Our Next Mind CT1 review takes an in-depth look at one of the latest pod mods on the scene. With an impressive battery for its size, refillable pods and ceramic coils, it looks promising, but does it deliver?
Is it worth picking up?
The Next Mind CT1 is a great device for new vapers. It’s easy to use, but boasts enough battery life to make it a viable option for serious vaping and the changeable atomizer heads mean you don’t have to replace the whole pod when the one you’re using runs out.
It performs well for such a simple device, and has loads of extra features – such as the choice between manual and automatic operation and the self-cleaning feature – that put it ahead of most of the options on the market.
The price of $39.99 is a little higher than some other options, but it’s a flexible, user-friendly device that blows most of the competition out of the water.
Full review
Pod mods are one of the newest trends in vaping, but many of the options on the market at the moment miss the mark a little. Whether it’s because of limited battery life, poor performance from the pods or just the expense of picking up new ones all the time, there are a lot of ways a pod device can go wrong. But innovations keep coming, and the Next Mind CT1 looks like a promising option for vapers who haven’t been overly taken with pod mods so far. With a substantial 650 mAh internal battery – easily twice the capacity of many pod-style devices – and open-system pods which you can refill with any e-juice you like, it could well be the ideal middle-ground between more serious long-term vaping devices and the convenience of a pod system.
It’s priced at $39.99, but is it worth it? We take a look at the device and what it can do in our Next Mind CT1 review to find out.
What You Get
The CT1 kit comes in a slim black box, with a picture of the device on the front and a contents list and the key features printed on the back. Inside, you’re greeted with a user manual, a quality control certificate and a handy quick-start guide, which covers the plastic tray containing your hardware.
Under the quick-start guide, you’ll find your device, the tank, a USB charging cable and two coils, one 1.0 ohm and one 1.2 ohm option. You can also add five extra coils to your purchase when you pick up the kit. Overall, you get everything you need apart from e-juice, and it’s a great offering all-round.
Next Mind CT1 Review – The Design
Appearance
The Nextmind CT1 has quite a unique appearance. It’s short and chunky, with an eye-shaped cross-section that’s bigger in the middle and thins out towards the edges. It has a hexagonal fire button half way up the body, just below the “Next Mind” logo and the connection point for the tank and coil. The tank/mouthpiece section sits flush with the battery section, and tapers in a little towards the tip.
From the front, the only thing that breaks up the solid black color of my jet black version is the “Next Mind” logo, although towards the bottom of the back side there is the logo, a “CE” logo, a “don’t throw in the bin” sign and some info about where it was designed and made.
Overall, the Next Mind CT1 has a pretty stylish look. It’s available in jet black and a blue they call “Dark Knight.”
The Tank and Mouthpiece Section
The mouthpiece and tank section of the CT1 is really what sets it apart from a standard vape pen. This is the “pod,” but the style and functionality really makes it something of a middle ground between a traditional tank and a pod. When you first open it up, it’s blocked off by a plastic stopper, which you twist counter-clockwise to take off. Underneath, there is a red stopper which you pull out to fill or refill the tank, and a space in the center to make room for the coil.
Filling the pod using this system is really easy. The red bung has a longer, thin part attached below to prevent you from taking it all the way out of the tank, but there’s plenty of space for you to insert the spout of an e-liquid bottle. The manual recommends that you only fill up to the “Next Mind” logo to prevent overfilling.
The upper section of the tank doubles as the mouthpiece, with a central chimney running up the tank to connect it to the coil. It’s made from a hard plastic, which is dark to match the device but clear enough that you can see your e-liquid level with ease. The mouthpiece has two inward-curved sections to make it comfortable to rest your lips on.
Overall, the tank looks great, it’s easy to understand what you have to do with it and it matches the body of the device well.
The Coils
The coils for the Next Mind CT1 are like the coils for most devices in appearance, but a little bit smaller than most coils. They use ceramic wicks, which is great for the longevity of the coil and tends to preserve flavor pretty well, even after many tanks of e-juice. The kit comes with a 1.2 ohm and a 1 ohm coil, both of which have threading around the bottom to connect up to the device. The wicking holes are quite small, but it works alongside the pod-style tank really well.
Making Connections
The Next Mind CT1 isn’t put together like most vape pens. The coils screw directly into the battery section, rather than being connected to the tank. You can easily see the spot for this at the top of the battery section, with a large circular hole in the center, surrounded by two arc-shaped holes which are used to connect up the pod.
The bottom of the pod has two protruding bits of plastic, which fit into opposite ends of the two arcs, and then you rotate the pod to lock everything in place. The top of the coil head fits snugly into the opening at the base of the pod section. Once you’ve done all this, the CT1 is ready to use.
The process might seem a bit convoluted, but when the device is in front of you it’s pretty much intuitive once you get used to the unusual layout. It’s great for new vapers in particular because it simplifies two of the main things you have to learn to do when you start vaping. Traditional pod-style vapes like the Juul or the MyBlu are even easier to use, but this offers a lot more flexibility for a very small increase in complexity.
USB Charging Port and Cable
The Next Mind CT1 has a micro USB charging port on the bottom of the device. This means you have to keep it laid down during charging, but since the e-liquid is completely contained within the pod this doesn’t cause any issues at all. The included charging cable is quite short, but has a ribbon-like, flexible cable and works really well.
