ICEWAVE X8500 Disposable Review: The Perfect Beginner Device

Design & Build Quality

The ICEWAVE X8500 is a colorful device that, if you ask me,  is just brimming with style. It’s probably not the best choice if you’re not looking for a conversation starter, but there’s definitely a lot to talk about regarding the design.

Each flavor comes in its own specific color and also features its own unique design panel. While all of the ICEWAVE X8500’s have a menacing set of eyes on the panel, each one is adorned by a different graffiti-style letter. 

At first, I thought that the letter was related to the flavor because ‘Max Berry’ had a ‘B’. However, many of the other flavors have nothing to do with the letter. For example, Pineapple Ice features a ‘J’ and Rainbow Sweets features a ‘Q’.

The letters don’t make too much sense to me, but maybe there’s a hidden message among all of the letters. Another equally puzzling design feature is the eyes on each one and the animal that they belong to. The image is mostly obscured by the graffiti letter, but it appears to be a tiger.

Enough with the mysteries though—let’s get back to what I do know. The body of each device is made up of two pieces. The top two-thirds is where you’ll find the decorative panel with the letter and eyes. You’ll also find the flavor of the device and “ICEWAVE” on this panel. This top portion of the case features a clear plastic shell that extends up to the mouthpiece. The lower third of the case is made of thin plastic that is painted with a metallic paint.

This lower section is also where you’ll find the display, which shows your battery life percentage and a droplet icon to indicate your remaining ejuice. The display is not all that bright, but easily visible nonetheless. 

There’s a decorative box printed around the display and, on some of my devices, this has started to wear away.

Overall dimensions for the X8500 are 101mm tall, 39mm wide, and 25mm thick. It’s a portable size for a disposable and not too large or bulky. It weighs somewhere around 72g when full, so it’s not too heavy either.

On the bottom of each device is where you will find the USB-C charging port.

Features

The ICEWAVE X8500, as the name suggests, offers up to 8500 puffs per device. In order to each this number, you’re going to have to recharge it a few times using the USB-C port on the bottom of the device.

The 600mAh battery does well to get me through a day of heavy vaping but by the end of the day it’s usually in need of a charge. If you’re a heavy vaper then your results will be similar—expect to charge it at the end of each day.

The display on the X8500 shows your real-time battery life as a percentage to give you a clear idea of where you’re at. As you vape, you’ll notice the battery getting lower and lower until finally it’s at 0% and it’s time to charge.

Next to the battery life percentage is a droplet icon. This droplet has four sections: two green top sections, a blue middle section, and a red lower section. Each section corresponds to the amount of ejuice remaining in the device, representing about a quarter of ejuice per section.

In my experience, a full discharge of the battery will use about a quarter of the ejuice (one section). With that being said, you can expect to get 4-5 full discharge and charge cycles out of each X8500.

There’s a 1.0Ω coil inside of each device which does the important work of vaporizing the 50mg/ml ejuice inside. This is a good coil resistance for a high-nicotine strength disposable but I’ll go over the actual vaping experience in more detail in the ‘How do they vape?” section of this review.

It’s worth mentioning that there are no buttons and no adjustments that are possible on the ICEWAVE X8500. It’s simply a “draw-and-vape” type of device and this makes it perfect for beginners.

Flavors

ICEWAVE has come out of the gate strong with 24 flavors available for the X8500 at launch. They’re website indicates that there are new flavors and colors coming soon as well and I’m interested to see what those are.

Thanks to the sheer amount of available flavors, there’s a nice variety of options. There’s one tobacco flavors (although it’s vanilla tobacco), a mint option, a cola flavor, some fruit/ice flavors, and a bunch of fruit and fruit mix flavors.

I’m going to describe how five of these flavors taste to me and what I think of them. However, keep in mind that just because I like a flavor that does not mean that you will like it. Similarly, if I don’t like a flavor this does not mean that you will not like it. This is solely my subjective opinion.

Kiwi Passionfruit Guava

Man oh man this flavor is delicious. It’s strong and dense but not overly sweet. The passionfruit and guava flavors are what I taste immediately on the inhale, followed by a kiwi flavor that is not quite as strong but still detectable. This is a tropical delight if I’ve ever tasted one and I can easily recommend this flavor.

Rainbow Sweets

This is a fruity flavor with a touch of candying that comes through on the exhale. I expected this flavor to be very sweet just judging from the name but it’s actually moderate on the sweetness. If you’re a fan of candy flavors but don’t want to get sick vaping on them, maybe try this one out. Even as someone who isn’t a fan of candy flavors, I still enjoyed this one.

Blueberry Watermelon

This is a perfectly balanced marriage of blueberry and watermelon flavors. Both flavors come through in equal parts right from the inhale and I taste blueberry and watermelon flavors at the same time. This remains true throughout the exhale. It’s a really consistent flavor that delivers the same, mixed taste with every puff.

Max Berry

I like this flavor but the berry flavors really meld together and it’s difficult to name any individual berry flavor. There’s a certain heaviness to the flavor as well which really hits the lungs. It’s not as sweet as I feel that it should be, which further detracts from how pleasant it is for me. It’s not a bad flavor but I think that it could be further refined by ICEWAVE to make it even better. As it is, it’s not a flavor that I would reach for.

Pineapple Ice

I’m not tasting the ice in this flavor. To me this is a pure pineapple flavor with a touch of tanginess and just the perfect level of sweetness. It’s natural and authentic to the fruit so it’s very enjoyable to vape. I like that there are no candy notes going on and that ICEWAVE chose to stick with the natural profile of Pineapple for this flavor.

How do they vape?

I had never tried a disposable by ICEWAVE until this review but my first impressions are good ones. I had a feeling that these would be good; after all, they are produced by ZOVOO. However, I didn’t think that I would like them quite as much as I do. I’ve been absolutely unable to put down some of these flavors (I’m looking at you Kiwi Passionfruit Guava) and they really check all the right boxes for what makes a good disposable vape.

The draw is easy to activate but it’s still quite tight and delivers a medium-MTL (mouth-to-lung) draw. The flavor from each device comes through immediately and the vapor is warm, dense, and delivers a nice throat hit.

The 1.0Ω coil functions perfectly for a draw that is satisfying on the nicotine front and flavorful at the same time. The flavors are (mostly) so good that it’s hard to put them down. And when you’re talking about 50mg/ml disposables, that can definitely be a bad thing! All I can say is to not overdo it with the puffs and to put them down when you’re feeling satisfied; definitely don’t go chain vaping on these!

One great feature of the ICEWAVE X8500 is that the draw does not get weaker as the battery nears depletion. I never even noticed that the battery was under 5% until the device suddenly stopped firing. To ensure that you don’t end up with a dead disposable when you really need it, make use of the battery indicator display and charge these at the end of each day if you want to be safe.

Verdict

ICEWAVE came out of left field with the X8500 and I couldn’t be happier with how they perform. The flavors are their strong point, with 24 available flavors. The ones that I used for my review really impressed me with the balance, flavor profile, and authenticity.

Adding to the list of pros for the X8500 is the dense satisfying draw, ease of use, consistent output even as the battery dies, and useful battery and ejuice display/indicator. The cons are few and far between with those being the flashy design, dimmer than desired screen, and lack of adjustability. 

Weighing the pros and cons against each other, the pros for the ICEWAVE X8500 easily come out on top. I only wish that I could get some clarification on the ambiguous letters and mysterious animal head that adorns the decorative panels. I’ll try not to lose too much sleep over this.