Difference?
Mechanical e-cigs are literally just a heating element and a battery. They're simple, but they make a stuff LOAD of vapor. Waaaaaay more than digital ones. They also
kinda look cooler. Digital ones have a digital chip in them that regulates the amount of power that goes to the heating element and allows you to select how thick/thin you want the vapor. Since you get a lot more vapor with mechanical ones, you use really low nicotine levels.
Mechanical ones require maintenance. If you use cotton to hold the e-juice, it starts getting burnt and you have to replace it fairly frequently. The alternate is dripping the e-juice onto the coils and refilling it every few hits, which gets way more tasteful and milkier hits. Every once in a while you have to replace the heating element, which requires quite a bit of work of wrapping coils around posts. There's a learning curve.
Digital ones are the ones you see with tanks. You pretty much just fill up the tank and go. Every week or so you'll have to replace the heating element, but it's a simple screw-out and screw-in. Takes thirty seconds, and they're cheap. You can also select how much power you want to go to the heating element, which changes the thickness, strength, and taste of the vapor. If you turn it up too high, it'll burn the juice though.
I recommend a digital one to start out with 'cause they're much easier to use. I've actually never owned a mechanical one, if you have questions about that I'd probably forward you to
rambo1220 'cause his are mechanical.
As for good digital vape pens, there's a lot of selection. I personally use a
Tesla, but I have friends who have Vapor4Life vapes, namely the
Dial-A-Volt model. Honestly though, a lot of it is just the quality of your atomizer. Sometimes when I don't feel like carrying around my big Tesla I just stick the tank on a generic battery (you can find 'em at any smoke shop) and tbh it works almost as well, it just doesn't have the ability to select voltage.
that post was way longer than i thought it was gonna be
