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The year is 2007 and Shenzhen, China-based company, Kangertech, is starting to produce vape hardware to the masses. Starting out, Kanger produced a few run of the mill products such as the T2 clearomizers and an Ego battery clone called the Evod, but it wasn't until 2013 when they hit the world with their first groundbreaking product - The Protank. Back in the day, many of the tanks on the market had plastic tank sections, which resulted in cracked tanks if you vaped certain juices, generally cinnamon (or citrus) flavours. This new Protank, however, featured a glass tank section that was sandwiched between stainless steel. The Protank dominated the market for clearomizers and eventually lead up to the release of the protank 2 and 3 which were some design improvements. The Protank was doing great up until 2014 when it met its main match - The original Aspire Nautilus. As soon as Aspire released the Nautilus, it essentially leapfrogged over Kangertech and took the top spot for tanks.
It had an easier fill port, bigger capacity, and overall better performance. Kangertech and Aspire kept playing this cat and mouse game with new releases such as the aero tank, and the nautilus mini.
Fast forward a few months and aspire hits the industry with something big - The worlds first sub-ohm tank: the Aspire Atlantis. Aaaand it didn’t do too well at launch because the coils had some questionable materials that were used to wick it. Kangertech took a step back and saw all of the flaws in the Atlantis and improved on it, making probably one of, if not the, most popular sub ohm tank to hit the market, the appropriately named: Subtank. The Subtank was an incredible success thanks to its flavourful coils, and RBA base right out of the box if you wanted to build your own coils. You were able to get RDA-esc clouds out of a tank. It was unheard of at the time. Kanger was dominating the tank market, but they didn’t want to stop there. Kanger then started experimenting with mods and created the first K-box, which didn't really do too well. Many people preferred the much more advanced eLeaf iStick for its digital display and wattage controls. Kanger saw that and produced, yet, another product that took the industry by storm The Kangertech Subox.
The Subox was a kit that you can buy that included a Subtank mini, which was essentially a new and improved subtank, and a 50W box mod powered with a 18650 and had a screen. Consumers of all experience levels were now able to get an easy-to-use kit that gave them, at the time, plumes of vapour. When the Subox hit the market, it sold very, very well. We actually had trouble keeping them in stock. It was now Aspire’s turn to play catch-up. They had releases such as the Odyssey kit that came with a revised version of the Atlantis called the Triton, but it still didn't get anywhere near the sales of the Subox.
Kanger eventually revised the Subtank giving it top fill and renamed it the Toptank, which also brought out an improved mod that got a boost up to 75W and had temperature control features. This new and improved kit was dubbed the Topbox. The topbox was equally as popular as the subox and there were raved reviews all over the internet.
Kangertech was then hit with tons of different competition that improved on the original topbox design and the topbox very quickly felt long in the tooth. Kangertech decided to try and change the game again by taking the ideology of the topbox and merging it into one, single product. The Nebox was introduced in 2016 and did great at first.. Until all the leaking issues happened. The Nebox fell short of being successful because no matter you did, it would leak everywhere. It was time for kangertech to go back to the drawing board and try to develop something that would hit the market the same way the original subtank did, but unfortunately, due to how saturated the market became, it was almost an impossible challenge for them. They had some sub-par releases such as the dripbox and dripbox 2, which were squonkers before the squonking craze hit the market, but they really didn’t go anywhere. With companies like Smok creating new and exciting products to which seemed like every other week, kangertech didn’t just have one company to catch up with now, but instead an entire industry. Since then, they have been putting out some new products, but it seems like they just get lost in the crowd. With that being said, however, kangertech catapulted the industry into what vaping is today. If it wasn't for the success of the subtank and subox, vaping could very well be extremely different to what we know it as now.
So, that’s essentially a brief history lesson on Kangertech. What are your thoughts? Leave a comment.
