The Quartz Lotus is the first ball vape designed to pair with the D-nail Universal heater. This heady ball vape is handmade by legendary glass artist Pukin Beagle.

Ball vapes are a recent innovation in the dry herb vape space, dating back to 2017. These vaporizers use ball-filled heaters to create massive convection power with an open, fast airflow. Ball vapes hit harder and faster than all other dry herb vaporizers.

It’s great to see D-nail dip their toes in the balls! See my History of Ball Vapes for the entire documented history. I predict the Quartz Lotus will be the start of a whole new segment of heady ball vapes. We’ll soon see similar vape heads made entirely of ruby, sic, diamondium, etc. There will be a plethora of heaters and heady ball vapes available.

Video #1 – Crossroads of Cannabis Innovation

The Quartz Lotus is more than just a new ball vape. It comes from a different realm of the cannabis community and has an entirely different path of evolution.

Torchless Heating Tech

Heady dabbers have been relying on butane torches for decades. Noise and danger aside, dab torches are still a must-have in most dabbers’ arsenals. But the future is leading away from torches because they’re dangerous and obnoxious. Plus, butane is just an expensive consumable, and one expensive consumable is enough.

Terp Sous Vide was an early torchless heater for bangers and slurpers. It’s noisy, but not as loud as a dab torch! The TSV is still popular today, but not as popular as it could be if it were quiet.

Dab Ready forever changed the e-nail experience and launched a similar stationary coil heaters market. The Dab Ready quietly keeps a standard bucket banger hot and ready. This product also brought us the very first cordless ball vape—the Terp Hammer.

D-Nail Universal Heater is a PID-powered desktop oven that will forever change the cannabis world. This heater is silent and doesn’t rely on contact like the coil-powered Dab Ready! The Universal Heater is designed to heat a variety of oddly shaped Terp Slurpers and Blenders. Its large heating cavern allows for even more cannabis creations. The $400 Universal Heater has become a mainstay on my desk and one of my favorite products. Use code TROYTIME to save $60 off the Universal Heater or 15% off anything else at D-Nail.

Quartz Lotus Review

The Quartz Lotus is a unique breed of ball vape, and at this time, no other ball vapes are designed to use the Universal Heater. Until that changes, the $450 unfilled ball vape is the king of its category by default. I bet there will be more contenders by the end of the year, though!

Ball Size & Media Fill

The Quartz Lotus can be filled with various balls or other media. The fill creates a thermal mesh network of high-surface-area heat-exchanging air channels. The balls get hot, and they rapidly heat air that’s pulled through them, creating saturated and thoroughly diffused convection heat.

Larger balls hold more heat but offer less surface area overall. Smaller balls have more surface area to exchange heat but add draw restriction.

3mm and 4mm Ruby Balls are the Best

This is no surprise. Ruby balls of 3mm or 4mm diameter are the sweet spot of high performance and low draw restriction. Vape hackers in the dry herb vape space have been experimenting with ball sizes and materials for several years and have this part figured out.

I filled the Quartz Lotus with a mix of 3—and 4-mm ruby spheres. The airflow was great, and it performed adequately. I think all 3mm would be perfect, but I haven’t experimented with all 3mm yet.

Video #2 – 2.5mm Gem Cut Ruby / Screwball Media Swap

Ball vapes have evolved since their inception in 2017. The current top-performing ball vape uses gem-cut rubies instead of balls. These tiny gems have massive surface areas and are tightly packed together for maximum thermal transfer. I took the gem-cut rubies from my Screwball vaporizer and tested them in the Quartz Lotus.

Verdict: The gem-cut ruby made the Quartz Lotuz perform with massive convection power, but the draw restriction was tighter than I prefer. 3mm ruby provides the best balance between performance and airflow.

The Screwball vaporizer has a larger airpath, which allows it to feel open-flowing without getting choked up by tiny gems like the Quartz Lotus. The bubble-cap design of the Quartz Lotus creates a bottle-neck area that may not work well with smaller media.

Quartz Lotus vs Other Ball Vapes

The Quartz Lotus offers no performance or flavor advantages over other ball vapes. The vapes on my Best Ball Vapes page are better, cheaper, and more durable than the Quartz Lotus. Most corded ball vapes will outperform the Quartz Lotus.

The only advantage of the Quartz Lotus is its compatibility with the Universal Heater. No other ball vape will work with the Universal Heater.

Traditional “Coiled” and modern “Cordless” ball vapes heat up faster than the Quartz Lotus, and they recover heat much more quickly between hits. The Quartz Lotus doesn’t physically contact the heater; it relies on radiant heat. Other ball vapes directly contact the heating coil and heat up very fast.

Coiled ball vapes have continuous heating power and begin recovering at the start of the hit as soon as the coil senses the temperature drop. The Quartz Lotus won’t recover until it’s returned to the Universal Heater.

The performance difference is very minor. The Quartz Lotus retains enough heat to serve three or four good hits without returning to its heater. Each hit will be less potent than the last, but it will have plenty of power to create vapor.

If you’re not rocking the Universal Heater, I recommend getting a different ball vape. My favorites are the Screwball and the Zenleaf. $450 is not a good value – it’s an early adopter tax.

Save $50 with code TROYTIME

The ONLY Ball Vape for the Universal Heater… for now

History repeats itself, and we’ve all seen this episode before. The Universal Heater and the Quartz Lotus are the first of their kind but will not be the last. These advances in weed consumption technology aren’t new innovations; they’re just new uses of already existing technology. We’ll see many copies and clones of the Quartz Lotus and the Universal Heater.