How Long Does a Vape Battery Take to Charge?
A typical vape battery charges very quickly. Most of the time, you can expect a dead battery to be fully charged and ready for use in less than an hour. That’s a great thing, because waiting for a device to charge is never a lot of fun.
Since you’re reading this article, though, you might be looking for a more specific answer than that. Maybe you want to know exactly how long you’ll need to wait before you can get back to vaping, for instance – or maybe your vape seems to be taking an unusually long time to charge, and you’re trying to troubleshoot the issue and figure out what’s going on.
In this guide, you’re going to find the information you need. It’s actually not hard at all to figure out how long a vape battery takes to charge because the only things that you need to know are the battery’s capacity and its charging speed. Once you know those two things, you can get the answer just by performing a little simple math.
You’re about to learn:
How to calculate how long a vape battery should take to charge.
What to do if your battery doesn’t seem to be charging.
What to do if your battery takes too long to charge.
How to know when a vape battery is finished.
Let’s begin.
Calculating How Long a Vape Battery Takes to Charge
To calculate how long a vape battery takes to charge, you need to know two things. Those are:
The battery’s capacity, measured in milliampere-hours or mAh. There are 1,000 milliamps in an amp, so a battery with a capacity of 1,000 mAh can deliver a current of 1 amp for an hour.
The battery’s charging speed, measured in amps. A charging speed of 1 amp will charge a battery with a capacity of 1,000 mAh in one hour.
You can usually find the capacity and charging speed of a vape battery in the instruction manual or on the manufacturer’s website. If a charging speed isn’t specified, you can assume that it’s probably 1 amp because that’s the speed at which most small USB-powered devices charge.
Once you know those things, you can determine a vape battery’s expected charging time with a bit of simple math. Let’s suppose, for instance, that a battery’s capacity is 600 mAh. That’s 60 percent of 1,000 mAh, so the battery charges in 60 percent of an hour – that’s 36 minutes – if it has a charging speed of 1 amp.
To give you a few real-world examples, these are the expected charging times of a few vape batteries from popular manufacturer rokinvapes.com.
Rage (280 mAh): About 17 minutes.
Mini Tank (500 mAh): About 30 minutes.
Mini Tank Pro (500 mAh): About 30 minutes.
Bar Pro (650 mAh): About 39 minutes.
What Does It Mean if Your Vape Battery Takes Too Long to Charge?
Have you done the math and found that your vape battery seems to be taking longer to charge than it should? First of all, it’s important to remember that battery charging times are rarely exact. To keep the heat level down, a battery will often charge at a lower rate when it’s nearly full – so the total charging time could end up being a few minutes longer than expected.
If your vape battery seems to be taking a very long time to charge, here’s what you should check.
Make sure that you’re charging the battery through a power source that supplies the correct amperage. If a vape battery is designed to charge at a rate of one amp but is connected to a half-amp wall adapter, the battery will take twice as long to charge. A vape battery should always charge at the best available rate if you charge it through your computer.
Try changing the charging cable. When a USB cable is close to failing, it’ll often transmit power at a lower amperage than it should because the internal wires are stretched and weakened.
Make sure that your vape battery is clean. If it charges through the 510 threading, remove leaked oil and crusty deposits using a cotton swab dipped in a little rubbing alcohol. If it charges via USB, use a toothpick to pry lint out of the port.
What to Do if Your Vape Battery Isn’t Charging
If your vape battery is taking too long to charge, that’s certainly an issue – but it’s usually one that isn’t too difficult to troubleshoot. If your battery isn’t lighting up at all when you connect it to a power source, though, that’s a bigger problem because it means that the battery isn’t charging. Here’s what you should do next.
Start by replacing the power cable. As we mentioned in the previous section, USB cables begin to deliver power less reliably when they get old. This will eventually result in the cable no longer being able to charge a connected device at all. When a vape battery isn’t charging, using a new cable will fix the problem most of the time.
Try connecting the vape battery to a different power source. Don’t use a high-speed charger for a mobile phone or tablet because your vape battery may not be compatible with the faster charging rate. For maximum reliability, it’s always best to charge a vape battery through your computer.
Make sure that your vape battery is clean. We explained the problem of residue in a vape battery’s threading or charging port above, and residue doesn’t only cause a vape battery to charge more slowly. If it’s bad enough, it can prevent the battery from charging at all.
How Do You Know When a Vape Battery is Finished?
When a vape battery no longer holds enough of a charge for normal operation, it’s time to replace it. You’ll know your device has reached that point because it’ll have one of the following symptoms.
It’ll never seem to finish charging regardless of how long it’s connected to the charger. This is a sign that the battery can’t charge up to its target voltage anymore, which might be the reason why you wanted to know how long a vape battery takes to charge in the first place.
It’ll finish charging almost immediately when you connect it to the charger, but it’ll start flashing in different colors as soon as you try to use it. This means that the battery is able to reach its target voltage, but the battery’s capacity has degraded so much that it’s essentially no longer usable.
A vape battery typically lasts through hundreds of charge cycles, so you can usually expect a device to last about a year if it’s used and recharged daily. Once the device shows signs of severely diminished capacity, though, it’s time to buy a new vape.
