The 600 Puff Comeback: Why Small Vapes Win Under the Vape Tax

Here is a prediction, on the record, from a shop that sells every format of vape there is: when the UK vape tax lands on 1 October 2026, the 600 puff vape will make a comeback.

Not because it is the cheapest way to vape on a spreadsheet, because it is not. But the duty is charged on every millilitre of e-liquid, which means the price of the smallest format in the shop rises the least at the checkout. We think that changes buying habits in a way a spreadsheet does not capture. This piece lays out the maths, the honest counter-argument, and the three kits we would put money on making a comeback.

Why 600 puffs won the first time

The British vaping industry was built on 600 puffs. When disposables arrived, the 600 puff bar was the format that took smokers by the million: pocket-sized, a few pounds a time, finished in a day or two, and a different flavour every time you fancied one. Nobody chose it because it was the cheapest per puff. People chose it because it was easy, cheap per purchase, and commitment-free.

The June 2025 disposable ban ended the single-use version, and the market moved to big-capacity prefilled kits, where one refill lasts a week or more and the cost per puff is genuinely lower. The 600 puff format survived as rechargeable pod kits carrying the old names, but the big kits have continued their momentum. We think the tax could reverse that trend.

The tax that changes the maths

From 1 October 2026 the Vaping Products Duty adds 22p per millilitre to every e-liquid sold in the UK, with VAT charged on top of the duty. It applies to the liquid inside prefilled pods just the same as bottles. Because it is charged per millilitre, the impact scales with how much liquid each format carries. The bigger the pod or bottle, the bigger the cost increase.

Read that table the way a customer at the checkout will. The 600 puff pod barely moves. Everything else moves by pounds. A big refill that costs £5.99 today lands over £9. A shortfill setup that costs a tenner heads north of £40. The 600 puff kit that costs a few pounds today still costs a few pounds. Our vape tax guide has the full picture, and our vape tax calculator works out what the duty adds to exactly what you buy. And for the practical version - what to sort before 1 October and the dates that matter - our vape tax countdown is the checklist.

A piece of perspective worth holding onto - from memory rather than a spreadsheet. The original 600 puff disposables sold at £4.99 to £6.99 each. A bottle of nic salts was £4.99 almost everywhere, and plenty of vapers happily paid £19.99 or more for a shortfill.

Today a 600 puff kit costs £2.49 and its pods around £2 each, so even after the duty lands, vaping this way still costs less than it did in the disposable era. We do not pretend to love the tax, but it does not change the bigger truth: every format on this page remains far less harmful than traditional smoking and far cheaper than it too.

The honest counter-argument

We will make the case against our own prediction, because it is real. On printed puff counts, big formats stay cheaper per puff after the tax, and it is not particularly close. If you vape heavily, know your flavour, and buy on the maths, a big-capacity kit remains the rational choice, and nothing in this article changes that. Our guide to the cheapest ways to vape after the vape tax runs that value comparison format by format. Printed puff counts are approximate rather than guaranteed, every kit and every vaper is different, but the direction of the sums holds.

Here is why we think the prediction stands anyway:

1. The checkout psychology: a fiver leaving your pocket feels very different from a tenner, even when the tenner is actually better value. The tax moves big formats past the tenner threshold while leaving small ones under the fiver.
2. Commitment: a 2ml pod is done in a day or two, so you can change flavour as often as you like, while a big refill locks you into one flavour for a week or more.
3. History: the UK has already voted for exactly this trade-off once. The 600 puff era did not happen because vapers could not do arithmetic. It happened because easy and low-commitment beats optimal for a very large share of people.

The three 600 puff kits we would put money on

All three carry names people already know, all three are rechargeable pod kits rather than disposables, and all three are in stock today.

Elf Bar 600 - The Icon Reborn

The most famous name in 600 puff vaping, now a £2.49 rechargeable kit. The pods click in and out, the flavours are the ones that made the original famous, and it is the cheapest way into the format there is.

• The best-known 600 puff name in the UK
• Kit just £2.49, prefilled pods click straight in
• The same familiar Elf Bar flavours

SKE Crystal 600 Pro - The Crystal Bar Successor

The Crystal Bar was one of the biggest disposables in the country, and the 600 Pro carries its flavours into a £3.99 rechargeable kit with £3.49 prefilled pods. If your bar of choice was a Crystal, this is the format the tax era hands back to you.

• The Crystal Bar flavours in a rechargeable 600 puff kit
• Kit at £3.99, prefilled pods at £3.49
• The same smooth draw the Crystal name is known for

Lost Mary BM600 - The Pocket Classic

The smallest of the three in the hand and the one closest to the old disposable experience: one pod, swap it when it is done, nothing else to think about. £4.99 for the kit with twin-pack pods at £3.99. We compared it against its bigger sibling in our BM600 vs BM6000 guide, where we first made the comeback call this article expands on.

• The most pocket-friendly of the three
• Kit £4.99, twin-pack pods £3.99
• The closest feel to the old 600 puff disposables

The full 600 puff vapes collection has every kit and pod in the format, and if you are weighing small against big before you choose, our guide to switching from disposables walks through the whole decision.

How we made this call

This is not a spreadsheet exercise. We are one of the UK's biggest online vape shops, selling every format on this page. We watched the first 600 puff era happen order by order.

The prediction comes from three things lining up: what our own sales data tells us about how customers actually buy, what the duty does to the price of each format at the checkout, and what we know about why the small format won the first time round. We have put the call in writing in August, two months before the duty lands, precisely so it can be checked. Come back in November and see if we were right.

One thing we are not doing is telling you the big kits are suddenly bad. They are excellent, they stay cheaper per puff, and we sell a lot of them. The argument here is narrower and more interesting: the tax changes what vaping costs at the moment of purchase, and the moment of purchase is where most buying decisions actually happen.

Vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking but it is not risk-free, and it is intended for adult smokers and existing vapers. If you do not smoke, do not vape. For free support quitting smoking altogether, visit the NHS stop smoking services.