lag behind the other competitors.

All three pod systems come equipped with a fire button and a decent sized internal battery. The Alpha comes with a 1000mAh battery, the Frenzy has a 950mAh, and the Orion Q also has a 950mAh. Since they all have such great internal cells there’s really not much to say about battery life. I haven’t run into an issue where one of these devices died on me within 1 full day of usage. Usually I can vape intermittently on these devices for 2 days before they need charging.

The differences between these systems really stands out when we start talking about cloud production. While the GeekVape Frenzy and the Orion Q both produce decent sized clouds for a pod device, the Trinity Alpha is on another level entirely. It functions more like a mini Sub-Ohm system than a pod device! That's probably because it uses some fantastic 0.6ohm mesh coils, which I guess does technically make it a sub-ohm?

The Frenzy gets some kudos points here, GeekVape managed to fit a Temperature Control module into the chipset for their device. As far as I know there’s only a handful of pod devices that come with a TC feature.

As far as power mode selections go, only the Frenzy and the Alpha actually allow you to change your power output. The Orion Q, unlike its big brother the original Orion, doesn’t have any adjustable output. Between the Frenzy and the Alpha I prefer the Alpha’s viewable fire mode settings to the Frenzy’s single color changing LED light. Also, I find the nifty fire mode selection button simpler to use than the 3 button press operation for cycling fire modes on the Frenzy.

So for performance, I have to hand the award to the SMOK Trinity Alpha. It feels so much more powerful than the other devices I tested, and when dealing with compact devices you need all the power you can get.

The Flavor

This is probably the most important category to judge by, since people buy vaporizers for the fantastic flavor more than anything else. In fact, I would argue that flavor is an even bigger concern for most vapers than the nicotine satisfaction factor of a device.

The GeekVape Frenzy has a little ace up its sleeve for dealing with flavor, a secret weapon only found in a select few pod devices, Temperature Controlled coils! That’s right, the Frenzy comes with an optional SS316 coil! With this coil you get decent juice flavor at the expense of some cloud production.

However, the basic kanthal coil that comes with the Frenzy is horrendously bad. The flavor is so muted, it almost tastes like they used a cardboard wicking element instead of a proper coil.

Lost Vape did a good job with flavor on the Orion device, since it uses an almost RDA style cotton wicked coil. I think the larger surface area of the cotton inside the cartridge helps to provide that fantastic flavor. However, there's a huge drawback to that design, because the coils and cotton are built directly into the cartridge you can't replace them separately. This leads to a slightly higher operating cost over time compared to the other two pods.

Finally we have the SMOK Trinity Alpha, a device that keeps surprising me every step of the way. With its three distinct fire modes and cross compatible mesh coils, the Alpha actually produces better flavor than the Orion! I haven’t even had to change the coils yet and I’ve been using this device on and off for 2 weeks.

So for the Flavor category it looks like SMOK takes 1st place again!

The Verdict

After much deliberation and many days of testing I think there’s only one conclusion to be had at this point. The SMOK Trinity Alpha has more features, more cross compatibility, more performance, and better flavor than just about every pod device on the market today. If you’re looking for the perfect compact vaporizer I think you’d be hard pressed to find anything better than the SMOK Trinity Alpha right now. If you needed more proof that the Alpha is a fantastic buy, out of all three devices, the SMOK is the only one I’m going to keep for personal usage!