The Puffco Peak is a sleek, fairly compact, simple use, and semi-portable e-dab rig. Upon first taking it out of the box, it is easy to put together but it does need to be charged for a good two hours in order to get the most out of the battery life. The instructions are simple and the settings are easy to control and understand. That said, it only comes with four color-coded designated heat settings and there is no option for manual precision temperature control.
Temperature settings
The rig’s temperature settings are as follows:
- 450°F (blue) for small dabs
- 500°F (green) for medium-sized dabs
- 550°F (red) for larger globs
- 600°F (white) for oversized loads
Each of the settings, however, all can result in smooth, flavorful, and cloudy hits, making this rig a satisfying and pleasant overall vaping experience. We found the temp settings actually each work with different sized dabs, the lower settings just take longer to burn through a bigger dab. And you’re more likely to end up with some dab soup in the bowl that you need to burn off or clean out before loading a fresh hit. At first, we were using the high heat (white) temp setting to try and get that same feel as taking a dab off of a regular rig setup, but found it to be a bit too harsh and splashy when trying to do a strong pull. The harshness of trying to take a strong pull is likely due to the design of the bubbler, as it only holds a small amount of water for cooling and it’s compact nature really is designed for slow casual pulls. If you like the gut punch hits of your regular dab rig, you might feel a bit lackluster when hitting the peak, as it’s portable size compromises the ability to take a long hard pull. When used as directed, taking slow, even hits, the Peak does, however, produce a solid, satisfying, and cloudy hit. The unit heats up just long enough to get a good hit, but if you use sesh mode (hit the button 2 times while it’s still lit up) you can keep the temp from cooling off and pass it around or get several hits without waiting for it to reheat.
Using the Puffco Peak
The usability is simple, there is an LED light strip that runs around the base of the unit that codes for heat and battery settings. All of the power/settings are accomplished by a simple set of clicks with a single button. The unit also vibrates in different patterns to alert the user if the unit is activated and when it has reached temperature settings for use. You can choose to either load your oil before or after it has reached peak temperature. The bowl is fairly small and cannot handle a large quantity of product at once, but you can still use a good-sized dab and it will hit 2-4 times, depending on your temperature setting and lung capacity. A definite perk to this product is the heating time, which is around 20 seconds, so you can get to dabbing pretty quick with very little setup. As far as cleanup goes, it’s about the same as any other rig, just take the pieces apart and soak them in ISO or rig cleaning solution. It does need to be cleaned often to prevent buildup at the base and around the atomizer, which otherwise will gunk up fairly quickly.
As for portability, it is definitely easy to use this as a travel rig due to its handheld size and battery-operated system. It is not portable enough to stick in your pocket or sneak into public settings, but definitely great for camping (you’d need a portable USB hub), road trips, bringing to a friend’s house, or just for moving from room to room.
At a $300 price tag, it seems like this rig should come with a few more perks. The vibrating alerts only work well if you are actively holding the rig, if it’s sitting on a table while you are waiting for it to heat up with a preload, it’s easy to miss the vibrating alert and then have to load a new bowl and start over again, so it would be nice to have an audible feature that can be turned on/off. Also, an auto-off feature would be nice, as we often forget to turn it off at night since there’s no light indication if it’s still on, and the battery life never seems to last for as many as the 30 hits they claim you can get from a full charge. A visible light indicator or LED screen letting you know which settings it’s on would have been really nice as well, otherwise, the next day, you have to keep clicking it until you know you’ve cycled through the options again. The ceramic parts of the bowl and atomizer are fragile, stain quickly and break easy. Parts are also a bit pricey to replace and you can’t purchase just the carb tether or the individual parts of the atomizer, so you pay full price for the whole units.
Final words
In conclusion, we really enjoyed the Puffco Peak as a casual rig setup that is great for moving around the house and easy to use in bed. Additionally, our friends who are novice oil users or lightweights loved how easy it was to use and that they could take smaller, more controlled hits. The portability and simple use are the best features of the Peak and, even though it doesn’t hit entirely like a true dab rig, it hits well, the flavor of the oil shines through and we think it definitely has its place as a good on-hand piece to have as part of your oil use equipment.
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