There is a reason the IQOS ILUMA comes up in almost every heated tobacco conversation. It is a good device, it is well made, and it has a name that people recognise. If you have walked into a shop anywhere in Europe and asked about heated tobacco, the counter staff will hand you an ILUMA and you will assume that is the category.
It is not the category. It is one product in it, from one company, and there are a good number of other things you could be holding instead.
What follows is an attempt to make that concrete. I am going to put all five HEATX models next to the ILUMA and let the numbers do most of the talking, and then I am going to spend more time on the things that the numbers cannot show, which is where the actual decision gets made.
One note on the disagreement between the two approaches. The ILUMA heats with induction, which is a different engineering idea from anything in the HEATX range, and reasonable people disagree about which is better. I am not going to tell you the ILUMA is bad. I will tell you what each one gives up.
HEATX figures come from our own product documentation. The IQOS figures come from Philip Morris' published specifications.
The whole range against the ILUMA
| Model | Weight | Battery | Charging | Sticks per charge | Session | Heating | Stick format | App |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IQOS ILUMA | 74 g | 1728 mAh | About 90 min | About 20 | Not published | SMARTCORE induction | TEREA only | Yes |
| HEATX 1 (MRT0) | 48 g | 1350 mAh | 90 min | 15 | 240 s | 360° resistive | TEREA | No |
| HEATX 2 (GEN2.0) | 66 g | 1800 mAh | 90 min | 20 | 250 s | 360° resistive | TEREA | No |
| HEATX 3 | 100 g | 3200 mAh | 120 min | 30 | 320 s | GEN3.0 dual zone | TEREA | No |
| HEATX 5 (GEN 5.0) | 64 g | 2000 mAh | 90 min | 20 | 270 s | 360° resistive | TEREA | No |
| HEATX 6 (GEN 6.0) | 90 g | 2600 mAh | 90 min | 20 | 240 s | 360° + airflow | HEETS | No |
Three observations, and I will take them in order of how much they matter.
The ILUMA is not the endurance champion. 1728 mAh, about 20 sticks. The HEATX 3 does about 30 on 3200 mAh. The HEATX 6 does 20 on 2600 mAh in a 90 minute charge. The ILUMA's 90 minute charge is good, and it is only out-charged in duration by the HEATX 3 at 120 minutes, which is a bigger gap than most people expect.
The ILUMA is not the lightest. 74 g sits in the middle of the HEATX range, not the top. The HEATX 1 is 48 g, 26 g lighter. The HEATX 5 is 64 g, the HEATX 2 is 66 g.
The ILUMA is the only one with an app. And I will come back to that, because it is the single most important row in the table and it is the one that decides purchases more often than any spec.
Battery, properly rather than by milliamp hours
Milliamp hours on their own are not a comparison, and anyone selling you on them is selling you on them because they are easy.
The number that means something is sticks per charge, because that is what you experience. On that measure the ILUMA's roughly 20 sticks is respectable but not leading. The HEATX 3's 30 is 50 percent more. The HEATX 1's 15 is the weak point in the range, and if you are comparing that model to the ILUMA, the ILUMA wins.
Then there is the reuse question, which is the one that changes the arithmetic more than the battery figures do, and it is worth walking through slowly because it is easy to misread.
The HEATX range heats with a 360° circumferential element. The heat wraps around the stick and reaches the tobacco that a single-direction heater would leave untouched. That is what makes a second pass possible: insert a stick that has already been heated once and it goes back in for another session, no rotation and no re-seating required.
So the HEATX 3's 30 charging cycles are not 30 single sessions. They are 30 sessions plus a second pass on each one, which works out to 60 sessions of tobacco from one charge, in effect, because you are getting roughly double the usable tobacco out of each stick.
The ILUMA does not do this. A TEREA stick in an ILUMA is a one-use stick, which is the format the Philip Morris system was designed around, and that design is the reason induction heating is so precise: the stick and the heater are built for each other, and the firmware expects a specific thermal signature.
This is the real trade and I want to state it plainly rather than let it look like a free win. Induction gives the ILUMA exceptional consistency, because nothing outside the original design team knows the exact profile it expects. That precision is what you are paying for with the closed ecosystem, and it is a genuine advantage in taste consistency. What the HEATX range gives up in exchange is freedom to use sticks from any manufacturer, and the ability to get a second session out of one.
