Vaporesso XROS 6 Review: Bigger Battery, Same Brilliant XROS

I have been vaping XROS kits since the very first one, so I had a fair idea what the XROS 6 would be before the box was even open. What I did not expect was how much of the upgrade would come down to one number: 1800mAh. Here is what a long time XROS user makes of Vaporesso's latest, after living with it properly.

A Long Time XROS User Reviews the XROS 6

Let me put my bias on the table before we start. I have been using XROS devices for years, all the way back to the original. It is pronounced "cross", by the way, which nobody guesses from the spelling. The XROS series is my go-to kit and has been for a long time, so I am not coming at the XROS 6 as a neutral party. I am coming at it as someone who has already decided he likes the family and wants to know whether the newest one earns its place.

One thing I should be straight about: this review is late, and that is not our doing. Vaporesso normally send us review samples ahead of launch so we can have a review ready on day one. For whatever reason they left us out this round, so we had to wait until our own stock landed before I could get my hands on one. The one silver lining is that I got to choose the colour myself this time, and I went for the Silk Green. I have absolutely no regrets about that.

This is going to be a thorough one, so settle in.

Design and Appearance

The XROS 6 is a slim, pen-shaped pod kit measuring 122mm x 24.5mm x 14.5mm and weighing around 71.5g. If you have held an XROS 5, that will sound familiar, because it is very nearly the same device to look at. Stand the two side by side and you have to look twice to tell them apart. Vaporesso have clearly decided the shape is finished, and honestly, they are not wrong.

What I will happily gush about is the colour. The Silk Green finish is genuinely stunning. There is a fine brushed texture running down the body that catches the light, a subtle pinstripe detail, and the green shifts from a pale sage at the top to a deep forest at the base. If you care at all about how your vape looks, this is the one to get. We are VapeGreen, so reviewing the green one was never really in question, but I would have picked it anyway.

Build quality is what you expect from this series. It feels solid and dense in the hand without being heavy, the finish does not mark easily, and nothing creaks. I have dropped mine more than once during the test period, as I do with every device I own, and there is not a crack or a chip on it.

Here is a proper look around the device, including the airflow slider on the side, the fire button and the USB-C port on the base.

Interface and Features

The Display Screen

The XROS 6 carries a 0.88 inch TFT colour screen, and it is the same excellent screen the XROS 5 had. It shows you battery percentage, the current mode or wattage, your puff count and the resistance of the pod you have fitted. A percentage beats a green-amber-red LED every single time, because there is no guessing how much of the day you have left.

Button Commands

All the XROS click patterns carry over, so if you are coming from a previous model you already know them:

• Two clicks: open the settings menu
• Three clicks: cycle the power mode
• Four clicks: lock the fire button
• Five clicks: turn the device on or off

One thing worth clarifying, because it catches people out: four clicks locks the fire button only. Inhale activation still works perfectly well with the button locked. That is exactly what you want. Click it four times before it goes in your pocket and it cannot fire against your keys, but you can still pull on it without unlocking anything. I genuinely do not see why you would ever need the five click power off.

Eco, Normal and Power Modes

Rather than making you fiddle with wattage, the XROS 6 gives you three modes: Eco for the longest battery life, Normal for balanced everyday vaping, and Power for maximum output. It is a smart bit of design. Vaporesso have been at this long enough to know that most people do not want to think in watts, they want the vape to be a bit softer or a bit stronger, and three clearly named modes deliver that.

The 0.4Ω Wattage Catch

Now for my one real gripe, and it is inherited straight from the XROS 5. Adjustable wattage is only unlocked when you fit a 0.4Ω pod. Every other resistance, including the 0.6Ω and 0.8Ω pods that actually come in the box, is locked to those three modes with no fine control at all.

Here is why that bothers me. The 0.4Ω is my favourite pod in the whole range. I am a heavy vaper, and for me the 0.4Ω gives noticeably more flavour and a warmer vape, particularly around 24 to 25 watts. It is the pod I run in all my XROS 5 kits. And it is not in the box.

So the kit ships with two pods that cannot use the wattage control, and the one pod that can is a separate purchase. I can see the logic, in that Vaporesso probably want the out-of-box experience to be as simple as possible. But I would love to see them split it: let the Mini ship with a 0.6Ω or 0.8Ω, and give the full size kit the 0.4Ω with its wattage control unlocked, because it is the more advanced pod on the more advanced kit. To be crystal clear though, the 0.6Ω is an excellent pod and the 0.8Ω is very good too. This is a heavy vaper's complaint, not a dealbreaker.

60 Second Smart Prime

This is the genuinely new feature, and it is my favourite thing about the XROS 6. Double tap the fire button to open the menu, click through to Prime Coil (the menu loops around, so if you overshoot just keep going and it comes back), hold the fire button to start it, and the device runs a 60 second countdown that gently saturates a fresh coil for you.