Overall
The CT1’s design brings pod-like vaping into a more practical package. The coils are easily replaceable and the tank is easily refillable, and although this means it has a lot in common with traditional vape pens, the device still feels and operates like a pod system.
Next Mind CT1 Kit Review – The Battery
The 650 mAh battery on the CT1 is a big improvement on many of the pod systems on the market, which tend to be 300 to 400 mAh. This puts the CT1 at up to double the battery life you’d expect from a pod system, but is a little bigger as a result. It’s bigger than the Juul, for instance, but in practice it’s still compact, and excellent when it comes to portability.
The battery will last you through most of a day of vaping depending on your level of use. With most pod systems, the best approach is to use a higher-strength e-liquid, to both conserve battery and still get a nicotine hit comparable to a more powerful device. If you’re vaping like this, you could comfortably get through a day at work on one charge. If you vape lower-nicotine or chain vape, you’d probably need to take your charger with you.
You can’t vape while you charge, unfortunately, but the charging time is pretty quick – around an hour and a half – so this isn’t a huge deal. The blue LED on the fire button turns solid blue when it’s done charging.
Next Mind CT1 Review – In Use
Performance: 1 Ohm Coil
The 1 ohm coil on the Next Mind CT1 offers the highest-power vaping out of the two options. Overall, the performance is pretty solid. The vapor production is really impressive for a pod-style device: it might not be able to compete with mods in this area, but it’s easily up there with some of the better vape pens, and more than enough to feel satisfying after the switch from smoking.
The CT1 works in both automatic and manual mode, so you can either push the button to vape or just inhale from the tip, and both modes offer great vapor production. I found manual operation a little bit better, but that’s likely partially down to my familiarity with manual vaping.
The flavor from the coil and tank is also really good. The ceramic coil undoubtedly helps with this, but it feels like you get comparable flavor to some modern tanks. Much like with the vapor production, if you compared it to some more advanced devices on the market, it would come up a little short, but for a simple e-cig like this, the flavor is really hard to fault.
Performance: 1.2 Ohm Coil
The higher-resistance coil performs comparably to the lower-resistance one, on the whole. Although the CT1 will be operating at a slightly lower wattage, the difference in vapor production is so minor that it’s barely noticeable. You still get plenty of vapor with every puff, and it works well whether you use the button before inhaling or rely on the automatic operation. Similarly, it does just as well when it comes to flavor too. Overall this is great, although it basically means that the choice of coil doesn’t really have too much of an impact.
Ease of Use: Refilling and Changing Coils
One of the biggest selling-points of any pod-like device is how easy it is to use, and the Next Mind CT1 does really well in this department. Changing coils is about as easy as it could be on any vape pen that doesn’t use completely disposable pods. All you have to do is remove the pod from the battery section – just twist and pull up – and then you have access to the coil. You don’t need to empty your tank; you can get access to and change the coil really easily at any time. Once you’ve taken off the pod, all you need to do is unscrew the coil and replace it.
For refilling the pod, the process is similarly simple. You just need to invert the pod, remove the red stopper and add your e-juice into the hole it was plugging. Knowing the precise point to fill up to could be a little easier if there was a clear mark on the side of the pod, but the logo is easy to spot and you’ll always be roughly right if you fill up to it.
Overall, the CT1 does a great job when it comes to ease of use. Even brand new vapers won’t have a problem with the main tasks you need to perform with the device.
Self Cleaning Coils
A unique feature on the Next Mind CT1 is the “self cleaning” feature for the coils. This is a really handy feature for when you’re changing flavors or when you notice the taste from your coil deteriorating slightly. It’s really easy to put the CT1 into self-cleaning mode: simply remove the pod and press the fire/multi-function button eight times in a few seconds. The light will flash red for 30 seconds as the coil is cleaned. You repeat this process until there is no more vapor, then your coil is as good as new.
Does it Work With High-VG E-Liquid?
Many pod systems on the market require a higher-PG e-juice than vapers often use, but the CT1 works well with higher-VG e-juice too. During testing with a 70% VG e-juice, I had no issues with wicking unless I was really chain-vaping (which can cause issues with most tanks anyway). The performance does seem slightly better with thinner, higher-PG juices, but it works well in either case.
Portability and Comfort
The CT1 really stands out when it comes to the portability of the device and how comfortable it is to use. The small size makes it perfectly-suited for use out of the house, and the bigger battery than most pod systems gives it an extra edge too. Although it is a bit bigger in size as a result of this, it’s still much smaller than the majority of e-cigs on the market. It’s also really comfortable to use in practice, because it fits comfortably in your hand and the design of the mouthpiece accounts for your lip position well.
Leak-Free Design
Another big advantage of the CT1 is that the pod design makes it completely leak-free. The only time you might end up with some spillage is during or directly after refilling, but this is really only if you either miss the fill hole or overfill the pod. You’re much less likely to experience leaking with the CT1 than with a standard vape pen, and it’s even good compared to other pod systems.
Build Quality
The Next Mind CT1 is really nicely put together. It is a fairly simple device, but the connections are all snug and solid, little details like the silicone plug you remove when filling the tank do their jobs perfectly and it can stand up to little knocks and drops with no issues whatsoever.