Vista Vapors Cloud Series E-Liquid Review
Vista Vapors is an e-liquid company from Minnesota that strives to offer vapers the most affordable e-juice in America. Apart from a very impressive line of basic e-liquids, Vista Vapors also offers a few premium lines of Max VG e-liquid at a very competitive price. Quite frankly, they are indeed selling the cheapest premium e-liquid I have ever seen, so I was more than a bit curious to see how it compares to other more expensive brands.
For this review, I was sent the Vista Vapors Cloud Series, one of the four different Vista Select premium e-liquid lines offered by this company. It currently consists of five flavors named after different types of clouds: Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, Altostratus and Nimbostratus. They come in 30 ml bottles exclusively, but are available in five nicotine strengths, from 0 mg/ml to 18 mg/ml. Since they had to ship the e-liquid to me overseas, to avoid any kind of trouble at customs, they sent me the nicotine-free line, so I won’t be able to talk about the throat hit on this one.
The labeling is decent from an artistic point of view, featuring an interesting octopus drawing that, for some reason, reminds me of Cthulhu, but I wish they put more work into the technical aspect. There are no ingredients listed on the bottle, no pictograms, and the only warnings are “Must be 18 years of age or older”, “Keep out of reach of children” and “Do not swallow”. Pretty basic stuff, this day and age, when we’re getting ready for FDA regulations to drop, so I definitely recommend Vista Vapors put a bit more work into their labeling.
As I mentioned, the Clous Series, like all the others Vista Vapors premium lines, is Max VG, so considerably thicker than your run of the mill e-juice. For this reason, it should only be used with rebuildable dripping atomizers (RDA) or advanced tanks like the SMOK TFV4, to make sure the wicking material is properly saturated during vaping.
The one thing that caught my attention before getting a chance to vape this line, was the color – or lack thereof – of the five flavors. Four of them are completely clear, which I thought was a little strange, while the fifth has an amber color. The upside to this lack of coloring is that the coils and cotton last a lot longer than other Max VG liquids I have tried in the past.
But enough of this fluff, let’s check out the flavors:
Cirrus is described by Vista Vapors as “a blend of berries with a cool menthol finish”, which is pretty accurate, in my opinion. The only problem is I couldn’t actually identify the berries in this “mix” if my life depended on it. It just tasted like your average berries juice mixed with the right amount of menthol. Cirrus is not a bad combination by any means, but it’s also not an e-liquid I would place the “premium” label on either. It reminds me a lot of Liqua, a decent line I used to vape some years ago, before premium e-liquids became a thing.
I do want to point out a recurring theme in this Cloud Series – the use of phrases like “fruity blend”, “fruity, elegant mix” and “fruit mixture” to describe the flavors, instead of clearly naming the actual flavors. To be honest, after trying out all the flavors, I can see why they went for this sort of description, as most of them taste very generic, as in fruity, perfumy, without actually bringing out any particular flavor.
Stratus is supposed to be an “elegant mix of berries and bananas”. Yes it most certainly is a mix of berries, as a matter of fact it’s the same as teh one sued for the Cirrus only instead of menthol they added a bit of banana flavor. Again, the flavor profile described by the company is on the money. Stratus tastes like a generic berry cocktail with a discrete banana flavor making it’s presence felt mostly on the inhale. The combination is decent for a fruity vape, but it doesn’t have that edge most premium e-liquids have, that special something that separates them from the basic stuff.
Nimbostratus has a more specific flavor profile than most other Vista Vapors Cloud Series e-liquids – it should taste like melon with a cotton candy finish. The melon flavor is pretty good in this one, but I didn’t really get any of that cotton candy. I guess you can call it a slightly sweetened melon flavor, but saying Nimbostratus tastes like cotton candy is a bit much. I can’t hold the wording against them though, as they are definitely not the only company who sugar-coat the description of their e-liquid to make them sound more enticing. I will say that Nimbostratus is a tasty melon flavor, but that’s about it. There is nothing complex about it.
Cumulus is described by Vista Vapors as a mix of tropical fruit with a smooth berry finish, but all I can think of after vaping it is how much it tastes like a pina colada. I am actually surprised the popular cocktail is not even mentioned in the description because that’s what Cumulus tastes like to me. You only need to take a whiff of the bottle to discover the pineapple, and actually vaping it really brings out the coconut. My senses didn’t pick up any rum, so you might say this is a non-alcoholic pina colada, but it is a pina colada nonetheless.
This one actually is a nice combination of pineapple and coconut – no sign of berries – but it does have a slight artificial taste to it. It doesn’t make the juice un-vapable, but I wish it wasn’t there at all.
Altostratus is the only Cloud Series e-liquid that actually has a bit of color to it, although that doesn’t help the flavor very much. This one is supposed to be a “smooth, subtle fruity blend [that] gives you a fruity candy burst with a mild sour candy finish”. Very vague, but I was able to identify some watermelon, some of that berry mix and a strange undertone (candy, maybe) that I really didn’t like because it left my mouth tasting of perfume or soap (take your pick).
I’m sorry to say that Altostratus was my least favorite of all Cloud Series flavors and I just couldn’t recommend you give it a try.
I really wanted to like this Cloud Series line, if only because the guys at Vista Vapors went through the trouble of shipping it halfway across the world, so I wanted to make it up to them. But this juice just wasn’t what I expected. Maybe I just had my hopes up to high, or maybe it was the fact that I switched to it from the stellar Cloud Company line by Suicide Bunny, of which I will be doing a review soon, but you could say I was ultimately a bit disappointed.
It’s important to keep things in perspective though, so I will mention that a 30 ml bottle of Cloud Series by Vista Vapors costs just $11.99, whereas most other premium e-liquids cost at least $10 more. So, for the price, it’s a pretty decent collection of flavors, especially if you’re into fruity combinations, but it’s just not up to my standards as a premium e-juice. Basically, you get what you pay for with this e-liquid line.
For reference, I vaped the Vista Select Cloud Series in my Nixon and Plum Veil RDAs (dual coil, 0.30Ω atomizer resistance) on the new SMOK R200 mod, at around 65 watts.