The app, and why it is the row that matters
Look back at that table. The ILUMA has an app, Bluetooth, and firmware updates. Every HEATX model has none of them, and I am not going to pretend otherwise or bury it.
Here is what that looks like in practice. If your routine involves opening an app, looking at a puff count, getting a notification or being told by the manufacturer that something improved, the ILUMA does that and we do not. There is no phone app, no Bluetooth pairing, no software update arriving in six months that adds a new mode.
What you get instead is a device that behaves the same on day one thousand as on day one. If you have ever resented a manufacturer pushing a firmware update that moved a button, you will understand why some people actively prefer this. If you are the person who tracks everything and finds that process genuinely useful, then the ILUMA is the right product and the rest of this is a distraction.
I have watched people choose on this basis in both directions. It is not a matter of one side being smarter. It is a matter of what you want a device to be.
What the ILUMA is genuinely better at
Three things, and I mean them.
Consistency across sessions. Induction heating with a stick-specific thermal signature produces the most repeatable results in the category. If you have used an ILUMA and the flavour never drifts, that is not a marketing claim, it is what the physics gives you.
Portability of the ecosystem. TEREA sticks are available in more places than any other heated tobacco format. Wherever you travel in Europe, you will find them. That reliability has real value and I would not want someone to leave the ILUMA thinking they have escaped a supply chain when they have only changed which one they depend on.
Software longevity. Firmware means the device can improve without new hardware. That is a genuine, meaningful advantage, and it is the one I would find hardest to argue away.
What the HEATX range is genuinely better at
Getting more out of a stick. One stick, two sessions, no rotation, no re-seating. This is the mechanism behind the 29 puffs on the GEN2.0, the two-use behaviour of the MRT0, and the 30 cycles on the HEATX 3.
Weight. 48 g for the HEATX 1, 64 g for the HEATX 5. The ILUMA at 74 g is not heavy, but it is not in the same class as the two lightest models here.
Choice of heat. The HEATX 3 has four modes, SOFT, MILD, NORMAL and BOOST, switched with a double press. The HEATX 6 runs two separate temperature curves for different sticks. The ILUMA has sliding temperature adjustment, which is arguably more granular than the HEATX 3's four steps, so I would not claim a win on granularity. But having a screen that shows which mode you are in, alongside battery and stick count, is a different experience from sliding a control and hoping.
Stick formats across the range. Four of the five models take TEREA format sticks, and the HEATX 6 takes HEETS. If you use HEETS, you have one option here. If you use TEREA, you have four, and you are choosing on weight, battery and body rather than on whether the device will physically accept your sticks.
The heating methods, plainly
I want to explain this without the marketing on either side.
Induction heating, as the ILUMA does it, drives a metal element inside the stick without touching the tobacco at all. No blade in the leaf, no hot pin, no direct contact. It is the more elegant method and the one I would pick if consistency were the only thing that mattered.
Circumferential resistive heating, which the HEATX 1, 2, 5 and the GEN2.0 use, wraps an element around the outside of the stick and heats inward. The HEATX 3 adds a bottom heating zone to make it a dual zone system, and the HEATX 6 adds airflow heating on top so the stick is heated from the inside out by moving air rather than by a single direction of conduction.
The trade-off is that resistive heating is less tightly coupled to a specific stick. It is also less refined, less expensive, and considerably more flexible, because it does not need to know the thermal signature of a proprietary insert.
None of this makes the ILUMA wrong. It makes it a different bet.
Which one I would buy
If you want the most consistent sessions available and you are content to stay inside one manufacturer's stick supply chain indefinitely, and if the app is something you use rather than something you tolerate, buy the ILUMA. It is a well-made device and in the consistency category it is not close.
If you want a second device that costs less than the first, if you want to get roughly double the usable tobacco out of each stick, if you want to pick your device by weight rather than by whether it will fit your existing habit, or if you simply do not want to run an app to use a heated tobacco device, then the HEATX range is the answer. The HEATX 3 for maximum battery and control, the HEATX 1 for minimum weight, the HEATX 2 for a flat 20.6 mm body, the HEATX 5 for a metal shell and a single button, the HEATX 6 for HEETS sticks and hybrid heating.
Every model, with full specifications and photos, is on chillmistvape.com.
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 here is medical advice and nothing in this article 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. The IQOS and Philip Morris figures used here come from the manufacturer's 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.