SKE BAR Pod System Review: Swappable Pods!

Design & Build Quality

The SKE BAR is a very petite device. At just over 100mm tall and only 17mm wide and deep, it feels more akin to a pen in your hand than a vape. It is also very lightweight, coming in at just over 30g. All that adds up to a tiny and convenient vaping package, one which is perfect if you prefer discreet vaping over showing off with flashing lights, animated screens, and big clouds. 

The SKE BAR is encased in clear, moulded plastic, with ridges running the full length at all four corners. It somewhat resembles a long chunk of quartz. Inside that transparent plastic body is a colored tube that conceals the battery, pod, and other internal components. The color of this tube usually provides some clue to the e-liquid flavor inside (e.g., red and blue for Blueberry Sour Raspberry flavor). 

The mouthpiece is narrow across its width, being the same width as the rest of the body, and tapers to around 5mm at the tip. The vapor chimney is fairly small, but no smaller than would be expected for an MTL vape of this type. 

The base of the device is polished metal and houses the USB Type-C charging port. On two of the sides of the metal base, you’ll see a cutout section. These provide access to spring clips that connect the base to the plastic body, but I’ll explain more about what these are for in a moment. 

Features

The SKE BAR is, by anyone’s reckoning, a pretty simple and uncomplicated device. As such, there aren’t many features to talk about here. No adjustable airflow, no mode switches, not even a tiny digital display. There is a single LED on the base, which provides an indication of when the battery is getting low, but that’s it for visible features.

There is, however, a hidden feature worth talking about, as I alluded to above. Squeeze those two cutouts on the base and pull gently, and the battery can be separated from the pod hidden inside the plastic body.

At first, I could not get the pod/cartridge out of the clear plastic body, no matter what I tried. But upon reading the supplied instructions (oh, the shame of having to read instructions), it seems that the “pod” is actually the e-liquid reservoir AND the clear plastic outer body combined. 

EU rules say that small electronics must be constructed with a removable battery, making them able to be more easily collected and recycled, rather than the lithium being wasted along with general household garbage; the swappable pod does just that for the SKE BAR. The swappable pod also means that these devices are not classed as single-use, and are therefore not banned under the new disposables laws in the UK and other parts of Europe. 

Flavors

The SKE BAR is available in a wide variety of different flavors. The majority of the 35 flavors are fruit-based, but there are also several ice flavors, a couple of different menthols, and a tobacco flavor for the traditionalists. 

I was lucky enough to get my hands on most of the flavors for testing, and while I found most to be either okay or quite nice, a few really stood out from the crowd for me. Here are the five SKE BAR flavors that tickled my taste buds the most. Keep in mind that just because I like a flavor, that does not mean that you will like it, and vice versa. This is solely my subjective opinion.

Blue Razz Lemonade

Blue Razz, or a similar variation of the flavor, is often my favorite, no matter the e-liquid or brand producing it. The Blue Razz Lemonade in the SKE BAR is fruity, icy, sweet, and also somehow refreshing. The ice hit isn’t as intense as it is with some of the SKE flavors, but it is enough to reduce the often sugary sweetness of lemonade flavoring down to something that adds enjoyment for me, rather than takes it away. 

Fruit Medley

If you want a REALLY fruity flavor, then Fruit Medley is the one to go for. I have no real idea of the fruit flavors used in it, but to me it tastes of honeydew melon, peach, strawberry, and maybe a hint of pineapple. It is sweet, as disposable vape flavors seem to be, but there is something there that changes it from what could be too sweet into a flavor profile that is really delicious. 

Berry Ice

If the Berry Ice was slightly less sweet, this would have been my number one choice of all the SKE flavors I tested. The ice hit is intense without being over the top, and the fruitiness of the berry flavors, which I would guess is raspberry, blackberry, and maybe blueberry, is very well balanced. No single berry is obviously prevalent, but you can taste multiple berries in there. As I mentioned, it is a little sweet for my tastes, but I still enjoyed puffing this flavor. 

Sour Apple Ice

Sour Apple Ice is another go-to flavor for me, and the SKE version doesn’t disappoint. I could take a bit more sourness, but the green apple flavor is great, and the ice hit helps to reduce the sweetness even if the sour element doesn’t quite manage it. This is a vape for a summer day, sitting outside a nice bar or restaurant, after filling your belly full of delicious food. If this were a dessert flavor or ice cream flavor, I would eat little else!

Fizzy Cherry

Cherry flavor e-liquids are very much hit or miss for me, so I took my first puff on the Fizzy Cherry SKE with some trepidation. It wasn’t what I expected, but I did enjoy it immensely. The name should have perhaps given me a clue, but this vape tastes less like ripe, fresh cherries and more like Cherry soda. It instantly transported me back to my teenage years, when Cherry Coke was my drink of choice whenever we went out to eat. 

How do they vape?

The SKE BAR vapes are fairly basic devices, despite the ability to disassemble them to remove the battery from the pod. They are designed as MTL vapes, and they vape like MTL vapes. There is no airflow control and no way to increase or decrease power, so there’s no way to make it anything other than MTL. 

The draw is on the loose side of MTL, but not so loose that it won’t suit current users of similarly sized and comparable disposables. Vapor production is reasonable considering the low power, but don’t expect to be blowing clouds. 

The 500mA battery size is nothing to brag about, but because the power output is relatively low (I would guess no more than 12W), it is certainly enough to provide a full day of use before needing to be recharged.

If the pod is still going after a full day of use, recharging is quick thanks to the 2A USB Type-C full fast charging. Due to the  TPD-compliant capacity of 2ml, don’t expect to recharge them more than once or twice before the e-juice runs out. 

Verdict

The SKE BAR is a simple, but very good, small-capacity vape. The device looks nice, and is small and light enough to make it perfect for discreet vaping. Although it is essentially a lump of plastic with a few bits of metal and e-liquid inside, it feels as robust as most of the disposables that it aims to replace, and more robust than some. 

The range of flavors is nothing ground-breaking, and they don’t stray too far from the popular and widely accepted norms for flavors, but all taste pretty good. I tested nearly 20 of the available flavors, and not one was something I wouldn’t want to try again. A handful, including the Blue Razz Lemonade and Berry Ice, are flavors I could happily vape every day. 

The replaceable pod is a great feature, and the ability to detach the battery from the rest of the device for eventual safer and more environmentally-friendly disposal is something I am fully on board with. In the modern world, wasting lithium by discarding batteries is undeniably a bad thing, and if more vape brands adopted this feature, vaping might start to shake some of its bad reputation among non-smokers and government policy makers.