Vaporesso Luxe PM40 Review: A Truly Luxurious Pod Vape

Product intro and specs

The Vaporesso Luxe PM40 is the latest pod system by Vaporesso, a company that has become quite popular after producing great mods like the Gen S and Luxe. The Luxe PM40 is a pod-based AIO in a small package as is the craze these days, and it is made for MTL and low-wattage DL vaping. Its internal battery is listed at 1800 mAh, it uses a fire button, and its pods can hold up to 4 mL of juice. Pods are refillable and the coils are separate from the pod, so there’s less waste and less cost down the line.

Keep reading to find out how the Luxe PM40 kit performs, and if it stands out in the very competitive pod vape market.

Vaporesso sent me this kit free of charge for the purpose of this review.

Price: $24.99 (at Element Vape)

Colors: Black, silver, carbon fiber, lava, jade

Build quality and design

The Luxe PM40 is a pretty small pod system that’s very pocketable. It stands at 96.5 mm x 30.6 mm x 21.5 mm and it’s got enough weight to feel solid and well-built without feeling too heavy. It’s not as small as the Caliburn or the JUUL, but it’s smaller than some of the fancier ones that have come out lately like the Voopoo Vinci, which is also a 40-watt adjustable pod system. And it obviously borrows a lot of its design from the SMOK Nord series, and specifically the Nord 2. From a form factor perspective, they are almost identical.

I received two color options, the Jade and Lava, and both have gunmetal frames and colored IML panels which look like stabilized wood. The Lava is red/black while the Jade is different shades of blue with a little brown. The three other color options are black, carbon fiber, and silver. They all have the same gunmetal frame with the color options being the panels. The black option-despite its name-is black and rainbow, while the silver one is silver and rainbow. The carbon fiber is accurately named and comes with a carbon fiber style design to it.

Both samples I received look great and come with nice panels. There is one button which, as I will explain in the following section, acts both as a fire button and a wattage adjustment button. On one side of the device, you have the 0.69-inch rectangular black and white OLED screen which is bright and easy to read. On the other side, there is a silver rod sticking out slightly which is used to slide back and forth to adjust the airflow. It adjusts from a solid MTL to a restricted DL vape. It’s not a huge adjustment, but it offers some versatility. Branding is very simple and hardly noticeable. All in all, it’s really a good-looking pod system with plenty of color options and some really nice features to it.

Getting started

The Luxe PM40 is a pretty typical pod system that’s simple to use. There is one button on it which does everything. Not having adjustment buttons threw me off a bit at first, but I found it very intuitive and enjoyed it once I got used to it.

Five clicks of the button turn the device on and off. It auto locks as an adjustment button. To adjust the power, click it three times and it unlocks. Then tap or hold to scroll through the wattage until it gets to where you want it. Then wait a couple of seconds, and it’ll lock the wattage in and relock. Hold it to fire while it’s locked—there’s no auto-draw option. The screen displays the wattage, a puff counter, and resistance. It also shows battery level with a percentage, which I really like.

The Luxe PM40 comes with two pods and two coils in the box. Air is adjustable via a slider on the back of the device. I love that they include an extra pod so you can carry an extra around easily. Refilling a pod is really easy. It doesn't have to be removed. Just push back on the drip tip and it pops off. Once it’s off, you’ll see one large fill hole that’s easy to use and a small outlet hole on the other side for air to escape while you fill it. Really well done and not messy at all. Only a small amount of the pod is exposed from the front, but it is almost fully exposed from the side and you can check juice levels until you get about 10%. The pod is also clear and not tinted so the juice level is easy to see.

To remove the pod, just pull it out. No magnets, it’s just friction fit but it fits in great with no wiggle or play and gets in and out easily. Coil replacement is really easy as well. It uses the same GTX plug and play coils as a few of their devices like the Xiron and Target PM80. With the pod removed, just pull the coil out from the bottom and pop in a new one. Then put the pod back in and refill it. You do need to pretty much empty the pod before replacing the coil, but if you do it sideways, a little juice can stay in there as well. Overall, a very easy to use pod system—as it should be.

Performance

The most important part of any pod device is going to be the coils—a great device is pointless if the coils are bad. The Luxe PM40 comes with two coil options. A 0.8-ohm mesh coil rated 12-20 watts and a 0.6-ohm mesh coil rated 20-30 watts. I asked Vaporesso about coil compatibility and they responded that these are the only two compatible coils at the moment (check the comment section). Vaporesso's GTX coil page lists the two 1.2-ohm coils (mesh and regular) as well, but I don't have any 1.2-ohm coils at hand to give them a try.

I’ve used quite a few of these coils over time on devices like the PM80 and the Xiron, so I was pretty familiar with them going into it. In general, low-wattage Vaporesso coils have been good. For this kit, I started off with the 0.8-ohm coil. I used 50/50 20 mg nic salt juices in it and the flavor was great for that wattage. I found it best on the low end, around 12 watts. I ran 20 mL of that juice in it before the coil died, which is great life at 12 watts. Overall, a really good coil for low-wattage vaping.

Then I used the 0.6-ohm coil, but with 70/30 3 mg juice. I found it best on the low end again, at around 22 watts. I got 28 mL of juice before it died, and the flavor was solid for a 20-watt coil. No complaints on this one either.

Vaporesso lists a “turbo boost tech” which allows the hit to remain constant as the battery drains, and I will say it worked well. You won’t notice any difference in your puffs until the battery is pretty much dead. One more thing to note is it has a five-second puff cut off. This may limit a small number of people, but most vapers would be fine with it. Finally, a cool thing I noticed on this system is that at no point did I need to wipe condensation from under the pod. Even as I write this review, the bottom of the pod is completely dry, which is great—and something that most pod systems out there fail at.

Battery life and charging

Battery life on the Luxe PM40 will vary depending on the coils you use and the wattage you fire them at. Personally, I found it to be pretty good for a small device. It comes with an internal battery listed at 1800 mAh, and they list the charge rate at 2 amps. I tested all this and for the charge rate I got max 1.43 amps so I am a little disappointed in the rating. It should have been listed at 1.5 amps instead, so I’ll ding them for that.

For battery capacity, I performed the test twice on my Jade one and got 1295 and 1299 mAh. I decided to test the Lava one to make sure it wasn’t just one bad battery, and I got 1353 mAh on that one. That’s well below the 1800 mAh rating and a rating of 1400 mAh would have been more appropriate. It’s not uncommon for companies to overrate battery sizes but Vaporesso’s ratings are usually accurate, so that was kind of a disappointment.

While battery specs are unfortunately overrated for the most part on this device, the 60-minute charging duration that Vaporesso advertise is accurate—the three charges I tested were all done in 57-61 minutes. It also has passthrough vaping so you can vape while it charges, and the device will pause the charging process while you're vaping. The Type-C port is located on the front of the pod, under the screen at the bottom.

Pros / Cons

Gallery

Verdict

Overall, Vaporesso did an excellent job with this pod system. I really don’t have any complaints with the product itself. The battery size is overstated as is the charge rate, which sadly is pretty typical for a lot of pods from most vape companies out there. But the true specs are really good, and the product itself is excellent. I’d highly recommend it if you are in the market for a new pod system, despite the spec overrating. I still hope next time the battery and charge specs are more accurate though.

We’d like to hear from you. Have you tried the Vaporesso Luxe PM40 kit? How was your experience with the device? Let us know in the comments below.