Vaping 101

How Many Cigarettes Is 5,000 Puffs?

Hemok Wang
Hemok Wang
Oct 17, 2024
Hand holding Innobar 7000 disposable vape while showcasing puff capacity.
How Many Cigarettes Is 5,000 Puffs?
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When you look at the best disposable vapes on the market today, you’ll find that almost all of them have one thing in common: very high capacities. In regions that allow high-capacity vapes, devices like the Innokin INNOBAR 20000 are giving people the opportunity to enjoy a vaping experience that’s both convenient and economical by providing up to tens of thousands of puffs before running out of e-liquid.

When you look at a disposable vape’s advertised puff count, the number probably looks enormous to you – so enormous, in fact, that you might have difficulty equating it to cigarettes. How many cigarettes are there in a 5,000-puff vape like the Innokin INNOBAR CLK, for instance, and how long can you expect 5,000 puffs to last?

As you’re about to learn, using a disposable vape’s advertised puff count isn’t necessarily the most accurate way to guess how long the device will last because there can be significant differences in how manufacturers estimate their devices’ puff counts and in how people vape – but never fear. In this guide, we’ll give you a nearly foolproof way to equate disposable vapes to cigarettes for your personal vaping pattens. Let’s jump in.

 

How Long Does 5,000 Puffs Last?

When people first switch to vaping, one of the things that they want to do is equate the devices’ puff counts to cigarettes if they can. That’s a bit of a losing battle, though, because a disposable vape seldom delivers exactly the number of puffs stated on the box. If you could get precisely that number, the math would be easy. A cigarette delivers about 10 puffs on average, so a 5,000-puff vape would be equal to 500 cigarettes or about 25 packs.

You’re probably well aware, though, that people don’t actually use 5,000-puff vapes for nearly a month in the real world. That’s because the manufacturers typically calibrate their vapes with the expectation that each puff will be one second long. If your average puff length is two seconds, you’ll get about half of that. If your puff length is three seconds, you’ll get around a third of that.

When you shop for disposable vapes, it’s best to think of the puff counts mainly as a way to compare the capabilities of different devices. There’s a more accurate way to do that, though – but before we go into further detail about how to compare vapes to one another, let’s learn about a different way to compare vapes to cigarettes.

 

How Many Cigarettes Are in a Vape in Terms of Nicotine Content?

Another way to compare vapes to cigarettes is by looking at how much nicotine they contain. You can find out how much nicotine is in a vape by multiplying its total e-liquid content by its nicotine strength. For example, the Innokin INNOBAR V7000 has 16 ml of vape juice, and its nicotine strength is 50 mg/ml. It contains 800 mg of nicotine in total.

Next, you need to know how much nicotine is in a cigarette. The answer is that an average cigarette delivers somewhere in the range of 1.5 mg of nicotine. That leads you to a similar conclusion: There are around 500 cigarettes in a 5,000-puff vape. Once again, though, you might be left scratching your head because it’s highly unlikely that you use a 5,000-puff vape for a month. What gives?

When you try to determine how many cigarettes are in a 5,000-puff vape based on the number of puffs or the nicotine content, you’re going to come up with a number that seems too big to be real – and there are two reasons for that.

  • The nicotine delivery of a vape may not be exactly the same as that of a cigarette.
  • You may not vape in exactly the same way that you would smoke.

With those two things in mind, there is only one completely foolproof way to compare vapes to cigarettes – and that’s what we’ll discuss next.

 

How to Determine How Many Cigarettes Are in a Vape for Your Usage Patterns

If you want to determine conclusively how many cigarettes are in a vape, the only way to do that is by keeping track of how long the vape lasts and comparing that to your smoking patterns. Let’s say that you smoked a pack of cigarettes per day before switching to vaping, for instance, and you find that a 5,000-puff vape lasts five days before you need to replace it. In that case, there are 100 cigarettes in a 5,000-puff vape given your personal usage patterns.

You may not puff on a vape exactly the same number of times and for exactly the same durations every day, so it’s helpful to record how long a few devices last and get an average. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a baseline for knowing how long you can expect your vapes to last.

Now that you have that information, what should you do if you want to step up to a vape that lasts even longer? If you want to compare two vapes, looking at their puff counts may not be the most accurate way to do it. We’ll talk about that next.

 

To Compare Vapes More Accurately, Look at How Much E-Liquid They Contain

Now that you’ve learned everything that you need to know about how many cigarettes are in a vape, the next thing that you’ll want to do is compare different vapes. That way, you can identify which one is the most economical choice for you given your personal usage patterns. You’re not going to learn much by comparing vapes based on their puff counts, though, because manufacturers have different methods of determining how many puffs their devices should deliver. In other words, one manufacturer’s 5,000-puff vape may not be exactly the same as another vape purported to deliver 5,000 puffs.

So, how can you compare two different vapes to determine which one will last longer? The answer is that you need to see how much e-liquid they contain. Suppose two vapes are advertised to deliver up to 5,000 puffs, for instance – but one contains 13 ml of vape juice, and the other contains only 10 ml. In this case, you can be confident that the device with more e-liquid will most likely last longer. Assuming that it fits your requirements for price, design, portability and features, you should probably buy the vape that contains more e-liquid.

 

To Make Disposable Vapes Last Longer, Try to Recreate Your Smoking Patterns

If you learned one thing from this article, it’s probably that trying to estimate how long a disposable vape will last based on its puff count is going to leave you disappointed. Vapes rarely deliver exactly the number of puffs advertised, and it’s also likely you don’t puff on a vape in exactly the same way that you would puff on a cigarette.

So, what can you do if you want your disposable vapes to really last as long as several packs of cigarettes? The answer is that you need to vape like a smoker. Here’s how to do it.

To begin, you need to think about the number of cigarettes that you used to smoke each day before you switched to vaping. If you smoked a pack of cigarettes per day, then your goal should be to divide your daily vaping into 20 distinct sessions. You already know from reading this article that a cigarette lasts 10 puffs on average, so each session should be about 10 puffs in length. If you do that, you’ll be amazed by how much longer your vapes will last.

If you try to limit yourself to 200 puffs a day and find that your vaping experience isn’t quite satisfying enough, don’t worry about it – just puff on your vape a few extra times each session. The nicotine that you get from vaping may not absorb in the same way as the nicotine in cigarettes. It’s also important to ensure that your vaping experience is a satisfying one, so you won’t be tempted to revert to smoking.

Hemok Wang
Hemok Wang

Hey! Hemok here, a vaping enthusiast with a passion for helping people quit smoking. My uncle was diagnosed with lung cancer a few years ago after smoking for more than 40 years. I do understand that quitting smoking isn't only a physical issue but also a mental one. It's just hard to go "cold turkey". I believe that vaping is one of the best solutions to make the switch only if you do it in the right way, and that's why I am here to share :)