The Puffco Peak vaporizer is a quick hit of concentrated genius

Hell hath no fury like a stoner who has just had to dig his last nugget of honeycomb wax out of the carpet because the wad of sticky concentrate managed to fall off its dabbing tool. I mean, do you still fire it up -- carpet fuzz, cat hair and all -- or simply take the L and move on with your evening? Neither, you get yourself a tabletop cannabis vaporizer that doesn't require a menagerie of industrial tools to operate and which can be loaded as easily as a hash pipe.

Cannabis concentrates possess a number of advantages over the flowers from which they're derived but "ease of consumption" isn't one of them. Depending on the extraction method, they can range from crystalline crumbles to sticky honey oils and tar-like rosins. Ingesting them isn't a walk in the park either. While you can simply roll up loose leaf weed in a sheet of paper and be good to go, concentrates typically require convoluted heating implements and specialized tools. Seriously, getting lit should never require the use of a blowtorch. With the new Puffco Peak, you won't need rigs, nails, spikes, e-rings or any of the other conventional accoutrements dabbing used to demand.

Though it is a vaporizer, the Peak is shaped like the lovechild of a conventional water pipe and Silent Hill's Pyramid Head. It offers an upward-facing ceramic bowl situated in front of a tapered glass stem which can be removed from the rest of the unit and filled with water to improve vapor filtration. All of the electronic guts are hidden in its sturdy base. The entire unit stands 7-inches tall and I really appreciate how bottom-heavy the Peak is. My old Cloud EVO rig, for as much as I loved it, was notoriously unsteady and would topple if I so much as looked at it sideways. The Peak, on the other hand, is practically a Weeble-Wobble -- you've got to give it a good shove to knock it over.

While it isn't quite as intuitive to use as the water pipe it's designed to resemble, the Peak is still far easier to use than virtually any other tabletop vape rig I've used. You load your concentrate into the bowl (heating crucible) and place the carb cap on top. The cap helps regulate airflow through the bowl and prevents your precious vapor from wafting away when you aren't drawing on it. To turn on the device, you will first need to charge it using the included micro USB cable and wall adapter, then press a button on the front of the Peak just below the bowl. Once charged, click once to cycle through the four color-coded heat settings -- blue (450 degrees F), green (500 degrees), red (550 degrees), and white (600 degrees) -- then double click the same button to activate the heating element. Unlike other electronic dab rigs, the Peak takes around 20 seconds to reach its operating temperature, not upwards of four minutes as my Cloud EVO did.

Best of all, the Peak will buzz slightly to indicate that it's ready for use. That way you're not left to watch the clock or, even worse, wander off to find a snack and come back to a burnt bowl. The Peak will automatically turn itself off after about 10 seconds to conserve battery but can quickly be reactivated with another double-click. You can keep clicking for the duration of your session and the Peak will maintain the same temperature throughout. This is especially helpful feature when you're vaping with a group, because it ensures that there will be minimum lag time between passes and that everybody will have a similar experience -- nobody gets saddled with a cold bowl.

Depending on your preferred temperature settings, how much concentrate you put in and how many times you extend your session, the Peak will hold a charge for between four and six bowls or around 30 individual dabs. Once the battery is exhausted, you'll need to plug it into a wall socket for two hours to fully recharge it. Unfortunately, the Peak doesn't operate while charging.

The Peak is also technically portable, I'm just not sure I'd really want to go hang out in a park or see a concert with a $380 electronic vape rig I brought from home. But if that's your thing, you do you. The Peak is currently available for order at the Puffco website.

We got our first glimpse of the Peak earlier this year at CES 2018, and I've been hyped to try it ever since. The Peak did not disappoint. It handled every type of concentrate I loaded into it with aplomb: cold water crumbles, shatter, honeycomb wax, even some straight up butane hash oil. It's more affordable than the Herbalizer, more versatile than the Volcano, and requires a fraction of the setup time that the herbalAires demand. Best of all, the Peak offers virtually zero opportunity to spill its concentrate cargo once loaded which means I won't have to smoke cat hair anymore.