The Volcano Vaporizer is the Winner of 2003 High Times Best Product Award. This Vaporizer is a bag type weed vaporizer. What you do is load the plastic herb basket and just slap it on top of the heating chamber. The Volcano uses a plastic herb basket so that is not a plus in vaporization. Majority of herbal connoiseurs love borosilicate glass on ceramic heating element designed vaporizers such as the new Vapezilla Vaporizer. The Volcano is designed with an aluminum heating element and not ceramic, as a Steinel or Milwaukee Heat Gun also. The Volcano is a solid device made to be used in industrial situations, but we can not vouch for its longevity due to the aluminum heating element. What we do know is, for now it works flawlessly running all day for 24 hours. We rated it under the Valloon due to a slight difference in flavor and time to warm up. The heat gun from the Valloon kit is very nice vs the Amazing Vapor or Got Vape heat gun. The latter two adds a metallic taste to the flavor due to the metallic heating element. Aluminum heating elements over time, like a car cigarette lighter, corrodes and oxidizes. The user than inhales these toxic fumes which does the same damage as inhaling aerosol spray paint. Metal heating elements are not built to last for industrial use. More high end vaporizers include ceramic heat which is definitely industrial grade. Ceramic is what your local dentist use as a crown for your root canals so it is very safe. The Volcano hides the metallic taste very well due to the cfm of air they are running. There heating elements run at a lower temp so it masks the metallic taste a bit more. None the less you are still inhaling the metallic toxins even if you are not tasting it, it is just more diluted. To efficiently vaporize the temperature needs to be around 350*F. Now with air moving past that heating element, the heating element needs to now have a higher temperature to compensate that air. That means the heating element inside the Volcano has to be at least 700*F. Technically that is enough heat to release toxins in Aluminum. We have had many discussions over this, and we have come to a conclusion that, we do not taste it due to the fact it is at the brink of out gassing. We tested this hypothesis by heating aluminum at 700F and the aluminum altered color indicating it is releasing toxins. So even though we don’t taste it, we are definitely inhaling it. Aluminum during our in house test will build a oily residue visible to the human eye if heated at that temperature. The Volcano Vaporizer was ran through Norml/MAP studies and was not tested for these toxins out gassing. We have heard Volcano state on forums that they put out money to test their Volcano which is not true. These test were paid by the people’s tax money. Don’t act like you are helping the medical community when we are actually paying for the test with our tax paying dollars. We still rated them a #3 due to how the machine taste compared to the others. The Volcano is also simpler to use than the Valloon. The glass parts on the Valloon get very hot and on forums there support is very weak for there merchandise vs Volcano. Taste of Valloon is still slightly better but not noticeable to a new comer to vaporization.