Brewing coffee in a Keurig or Nespresso is no harder than flipping the machine open, popping in a pod, and waiting a minute for your coffee to brew. Now, that same easy UX is coming to the esoteric world of vaping whole flower cannabis.
Pax Labs—a pioneer in building vaporizers that fit in a pocket rather than on a table, and the most popular vape brand in the U.S., according to cannabis market analyst BDSA—has debuted a new interlocking system of vaporizers and pre-pressed pucks of ground cannabis. The Pax Mini ($150) and Plus ($250) are the company’s latest vaporizers. To operate them, you simply pop open the lid of a Pax, drop in the preformed puck (or your own cannabis), and hit a button. Then, within about 30 seconds, the machine heats the flower to produce a smooth, smokeless vape.
To be clear, it is almost unfathomably easy to ingest THC these days, as liquid-filled cartridges sneak hundreds of puffs—or the equivalent of dozens of joints—into bargain-bin vapes that are sleeker than a No. 2 pencil. But 30% to 40% of the cannabis market still consumes the actual plant. Why? Different varieties of cannabis have different effects on your body and mind, and the specialized cannabis compounds found in flower are often lost in THC extraction. And when inhaled at low temperatures that don’t combust, vaping flower is believed to be relatively safe. Ultimately, the new Pax products are meant to marry UX and quality—which means they aim higher than a Keurig. Imagine the cannabis equivalent to brewing single-origin coffee beans from a pod, rather than something that tastes like Folgers.
“Our opportunity continues to be to take a consumable product, and the device, and make them lock together perfectly in terms of how they’re designed to work,” says Steven Jung, president and COO at Pax Labs, “and no one else is doing that.”
To develop the updated hardware, Pax’s in-house design team interviewed some of the customers behind the 7 million vaporizers it’s sold to date. They asked for a machine they could pack less full and clean more easily.
In its lab, Pax attached its own vapes to puffing machines that can measure particulate matter and THC output. The company built two new models from its research that, at a glance, look almost identical: with extruded aluminum bodies and that Pax long-standing iPod mini vibe. The retro aesthetic isn’t just a Y2K throwback; the aluminum doubles as a heatsink to keep the device operating at a precise temperature. A new satin finish and rounded edges make the metal feel softer in your hand, too.
The new models have fewer fumbly parts to juggle when packing the machine, and they no longer connect to an app for precise temperature control (a decision that seems to be made in part because Apple has blocked the company’s app, and in part because most people weren’t ever changing the temperature, anyway). Instead, the Mini has only an on/off mode, while the Plus features a larger chamber, the option to support concentrates, and lets you hold and tap the mouthpiece to change between four presets that range from low-temperature Stealth to a toasty Boost.
The team likens the more automated approach of the Mini to driving a car with an automatic transmission. Who wants to shift themselves? Instead, the Mini uses proprietary algorithms to ramp temperature up and down during a session without your realizing it. As an uptight fan of precise temperature dialing, I was skeptical of this approach, but I found the Mini to offer a silky smooth session, and from what I could tell, it did seem to operate on the lower end of the temperature spectrum (which one prominent Harvard physician recommends for your health).
You can grind your own flower and use (an aftermarket) funnel to drop it into these vapes. However, both models also support the aforementioned PAX Infused Flower pucks, which come in hand-pressed packs of eight for $40, shipped in what looks like a reusable Altoids tin. You can also drop the pucks into a bowl or roll them into a joint.
Notably, Pax isn’t charging much of a premium for the convenience. Per gram, these pucks are no more expensive than most decent bud. Plus, they’re infused, sans solvents and other questionable chemicals, for extra potency, cranking them up to a mind-numbing 32% THC. While I haven’t tried them myself, and I can’t argue with their appealing ease of use, some research does warn about negative health impacts and even addiction seen from the increasingly high levels of THC in flower. And while I’m taken by Pax’s design ingenuity, I do worry about a system that makes it too easy to take in too much THC. Yet, at the same time, I must also acknowledge that this puck of flower can actually be finished, naturally ending a session. Meanwhile, a vape cartridge offers an endless buffet of THC at any given moment.
Which is all to say, the very UX of getting high is in the midst of a rapid evolution, and Pax Labs has placed itself right in the middle of the conversation. Its new products are available now.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
