Are they worth picking up?
The Shine is a great pod device. It’s easy enough to use for someone brand new to vaping, it performs well enough to keep a long-term vaper happy and it’s affordable enough even for the most frugal vaper. It could be a little better – if it had a bigger battery or changeable coils, for instance – but if you’re looking for something to start you off on your vaping journey or something to use when you’re out of the house, it’s a fantastic choice.
Pod style e-cigarettes have come a long way since the days of the Juul and a handful of clones. As more vapers have switched over to the smaller, simpler devices and the range of nicotine salt e-liquids has increased substantially, pod devices have gotten better and better. Suorin’s Drop hit the market pretty early on in the trend, and they continued with devices like the Air, but the Shine moves back towards a pen-style, Juul-ish form while still aiming to maintain the performance the brand is known for. But have they succeeded? Is it worth the $34.99 investment? Our Suorin Shine review takes an in-depth look to find out.
What You Get
The Suorin Shine comes in a basic kit with the device, two pods (one pre-installed), a USB charging cable and a basic user manual. The device itself is in the plastic upper layer, and underneath there’s a box containing everything else. The spare pod is in a sealed package, so you know it’s brand new and ready-to-go when you open it up. There isn’t much to say here, you get enough to keep you vaping for a while, no extras but the key things you need are all there.
Suorin Shine Review – The Design
Appearance
The Shine has a more traditional look than Suorin’s other devices like the Drop and Air, with a pen shape that’s roughly reminiscent of the Juul, except with rounded faces and generally bigger. The pod connects to the top of the battery section – it just drops into place and follows the form of the battery section nicely – and there is a single button in the middle to control the device. You can pick it up in blue, red, black or white, although every version has a black border around the edges. It isn’t the most visually striking pod mod on the market, by a long way, but it looks cool and has a sort of effortless appeal.
The Pods
The pods on the Shine are kind of typical for pod devices. They have a top section for the mouthpiece that’s a little wider than the rest of the pod and a bottom section that contains the fill hole and the connection points for the main e-cig. They hold 2 ml of e-juice, and have the 1 ohm resistance printed on the bottom section. The mouthpiece has a curved shape so it fits comfortably between your lips, with a side oval-shaped opening for the vapor to come up through.
The fill hole works like it does on most pods too: there’s a silicone flap covering the hole and you pull it out and twist it off to the side to gain access. This is in line with the ease of use that’s at the center of the design of most pod-style vapes, and the battery section and pod also have magnets built-in so getting everything connected is really easy too.
LED Light
The bottom of the Shine contains an LED light that basically serves as an indicator for the battery level. When it lights up green as you vape, you have over 70% battery, blue for between 30 and 70% and red for less than 30%. It also flashes red a few times to let you know when you’ve switched it off and green for when it’s switched on, as well as some different numbers of for different errors and a few times to let you know when the battery has died. It’s a simple system but it tells you basically everything you need to know.
USB Charging Port
There’s also a micro-USB charging port on the bottom of the device. There’s not much to say about this but it doesn’t interfere with the look of the device, but it’s still easy to access when you need to charge.
Overall
The design of the Suorin Shine is basic but effective: it looks good and keeps everything simple enough that beginners won’t be put off when starting out with the device.
Suorin Shine Review – Battery Life and Charging
The Shine has a 700 mAh in-built battery. This isn’t as much as some other pod-style devices, but compared to the more basic options like the Juul it’s still pretty good. The important thing to remember with pod devices is that unlike standard vape pens (which realistically need over 1,000 mAh at least to last a full day), the demand on the battery is much lower. Even this fairly modest battery life consistently lasted me over a full day of use. In terms of juice consumption for a full charge, I got through one and a half pods of juice, so around 3 ml.
Charging is a pretty quick process, too. With the included USB cable, the battery goes from being completely dead to fully recharged in around 40 minutes. This is really good, and even without vaping during charging you don’t have to go too long without something to vape – but you can vape while charging. The indicator light system lets you know when it’s fully charged, too. The light pulses (in the appropriate color for the charge level) when it’s charging and stays solid green when it’s completed.
Suorin Shine Review – In Use
Performance
The Shine performs impressively well overall. From such a compact device, the vapor production is really quite impressive – of course you won’t get mod-like clouds, but for general vaping it’s more than enough to keep you satisfied. The flavor of your juice also comes through very clearly, definitely in line with most other tanks on the market and better than the majority of pod systems. If you’re looking for the very best in terms of flavor and vapor, it isn’t going to blow you away, but for the average vaper or smoker it’s fantastic.
One key element affecting the performance of the Shine is the two approaches to taking your puff. You can use it both manually and automatically, meaning you either press the button to vape or just inhale from the tip. This has more of a function than just working with your preference, too. When you vape using the button, you get a wattage dependent on the amount of charge left in the battery, whereas inhaling to vape gives you a constant output. From habit alone I tend to use the button, but it’s a great feature for when you’re towards the end of the battery and the output from the button method drops a little.
Overall, the Shine performs excellently. It’s a testament to how far the industry has come that even a long-term vaper like me can be perfectly satisfied by such a comparatively simple device in comparison to the dual-battery box mods I usually use.
Ease of Use
As beginner-friendly devices, ease of use is an important consideration for pod-style e-cigarettes, and the Shine does a great job here. Refilling the pod is about as simple as possible, with the silicone flap pulling out easily and twisting off to the side so you can easily fill up without it getting in the way. Although the body of the pod is dark, it’s translucent so you can see your juice level through it easily.
The fact you can’t change the coil itself does make it a little more expensive to run than some other pod systems, but at $14.99 for three pods it isn’t too bad at all. So all you have to do is physically switch out the pods, which literally just means pulling one out and dropping the other in.
The fact it works both manually and automatically also helps when it comes to ease of use. No matter how you prefer to vape, the Shine supports it. This might not seem like a huge deal but it’s common for beginners to prefer the “puff to vape” approach (because it’s like smoking) while after a while you get used to “manual” operation and pushing the button. The only little gripe I have about this is that when I vape manually I tend to inhale for a second longer than I hold the button (to minimize condensation) but on the Shine this doesn’t really work because it switches to automatic mode.
Comfort and Portability
The small size of the Shine makes it great when it comes to both comfort and portability. Like most pod systems, it’s very compact and can easily slip into a pocket without issues, which makes it great for taking with you out of the house. For comfort in-use, the pen-like form and the curved edges make it super-comfortable to hold, too. It easily fits into the palm of your hand and you can easily hold it with your thumb and a couple of fingers while you vape.
Leaking and Other Issues
While most of the time the Shine worked well without issues, there were a couple of recurring problems that it’s worth mentioning. Leaking ordinarily isn’t a problem, but on a few occasions there has been some leaking around the connection point between the tank and the battery. The other, bigger issue is that sometimes the device doesn’t seem to switch off when it should. Pressing it very quickly and easily over five times sometimes just seems to fire the device over and over. Of course this isn’t all the time and the problem goes away by itself but it’s still frustrating.
Build Quality
Suorin did a solid job with the Shine when it comes to build quality. Admittedly, it is a simple device and there isn’t too much that could go wrong, but it feels sturdy and it’s stood up to my general clumsiness pretty well. The connection for the pod is a little on the loose side, but not to the point where it will come out accidentally, and you can hold the Shine up by the pod without it coming out.