It is a lovely idea. Priming a new pod properly is the single thing new vapers get wrong most often, and getting it wrong means a burnt first hit. Having the device just handle it, with a visible countdown so you know exactly when it is ready, is a proper quality of life improvement. You can watch the whole sequence in my video below.

Battery Life and Performance

If you take one thing from this review, take this one: the battery is the upgrade. The XROS 6 packs an 1800mAh cell against the XROS 5's 1500mAh. That is a 20% jump, and it is the single most convincing reason to move up from the 5.

In practice, that extra 300mAh is the difference between glancing at the battery icon and not thinking about it at all. As a genuinely heavy vaper I was getting through an XROS 5 in a day. The XROS 6 comfortably stretches past that, and if you sit in Eco or Normal rather than living in Power mode you will get considerably longer again. For anyone whose main frustration with their current pod kit is reaching for the charger every evening, this is the fix.

On charging, let me be precise, because there is a lot of loose talk about this online. The XROS 6 charges over USB-C at 3A, and Vaporesso quote roughly 50% in ten minutes. The XROS 5 was also a 3A device, quoted at 80% in twenty minutes, so this is not a leap from slow charging to fast charging. What the XROS 6 adds is a 9V/2A charging profile alongside the 5V/3A one, so it does pull charge in faster in that first stretch. Set against that, it has 300mAh more to fill, so a full charge from flat lands in much the same place, somewhere around three quarters of an hour.

The honest summary is that the XROS 5 already charged quickly and the XROS 6 still charges quickly. I run mine off a fast charger with a 100W rated cable, which is complete overkill for a pod kit, and a ten minute top up genuinely does get you back into the day.

Pods

The XROS 6 ships with the new COREX 3.0 pods. I will be honest and say they are not a dramatic upgrade over the COREX 2.0 pods, but they were very good already, so that is not much of a criticism. Flavour is clean, they last a long time, and the mesh does its job.

What I do love is the design detail. The fill port is a distinct red, which makes it immediately obvious where the e-liquid goes. That sounds trivial until you have tried to refill a pod in a dim pub and stabbed at the wrong hole. More importantly, the pod is clear, so you can see your e-liquid level at all times.

That last point matters more than people give it credit for. Anyone who has vaped refillables knows the horror of taking a big pull on an empty tank and getting a dry, burnt hit. Being able to glance at the pod and see exactly where you are stops that happening. It is the one place where I think the XROS design beats the Uwell Caliburn G5, which is an excellent device in almost every other respect but hides its pod away inside the body.

The pods are backwards compatible with the whole XROS range, from 0.4Ω up to 1.2Ω, so if you are coming from an older XROS your spares will still fit.

Let Us Settle This: XROS Pods Do Not Leak

We get an email about this once or twice a month, so I want to address it properly.

First, a clarification. The device does not leak. It cannot leak. There is no e-liquid inside the device, only inside the pod, so whatever is happening is happening at the pod. The device contributes nothing to it.

Second, in years of daily XROS use, a properly sealed pod has never leaked on me. Not once. When a pod does leak, in my experience it is always one of three things:

• The top cap was not seated properly. This is by far the most common cause, and it happens to everyone eventually, myself included.
• The top cap was knocked loose. In a pocket or a handbag the mouthpiece can get nudged off just enough to break the vacuum inside the pod. Once that vacuum is gone, the e-liquid will trickle down.
• The top cap is cracked. Drop the device or knock it hard and you can crack the cap. The COREX 3.0 caps are supposed to be more resistant to this, and I can back that up, because I have dropped mine repeatedly and not split one yet.

So here is how to seal it properly. Snap the mouthpiece cap off by pushing it forward rather than trying to pull it straight up. Fill through the port. Then press the cap back down from the top until you hear it click, and take two seconds to look around all four corners and check it is flush. If it is even slightly misaligned, that is when you get e-liquid in the pod chamber. Sealed properly, it is bulletproof.

One more thing while we are here. If your pods seem to die quickly, the usual culprit is a very sweet e-liquid. Heavy sweeteners caramelise on the coil and shorten its life. That is true of every mesh pod on the market, not just these.

You can see the whole refill routine, cap off to cap on, in the video below.

If you want the 0.4Ω pod I keep going on about, along with any of the other resistances, they come in packs of four:

Vaping the XROS 6

Day to day, this thing is a pleasure. Both inhale activation and the fire button work flawlessly, and having the choice matters to me. I do actually use the fire button now and then, and that alone might be a reason to pick the XROS 6 over something like the Caliburn G5, which has dropped manual firing entirely.

On airflow, I want to be careful here, because I might be imagining it. The airflow slider looks identical to the one on the XROS 5. But it feels very slightly smoother to me. Just a tad. Vaporesso are calling it the VENTURI Airflow System, so there is presumably something behind it, but I would not upgrade for this alone and I am not going to pretend it is night and day.

