I try a lot of vape gear, mostly in pursuit of bigger clouds, and one tank has outlasted everything else on my desk: the Smok TFV12. It is the tank I was using while writing this. Smok has put out newer models since, and I have bought several of them, yet I keep going back. Below are my three reasons, along with the places where the old tank does fall short. These are my own opinions and nothing more.
No other Smok tank I tried runs at this wattage
Smok launched the TFV12 in 2017 and called it the Cloud Beast King. The pitch was a 6mL tank, coils rated for up to 200W, big clouds with plenty of flavor, and a design meant to stop e-liquid leaking. For cloud chasers it sounded like the complete package, and for several years it was.
Smok followed it with the TFV12 Prince, the TFV12 Cobra and the TFV12 Baby Tank. I bought each one out of curiosity. Each time the coils disappointed me with their low ohm resistance, and each time I ended up back on the original, buying more coils to feed my taste for high wattage.
Later Smok brought out the G-Priv 3 mod. The deep magenta finish and the glass screen won me over on sight, so I set my earlier disappointments aside and tried the TFV16 Lite tank with it. Its coils turned out to run very low, in the 60-90W range, which surprised me, but a new mod in a bright color was hard to say no to.
The trouble started within days. The redesigned o-ring snagged on a sharp point of the swivel top, was dragged out of place and stretched so far that it would not sit in its groove again. I fitted the spare from the kit. Three hours later that one did exactly the same. I sent the tank back to Smok and returned to the TFV12.
A redesign is not automatically an upgrade
To be fair, Smok does act on what vapers tell it. On the older tanks the o-rings sat directly above the refill slot, where they were supposed to form a leak-proof seal. People who vape all day and refill constantly, me included, kept catching that o-ring with the tip of the bottle. After enough nudging it would tear or pop out. Getting it seated again was a fight, and the spare supplied with every Smok tank never fitted quite as well as the factory one.
The Baby V2 was Smok’s answer. It added two things: a lock so the top cannot swivel open by accident, and an airtight o-ring moved to the underside of the swivel top, out of reach of bottle tips and careless fingers.
After years of bulky tanks that were tedious to refill, I was glad to see a real change, and I bought the TFV8 Baby V2 straight away. Filling it was much easier. The capacity was a little lower, 5mL against 6 mL on the TFV12, though the design was better thought out. What let me down was the power range. I normally vape above 150 watts, and the V2 tops out at 60-130 watts, a long way short of the 200 watts the TFV12 can take. I gave it an honest try and still went back to the Cloud Beast King, which was not the newest tank but gave me the cloud and the flavor I wanted.
Clouds, flavor and coil life
Smok appears to be heading toward more flavor in a less bulky tank, and getting there has meant smaller tanks and lower wattages. You could put my preference down to stubbornness. I can only report what I found over and over, which is that the other tanks did not match this one.
- Coil life: a TFV12 coil sometimes lasted me a month or longer, and I go through about 2-3 tanks a day.
- Clouds: cloud size cannot really be measured, but mine seemed bigger and puffier.
- Flavor: newer tanks advertise coils with stronger, purer flavor. To my taste the TFV12 still gives more.
Where the TFV12 falls short
It is not a perfect tank. Mine has an odd o-ring fault in which the fill slot gets squashed every time I close the top. Somehow it does not leak, and the only cost is irritation. I also have to take care when the device goes into a purse or a pocket, because the top can be knocked open. The newer tanks have a clever lock that prevents this, and I wish mine had it.
My verdict
Some vapers love Smok’s newer tanks, and I am glad they do. For me the TFV12 remains the everyday choice. I have tried plenty of alternatives and always come back to it. Coils that last a month, a stronger hit of flavor and no wrestling with replacement parts leave me no reason to change. If Smok ever reissued the TFV12 with a locking top and a relocated o-ring, I would be first in line to buy one.
If you have a tank you rate above the TFV12, or you feel as I do about yours, I would be happy to hear about it in the comments.