Elf Bar ELFX Refillable Pod Kit

This is the part that sets the ELFX apart from a prefilled bar or pod. The pod is empty when you get it, and you fill it from the top: lift the stopper, drip your juice in, and you are away, without prising the pod out of the device. That top-fill design is the easy, low-mess way to do it, and the pod has anti-leak tech to keep things tidy in a pocket.

Inside the pod is a QUAQ dual-mesh coil, which is Elf Bar's flavour tech doubled up. Two mesh strips share the work, so the coil runs cooler and lasts longer, and Elf Bar reckon you can put up to 100ml of liquid through a pod before the flavour starts to tire. That is a lot of refills from one pod, which keeps the running cost right down.

Because it is refillable, you pick the juice, and for a kit like this you want a 50/50 nic salt. Salts stay smooth at higher strength, which is what you want off disposables, and the 50/50 mix wicks properly through these MTL coils. The natural pairing is Elf Bar's own ELFLIQ, the bottled bar flavours, but anything in our nic salt range works: Hayati Pro, IVG Intense or MaryLiq. A 50/50 freebase like IVG 50/50 suits the lower-resistance pods too.

Filling takes seconds. Open the top stopper, drip your juice in to the 2ml line and close it. Give a fresh pod a few minutes to soak before the first vape, which avoids a dry, burnt first puff. After that, just top up when it runs low. Restock with fresh ELFX pods when a coil finally tires.

This is the ELFX trump card. The kit is £6.99, and after that you only ever buy juice and the odd pod. A 10ml bottle of nic salt is a few pounds and fills a 2ml pod five times over, so your day-to-day cost drops to pennies a fill once the kit is paid for. Set against a disposable a couple of days, the ELFX pays for itself almost immediately and then keeps saving.

The dual-mesh pod stretches it further. Elf Bar rate it at up to around 100ml of refills before the flavour fades, so one pod handles a long run of bottles before you swap it for a fresh ELFX pod. Add the rechargeable battery, and the only thing you ever throw away is a small pod now and then, never a whole device. It is the cheapest way to vape in the Elf Bar line by a distance.

A refillable asks a little more than a prefilled bar, but the snags are few and quick to sort. Most come down to a pod that has not soaked, an airflow setting, or a juice that does not suit the coil.

The choice within the Elf Bar range comes down to prefilled versus refillable. The closed ELFA is the simplest, you just click in a sealed pod, but you pay more per pod and are tied to the ELFA flavour list. The ELFX is a little more involved, you fill it yourself, but it is cheaper to run and works with any 50/50 juice, so the flavour choice is endless. If you want the lowest running cost and the most variety, the ELFX is the pick.

Against a disposable it is no contest on cost or waste: you buy the device once and then only pay for juice, where a bar gets binned every couple of days. If you want a bigger battery in the same refillable family, the ELFX Mega steps up to 2800mAh. For a compact, cheap, fill-your-own kit, though, the standard ELFX is hard to beat, and it slots in alongside refillables like the Vaporesso XROS 5.