The most expensive object in a good kitchen is rarely the one that costs the most over ten years. That honour usually goes to whatever the machine eats. Espresso machines, razors and printers all run on the same arrangement: a well-made body you buy once, and a consumable you buy for as long as you own it.
Since the UK banned single-use vapes in June 2025, the better pod kits have worked exactly this way. The Hayati Pro Ultra Plus 25000 is the clearest example, because the maths behind it is unusually stark. The device, in effect, costs three pounds.
A £3 object
At current UK retail prices, bought in fives, a Hayati Pro Ultra Plus kit costs £8.80. A refill pack for the same device costs £5.80. The kit is simply a refill with a device attached, so the body itself (an 850mAh rechargeable battery, a screen, a USB-C port and a twin-chamber mouthpiece that rotates between two flavours) is being sold for £3.
That is not a luxury price for hardware. It is closer to the price of the box it arrives in. And it changes how you should think about the purchase. The kit is a one-off. The real product is the refill.
The refill is also well designed as a consumable. Each pack is a sealed unit: one 2ml pod split into two chambers, each with its own mesh coil, plus two 10ml containers that feed those chambers as you vape. That is 22ml of liquid, and because the coils are replaced with every pack, nobody is left nursing a tired coil through the last third of the liquid.
A year of refills, run three ways
Puff counts on vape boxes are laboratory figures, taken with short, regular machine draws, and real use gives fewer. So the fair way to compare running costs is by liquid. Picture an adult who gets through roughly 12ml a fortnight, which is a moderate, steady habit, and run a year of refills three ways at today’s prices.
| Route | Refill price | Liquid per refill | Cost per ml | Refills a year (312ml) | Refill spend a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro Max Plus 6000 pods | £4.80 | 12ml | 40p | 26 | £124.80 |
| Pro Ultra Plus 25000 pods | £5.80 | 22ml | about 26p | about 14 | about £82 |
| Hayati Pro Max Nic Salts, own refillable kit | £1.80 | 10ml | 18p | about 31 bottles | about £56 |
The figures are an illustration, not a promise. Use more or less liquid and the numbers move in proportion, but the ranking holds.
Two things stand out. First, the bigger device is the cheaper habit. Moving from the 6K kit’s Hayati Pro Max Plus pods to the 25K kit’s refills cuts the cost per millilitre by about a third, which at this level of use is worth roughly £40 a year. It is an unusual case where the larger, more capable object is also the thriftier one to run.
Second, the bottle route is cheaper again, but it is a different kind of ownership. Filling your own pod from a 10ml bottle means handling liquid, replacing coils and keeping a separate device in good order. Some people enjoy that. Most people who bought prefilled kits did so precisely because they did not want a hobby.
What changes in October
From 1 October 2026 the UK charges Vaping Products Duty on liquid at £2.20 per 10ml, and new packs carry a duty stamp. On a 22ml Pro Ultra Plus refill that is £4.84 of duty; on a 12ml Pro Max Plus refill it is £2.64; on a 10ml bottle, £2.20. Stock produced before the duty can still be sold until 31 March 2027, so shelf prices will move over months rather than overnight.
A tax charged per millilitre does not change which route is cheapest per millilitre. It does make the waste more expensive. A refill abandoned with liquid still in it now carries duty you have paid for and not used, which is one more reason to pick flavours you will actually finish.
The part of ownership nobody prices in
Twin chambers are the reason to buy this device, and they come with a habit worth learning. Each chamber empties on its own schedule, so if you favour one flavour, that side runs dry weeks before the other and you are left carrying half a refill. People who alternate by the day tend to finish both sides together, which is when a fresh pack makes sense.
Flavour choice matters for the same reason. With two flavours per refill and a year of refills ahead, pairings you enjoy on day one and day twenty are worth more than the pairing that looked exciting in a listing. The range is large, running to 43 pairings and single-flavour packs on the 25K refills and more than 60 on the 6K pods, and browsing the full set of Hayati flavours before ordering five of anything is time well spent.
The body itself asks for very little: charge it over any USB-C phone lead, keep it off radiators and sunny car dashboards, and seat each new refill properly before the first draw. Treat it the way you would treat a good pen rather than a disposable biro.
Who should not buy one
The arithmetic above only works for people who vape regularly. Someone who vapes occasionally will find 22ml goes stale in flavour terms long before it runs out, and a smaller device will serve them better.
It is also a chunky object, about 107mm tall and 29mm deep. Coat pocket, yes. Tailored trousers, no. It comes only in 20mg nicotine salt, so anyone after a lower strength needs the smaller Hayati kit or a refillable device with bottled liquid. And if two flavours in one body holds no appeal, the twin-chamber mechanism is a feature you are paying to ignore.
For everyone else, the purchasing decision is less about the device than it looks. Buy one kit. After that, buy Hayati Pro Ultra pods and let the £3 body do its job for as long as it keeps charging. Nobody buys a second espresso machine every time they run out of coffee.
Tushan Das is the director of Hayati Pro Club, an independent UK retailer that stocks only the Hayati range. Hayati Pro Club is not affiliated with the manufacturer. Prices are UK retail at the time of writing, bought in fives (refill pods and kits) or tens (bottles). Vaping products are for adults aged 18 and over and contain nicotine, which is addictive.