The POTV ONE and XMAX Starry give you great vapor, a great value, and a tough choice to make. Both vaporizers are packed with unique features for their price point, but appeal to different needs. The Starry has a small footprint and is built more for the long haul, with its longer battery life and replaceable batteries. The ONE is just as pocket-friendly and durable, but with a shorter battery life and a slew of accessories that will appeal more to those with more regular access to an outlet or power bank.
Buy the Starry if:
You want a great value and longer battery life. The Starry has a bigger oven than the ONE, in case you like to go through your herbs quickly. It’s wider temperature range will please low temperature vaporists, as well as those squeezing everything out at the higher end.
Buy the ONE if:
You like what you see in the Starry, but are willing to sacrifice battery life for better vapor quality and the versatility of vaping with glass. The Starry is no slouch, but the ONE hits harder, and its Accessory Attachment turns this portable into a home vape that can keep up with much bigger units.
Conduction versus hybrid heating
What’s a conduction vaporizer?
Portable conduction vaporizers are consistently easy to use and share, can be packed into small profiles, and are usually very affordable. They use a simple, proven technology that heats your herbs with direct contact, like cooking on a skillet. The taste usually fades quickly, getting worse at the end of sessions, and they’re not known for efficiency, as they cook your herbs between draws. Conduction vapes hit best at the beginning of a draw, so they're best for people who like to take short sips, or can't take long, deep breaths.
What’s a hybrid vaporizer?
Portable hybrid vaporizers are generally considered superior to conduction vapes when it comes to vapor quality, with better taste that lasts longer, and stronger heaters that can keep up with big draws. They add convection heat to the conduction system for more power during hits, and less between them. Hybrid vaporizers require more energy and larger heating systems, and are typically bigger, more expensive, and have shorter battery life than their conduction counterparts.
Head to head
Vapor Quality
The Starry and POTV ONE taste similar on the first couple of pulls, but after that the taste in the Starry fades quicker. Out of the box, the NEW Version of the ONE delivers cooler vapor than the Starry with the included dimpled glass stem. The ONE can also be affordably upgraded ($10) with other glass pieces that surpass the Starry’s cooling system. The ONE’s hybrid heater can deliver thick hits on even the strongest of draws, while the Starry’s conduction system gets overwhelmed with similar demands. The Starry does have a wider temperature scale to work with (212℉ - 464℉ versus 320℉ - 430℉ for the ONE), which will appeal to people who like to vaporize at very low, or very high temperatures.
Unless you vaporize at the extreme ends of the temperature scale, the ONE wins with longer lasting flavor, a heater that keeps up with strong draws, and upgrades that maximize cooling.
Features & Controls
The Starry and ONE have a very similar feature set and control scheme, with three buttons and a digital readout. Both vaporizers have digital temperature control, haptic feedback, and a session shutdown timer. In addition to a wider temperature scale, the Starry adds the unique ability to change the shutdown timer from five minutes to ten, for those who like to take it slow, while the ONE is locked in at four minutes.
The ONE isn’t lacking anything critical, but the Starry wins with a wider temperature scale and adjustable session timer.
Battery Life
The ONE is good for 30 to 40 minutes of runtime on a single charge, while the Starry gets twice that, and has user-replaceable batteries.
No contest here. Battery life is the ONE’s weak point, while the Starry has it fully covered.
Versatility
The Starry is built for portable use, and that’s about it. At most, you can purchase a water pipe adapter to attach it to a bubbler, but the Starry gets easily overwhelmed when paired with glass. The ONE is not only smaller, its Accessory Attachment turns your portable vape into a small, at-home vapor factory. The ONE’s strong heater can keep up with the demanding draws that come with a bubbler. Pairing the ONE with your own glass, or one of our Mini-bubblers, transforms the session into something much bigger.
The ONE’s Accessory Attachment make it the easy choice here. It feels like two or three vapes in one.
Concentrates
The Starry and ONE each come with a stainless steel mesh pad for concentrate use, but they don’t perform similarly. Both vapes are session vaporizers that take minutes to go through concentrate, instead of a single hit all at once, but the ONE is more satisfying. The Starry’s conduction heater gently releases the concentrate in a wispy cloud, while the ONE’s hybrid airflow pulls concentrate out for fuller hits.
When it comes to vaporizing concentrates with a dry herb vape, hybrids are usually better than conduction vapes. This rings true here as well, with the ONE delivering more satisfying hits.
Size and Build
The Starry has a tall and slender build, similar to the Pax, and can get lost in your pocket. The ONE is a full inch shorter, but ⅔ of an inch wider, and takes up about as much space as the Starry, although in a stubbier profile. Both vaporizers have strong, metal exterior shells for a durable feel.
There’s no clear winner here. Both travel well with ultra-portable profiles, and both are well built. Which you like better will come down to personal preference - tall and slim versus short and wide.
Consistency
The Starry’s conduction heater rarely falters or surprises with an off session. It’s easy to use, and works every time with a loose or tight pack, depending on how you like to hit it. The ONE’s hybrid heater also gets it right every time, and only falls short if you pack the oven too tightly.
It’s a tie. Both vaporizers consistently vape well, even with different draw speeds and techniques.
Efficiency
The Starry has a big conduction oven that will cook your herbs between hits, and doesn’t leave much to come back to later if you don’t finish the bowl. Meanwhile, the ONE’s bowl is nearly half the size of the Starry’s, and its hybrid heater is gentler on your herbs between hits. The ONE’s oven cools down quicker as well, so the herbs will taste better if you want to save them for later. Unless you chew through a lot of herbs with multiple sessions, the ONE’s smaller bowl will force you into using less.
The ONE is more efficient than the Starry for multiple reasons.
Cleaning
The POTV ONE is pretty simple and easy to clean. All it takes is an alcohol wipe to the oven and mouthpieces, and a quick shake in rubbing alcohol for the screen and any glass pieces you use with it. The Starry isn’t difficult to clean, but it has more pieces to keep track of, and a mouthpiece release plate that can be finicky to pull out.
Both vaporizers are easy to clean, but the ONE has fewer parts and less to put back together.
Price
Both vaporizers are a steal at $99.95, and the ONE comes with $10 upgrade options that truly change things up. Feature sets and builds are similar, so the difference comes down to vapor quality, battery life, and all the choices the ONE gives you for glass.
No winner here - they're both $99.95.
Our take
The XMAX Starry is one of the best vape values available, and has quickly become one of our top sellers, racking up a pile of positive user reviews along the way. We think it’s one of the best conduction vaporizers available, when you consider features, build, vapor quality, and price.
The Planet of the Vapes ONE is a step up in a lot of ways, particularly in the vapor quality department, and is an incredible value in its own right. The hybrid heating is gentler on the herbs while still fully extracting everything, and the Accessory Attachment makes it feel like a different vape when paired with a glass bubbler. They're both $79, so we’re interested to see which one you choose. Still on the fence? Check out our Best Dry Herb Vaporizer Guide to find out which vape best suites you. Please comment below and let us know what you like best about these vapes, especially if you have both!