Flavour is where the XROS series has always delivered and the XROS 6 is no different. The 0.6Ω pod in the box gives you a warm, satisfying restricted lung draw with plenty of flavour, and the 0.8Ω tightens things up nicely if you prefer mouth to lung. Run it in Normal mode for everyday use and Power when you want a bit more from it.

I have been testing it with a Dojoliq Black Cherry Raspberry nic salt, and I really enjoyed it. Dark, jammy cherry on the inhale with a tart raspberry lift on the exhale, and no cloying sweetness. Worth keeping an eye out for, because Vaporesso are expanding the Dojoliq line with ten new flavours which should land with us before long.

In the meantime, these are the Dojoliq flavours our customers are buying the most of, and all three pair beautifully with the XROS 6:

The XROS 6 takes any 50/50 e-liquid, so the whole nic salt and 50/50 freebase range is open to you. Do not put a high VG shortfill in it, though. That will leak and it will kill your coil.

XROS 6 vs XROS 5: Should You Upgrade?

This is the question I have been asked most since we got stock in, so let me answer it plainly. If you already own an XROS 5, this is not a transformative upgrade. The two look almost identical, the screen is the same, the modes are the same and the pods are only marginally improved.

But there is one reason that stands on its own, and it is the battery. Going from 1500mAh to 1800mAh is a real, felt difference in daily use. If you are a heavy vaper who finds themselves charging an XROS 5 every evening, that extra 20% is exactly the upgrade you want, and it is the reason I have moved over to the 6 as my daily kit.

After that, the 60 second Smart Prime is a genuinely useful addition, and the airflow may be a shade smoother. Those are nice-to-haves. The battery is the reason.

If you are on an XROS 4 or older, or coming from a disposable, then it is not even a conversation. Get the 6.

Still weighing it up? You can read my full Vaporesso XROS 5 and XROS 5 Mini review for the detail on the previous generation.

Who Should Get the XROS 6?

Anyone coming off disposables. It is draw activated out of the box, the pods are pre-installed, the screen tells you everything and the Smart Prime handles the one step beginners get wrong. This is about as gentle a landing into refillables as you will find.

XROS 5 owners who charge every night. The 1800mAh battery is the whole pitch and it delivers.

Heavy vapers. Bigger battery, 30W on tap, and the 0.4Ω pod available separately for full wattage control. Just budget for that pod pack.

Anyone who wants a fire button. A lot of the competition has quietly dropped manual firing. If you want the choice, the XROS 6 gives it to you, and you can lock it with four clicks when it goes in your pocket.

Anyone who wants to see their e-liquid. The clear pod is a small thing that saves you from burnt hits, and not every kit at this price gives you it.

Accessibility

We include accessibility notes in all of our hardware reviews, because a very large number of the people picking up a vape for the first time are adult smokers trying to quit, and not all of them find fiddly hardware easy.

For visually impaired users: the screen is bright, high contrast and large enough to read at a glance, and the battery is a plain percentage rather than a colour code you have to interpret. The red fill port is a genuine help for finding the right hole. The fire button is a large raised oval that is easy to locate by touch alone, and inhale activation means you never have to find it if you would rather not.

For users with dexterity issues: this is where I would flag some caution. The pod top cap needs a firm push forward to release and a deliberate press to reseat, and getting that seal right does take a bit of finger strength and precision. If grip or fine motor control is a problem for you, refilling may be fiddly. The magnetic pod itself drops in and out easily, and the click patterns are all single button presses, which helps.

Overall: good for visually impaired users, moderate for those with dexterity difficulties, mostly down to the refill step.

Pros & Cons

Summary

The Vaporesso XROS 6 is an excellent pod kit. It is sleek, it is powerful, the battery life is superb, the pods are solid and it manages to be genuinely easy to use while still being a properly capable bit of kit. It has every safety feature you would want, it looks fantastic in Silk Green, and it has been my daily driver since the day it arrived.

My one real criticism stands: I wish the 0.4Ω pod came in the box, because it is the best pod in the range and the only one that unlocks wattage control. That feels like a miss on a kit at this level, even if I understand why Vaporesso chose simplicity.

And if you are on an XROS 5 wondering whether to bother, the answer is the battery. 1800mAh against 1500mAh does not sound dramatic written down, but it is the difference between watching the charge and forgetting about it. That alone moved me over.

Vaporesso are having a very good run at the moment. The Dojoliq range, the Dojo Blast kits, and now this. The XROS series is something they should be proud of, and the XROS 6 is a worthy addition to it. I really can't recommend it enough.

If you have any questions about the XROS 6 or which pod resistance would suit you, our customer service team know these kits inside out and are always happy to help.

Happy vaping!