HEATX 5 Review: The 64-Gram Metal Device That Reuses Every Stick

I have been putting the HEATX 5 through its paces for a few weeks, and the thing that keeps coming back to me is not any single specification. It is that I stopped thinking about the device after about a day.

That sounds like a complaint about the screen, and the HEATX 5 has no screen. But that is backwards. The absence of a screen is the reason the device disappears. There is nothing to check, nothing to configure, nothing to update. You press the button, it heats, you take your puffs, you press the button again.

Let me deal with the disclosure first, because it should come before anything else in a review.

HEATX is our own product, and the HEATX 5 is also sold as the GEN 5.0. Millennium Plus Holdings Group Limited is the company behind this generation. Every HEATX figure in this piece comes from our own product documentation. Figures for the IQOS ILUMA and the glo Pro come from those manufacturers' published specifications. I have not put an ILUMA on a bench and measured its draw, so when I talk about how the two feel, I am talking about use, not instrumentation.

What it is

64 g. 30 × 21.5 × 89 mm. That is the size of a lighter and roughly the weight of a small bar of soap, which is the comparison the brand deck uses and it is not a bad one.

The body is an anodised aluminium shell with a matte surface, and there are five colourways: metallic silver, signature magenta, mint green, ice blue and graphite black. The manufacturer frames the colour range as both a merchandising tool and a consumer-choice tool, which is corporate language for the obvious fact that a device sitting on a shelf should look worth taking off the shelf.

Specs first, in a table, so the rest of the review can be about what they mean.

The one button

Long press to start, long press to stop. That is the entire control scheme.

A breathing light indicates remaining battery. A vibration confirms the device registered what you asked it to do. Insert a stick and it begins heating on its own.

I want to be precise about why this matters, because "simple" is a word brand decks use to mean "cheap looking". What it actually means here is that there is no state to get lost in. A device with a screen has a menu, and a menu has a current selection, and a current selection can be wrong. The HEATX 5 has one button and two states.

For someone who has never used a heated tobacco device, and I mean genuinely never, this removes the single largest source of anxiety in the category. You are not going to get this wrong. I have handed it to three people who had never held an HNB and all three were using it correctly within a minute of opening the box.

The 30 second preheat is the one place where that simplicity asks something of you. Thirty seconds is long enough that you can stand there and forget what you were doing. The glo Pro takes 20 seconds on standard and 10 on boost. The HEATX 3 takes 20. So the HEATX 5 is not the fastest out of the box in this category, and if fast warm-up is the thing you care about, that is a real mark against it.

The second pass is the actual product

Here is where the HEATX 5 earns its place, and it has nothing to do with the metal or the colours.

360° circumferential heating means the heating element wraps around the outside of the stick and the heat travels inward. The consequence is that a stick you have already used once can go straight back in for another session. The manufacturer's own framing is that this saves cost and doubles enjoyment, and every model in our range that uses this heating approach does the same thing.

The HEATX 2 is the one where we publish the detail: 16 puffs on the first pass, 13 on the second, 29 from a single stick. The HEATX 1 does the same two-pass thing with a Standard mode for a used stick and a Boost mode for a fresh one. The HEATX 3, the HEATX 5 and the HEATX 6 share the same circumferential principle.

So one stick from a 20 stick charge is closer to 40 sessions than 20, depending on how thoroughly you use the second pass. That is not a trick, it is what happens when the heat comes from all sides and the inside of the stick is not left cold.

Now compare that to the two devices most people will be comparing this to.

The IQOS ILUMA uses SMARTCORE induction heating. Induction is the more refined method. A coil heats a metal element inside the stick, the tobacco never touches the heater, and the stick gets a specific thermal signature that the firmware knows precisely how to drive. There is nothing wrong with that, and I would not claim a resistive element matches an induction element for consistency.

But that same signature is what closes the door on a second pass. The ILUMA heats TEREA sticks and it does not offer a reuse mode, and the reason is structural rather than a marketing decision. The stick and the heater are built for each other. The profile the firmware expects is a profile for a fresh stick.

Against the glo Pro the gap is smaller and different. The glo Pro uses a ceramic chamber at roughly 280 °C, and it heats glo Neo sticks only. 98 g, 3000 mAh, about 20 sticks per charge, roughly two hours to charge. The battery is bigger than the HEATX 5's 2000 mAh and the charge time is longer, and the device itself is over 30 g heavier and much wider at 82 × 43 × 21 mm.

