Vape Starter Guide: How to Switch From Smoking

Thinking about switching from cigarettes to vaping? Good move — according to the NHS, vaping is one of the most effective ways to quit smoking for good. This guide walks you through everything you need to make the switch confidently.

Step 1: Pick the Right Kit

For ex-smokers, a pod kit or mouth-to-lung (MTL) starter kit is almost always the best place to start. They’re small, simple, and give you the same tight draw you’re used to from a cigarette. Avoid big sub-ohm “cloud” kits at first — they take a different inhale technique and can feel overwhelming.

Step 2: Choose Your Nicotine Strength

Match your nicotine strength to how much you currently smoke:

• Light smoker (under 10/day): 3mg or 6mg freebase, or 10mg nic-salt.
• Average smoker (10–20/day): 12mg freebase, or 10–20mg nic-salt.
• Heavy smoker (20+/day): 18mg freebase, or 20mg nic-salt.
• Already off cigarettes: 0mg or 3mg, then taper down.

Not sure? Start a notch higher — underdosing is the number one reason new vapers go back to smoking.

Step 3: Pick a Flavour You’ll Actually Enjoy

Lots of new vapers reach for tobacco flavours, expecting them to taste like cigarettes. They don’t — and most people end up preferring fruit, menthol or dessert flavours within a week. Buy two or three different 10ml bottles to find your go-to.

Step 4: Get the Inhale Right

Most starter kits use a mouth-to-lung draw — pull the vapour into your mouth first, then breathe it into your lungs, just like a cigarette. Direct-lung (DL) kits are different: one straight, deep inhale, like sucking through a straw on a smoothie. Read our MTL vs DL guide if you’re not sure which suits you.

Step 5: Look After Your Kit

• Prime new coils with a few drops of e-liquid before first use, then leave to soak for five minutes.
• Top up before you hit empty — dry hits ruin coils fast.
• Charge your battery from a quality plug, not a fast-charge phone charger.
• See our five tricks to make coils last longer.

Common Beginner Questions

Is vaping cheaper than smoking?

Yes — typically by a factor of five to ten. A 10ml bottle of e-liquid (£2.50–£5) lasts most vapers as long as 100–200 cigarettes.

How long do coils last?

Anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks depending on the kit, the e-liquid, and how often you vape. You’ll know it’s time to change when the flavour drops off or it tastes burnt.

What’s a shortfill?

A larger bottle of 0mg e-liquid with space left at the top to add nicotine shots. Cheaper per ml than 10ml bottles. Full explainer here.

Still Stuck? We’re Here to Help

Send us a message on Facebook any time between 12pm and 7pm, six days a week. We’ve helped thousands of people make the switch — and we’re happy to point you to the right kit for your situation, no upselling.

Your taste buds are coming back — and that’s a good thing

Smoking turns the volume down on your sense of taste and smell. Most smokers don’t realise how much until they stop — and then it comes back, faster than people expect. Within a month you’ll notice flavours getting brighter, food tasting more like it used to, your morning coffee suddenly being a thing again. By three months in, most people are close to where they were before they ever lit one up.

What this means in practice: if you start on a bold tobacco like our British Tobacco because lighter flavours feel too weak, don’t be surprised if a month or two in it starts feeling almost too strong. That’s not the e-liquid changing — that’s you getting better. It’s a good sign. Most long-term vapers naturally drift down to something softer like RY4 or Virginia over the first year, and when they do, the new flavour feels every bit as satisfying as British did on day one.

Why you might cough at first — and why the vape isn’t to blame

Some people cough a bit when they first start vaping. It’s easy to blame the vape — but it often isn’t. What’s actually happening is that your lungs have just noticed they’re full of years’ worth of tar and gunk, and they’ve decided to do something about it. Tiny hairs called cilia line the airways and sweep debris out. Smoking paralyses them. When you stop, they wake back up and get to work — and coughing is how the work gets done. If you’d quit smoking without picking up a vape at all, you’d still cough. The vape just happens to be in your hand when it starts.

It usually settles within a week or two. If it hangs around longer, try a lower nicotine strength, a smoother e-liquid, or check you’re not pulling harder on the vape than you need to — a gentle, slower draw is plenty.

A note for COPD sufferers

If you’ve got COPD, switching feels harder than it should at first — and then, oddly, the quit rate among COPD sufferers turns out to be one of the best we see. Here’s what’s going on. COPD-damaged lungs are deeply suspicious of anything new. They’ve spent years learning to tolerate cigarettes, so cigarettes feel fine to them and anything else triggers a reaction. The job, then, is simple in theory: get your lungs to trust vaping instead. Once they do, the relationship flips. Cigarettes start making you cough. Vaping doesn’t. At that point the switch tends to stick on its own.

A few things that genuinely help. Start on nic salts rather than freebase — the throat hit is much smoother. Drop to a lower nicotine strength than you think you need; you can always bump it back up. And, oddly, a small amount of menthol in the mix seems to speed things up. We don’t fully understand why — something about menthol appears to help the lungs accept vaping faster than they otherwise would. Once they have, your lungs and your old cigarettes are unlikely to be on speaking terms again.