HCigar is perhaps best known as a Chinese e cig company from the famous district of Shenzhen where they make clones of expensive e cig mods.
HCigar also makes some of their own designs but are especially popular for their affordable copies, like the Stingray and Copper Skyline mechanical mods.
In this review, we will look at an HCigar HB50 Box Mod: their version of the popular VW APV format which every vaping company, it seems, wants a part of.
HCigar’s Box Mod Offering
You probably guessed that 50 watts would be their maximum. A clue is always dropped into the name. Here it is HB50 which I imagine stands for “hot box,” but I could be wrong. “Hot box” is slang for being stuck in a room where people are smoking marijuana.
While you could easily attach an herb, wax, or essential oil tank to the HB50 and operate at adequate temperatures for satisfying effects, HCigar is essentially an e cig company. E liquid does not make people goofy.
Box Mod Specs
For about $70, you get a black, silver, or gold box, CNC-machined, operating with the power of one 18650 battery. There is only one button, so you will probably look at this mod and wonder for just a minute: how are you supposed to change the watts? What about volts?
This is one of those gravity-controlled mods, so it does not do what you are expecting and you have to have some confidence to operate it. Buttons are much easier than this, but maybe not as much fun.
Inside is a Yihi SX300 chip. It is a great chip with the ability to register changes in gravity to affect the orientation of your screen and alter watts (not volts it would seem).
The Yihi chip lets you use an atomizer with resistance as low as 0.2 ohms. Although vented at the bottom, you are also protected from certain problematic issues, thanks to Yihi’s microchip.
Visual Orientation
The screen is placed at the bottom left of the front face, diagonally opposite the logo which is at the bottom right hand corner. Compared to the usual setup, this is an alternative and attractive change.
A charging port and large firing button take up position on one narrow side to the left of the screen, which is a square inside a black rectangle. Press the button softly: it won’t click, but is highly sensitive and responsive. One great thing about this kind of button is that it will be slow to wear out.
Onward Charge
The battery is not built into your unit: it’s possible to take it out and replace one needing a recharge with one that has already been fully charged. That is one way to do things, but you could also attach a USB cable to the charging port, plug into a laptop or other USB device like your game console, and vape while your battery remains inside the mod charging. It will charge more slowly if you use it simultaneously, but that doesn’t matter so long as you have access to a pass-through source.
Floating Connections
We aren’t talking about dating at zero-gravity but the spring-loaded 510 floating connection pin. Its design allows you to fix one of various atomizer styles onto the HB50 without difficulty and for it to sit naturally atop the box.
As long as you choose a 510 atomizer (and most are), there’s nothing to worry about except that an atomizer can cope with your plans.
By this, I mean that it has to be capable of 0.2-ohm resistance and handle 50 watts when you are ready to make some fog.
If you feel like having a gentle vape at low temperatures and 2 ohms, standard tanks of any sort will do fine. But I would argue a CE5 is wasted on your HCigar HB50.