The other two names you will meet in this category belong to different formats entirely. The Ploom TECH+ is 37 g and 480 mAh and takes capsules rather than sticks, so it is the lightest object on the shelf and a different consumable model. The Pulze 3.0 is about 57 g with 1850 mAh and 25+ sticks per charge, and it is the one device here with tea-based nicotine-free iSENZIA sticks. The lil SOLID 2.0 is a KT&G device using ceramic conduction for about two sticks a session. None of them competes with the HEATX 5 on the same terms, because none of them reuses a stick.

Neither of those two devices gives you a second pass on the same stick either. That is the whole argument.

Where the 2000 mAh goes

Twenty sticks per charge is a mid-range figure and I want to be straight about what it does and does not mean.

Against the HEATX 3, which has 3200 mAh and about 30 heating cycles, the HEATX 5 is clearly the less endurance-oriented device. Against the HEATX 1, with 1350 mAh and 15 sticks, it is clearly the more. It sits in the middle, at 20 sticks, and with the second pass on top that puts it near 40 effective sessions.

The IQOS ILUMA is about 20 sticks per charge as well, and the glo Pro is about 20. So the HEATX 5 is not winning a battery comparison. What it is doing is landing in the same place with a device that is 10 g lighter than the ILUMA, 34 g lighter than the glo Pro, and 24 g lighter than our own HEATX 3, and then adding the reuse behaviour on top.

The manufacturer claims a price around half that of mainstream devices, on the logic that two packs of sticks cover the cost of the device. That is a manufacturer claim and the arithmetic depends entirely on what sticks cost where you are, so treat it as a starting point for your own maths rather than a fact.

The things I did not like

I will spend more time on this section than the previous sections.

No temperature control at all. Not "limited" temperature control. None. The HEATX 3 has four modes, SOFT, MILD, NORMAL and BOOST, selected with a double press. The HEATX 5 has one heating profile and you cannot change it. If you are someone who found a specific setting on a different device that you loved, that setting does not exist here, and no firmware update will add it.

30 second preheat. I covered this above but it belongs in this list too. It is the slowest preheat in our range, tied with the HEATX 2, and slower than the glo Pro's 20 seconds.

The breathing light is the only feedback you get. There is no session timer, no puff counter, no indication of which pass you are on. On the HEATX 1 and the HEATX 3, the screen tells you the puff count and the current mode. The HEATX 5 tells you the battery. If you are the kind of person who wants to know you have used 27 puffs out of an available 29, this device will frustrate you.

20 sticks per charge is the lowest endurance in the range once you exclude the HEATX 1. And the 90 minute charge is on the long side for a device this small. The HEATX 3's 120 minutes is worse, but the HEATX 3 also carries 3200 mAh, so it is doing more for the time.

It takes TEREA format sticks. If you have HEETS sticks, this is the wrong device. That is the HEATX 6's job, and there is no adapter.

No app, no Bluetooth, no firmware. I have said this as a feature twice already, so let me be clear that it is also a genuine limitation for some people. If firmware updates are how you keep a device current, the HEATX 5 will not get any. It will be exactly this device in five years, and depending on how you feel about that, it is either reassuring or bleak.

Who should buy it

Buy the HEATX 5 if you want a device that is small, quiet in the hand, and has nothing to learn. If you have never used an HNB and the idea of a menu puts you off, the single button is the real argument and it is a good one. If you want a metal body in a colour that is not black, there are five to choose from and only one of them is black.

Buy the HEATX 3 if you want the most control, the biggest battery and four temperature modes, and can live with 100 g and a 120 minute charge.

Buy the HEATX 1 if weight and size decide it and 15 sticks per charge is liveable. It is 48 g and it is the lightest thing we make.

Buy the HEATX 2 if you want the flattest body at 20.6 mm and 29 puffs from a single stick.

Buy the HEATX 6 if you have HEETS sticks or want hybrid heating with two temperature curves.

Full specifications and photos for every model are on chillmistvape.com, and if you are buying a range for a shelf rather than a single unit, the OEM and wholesale terms are worth asking about directly.

Health, law and where to buy

Heated tobacco is not harmless. Avoiding combustion reduces exposure to a number of the toxicants in cigarette smoke, but it still delivers nicotine, and nicotine is addictive. Nothing in this article is medical advice, and nothing here claims that any device is safe.

If you do not already use tobacco or nicotine, there is no reason to start. Check the age limits and the tax rules where you live, since both differ by country and change. Buy from licensed sellers only. Figures attributed to Philip Morris and British American Tobacco come from those manufacturers' published specifications; the HEATX figures come from our own product documentation. Compare the numbers, then decide which device fits how you actually use a heated tobacco device.