Twenty-five thousand puffs is the sort of figure that makes you squint. It is printed on the box in a font size that suggests confidence, and it is the reason most people pick this kit up in the first place. I have spent the last several weeks using the Hayati Pro Ultra Plus as my main device — commutes, pub gardens, one very long train delay at Crewe — and I have come away with a more nuanced view than either the marketing or the sceptics allow. It is a genuinely sensible bit of kit. It is also a device that only makes sense if you understand how the pod system actually works before you buy.
Who Hayati Are, and Where the Pro Ultra Line Sits
Hayati arrived on the back of the UK big-puff boom and, unlike a lot of names from that era, stuck around. It made itself known with high-capacity disposables, then pivoted — sensibly, and slightly ahead of the regulatory curve — into rechargeable prefilled pod systems. The Pro Ultra line is the flagship of that pivot, and the hayati pro ultra plus is the version most UK shops now stock as the default.
The proposition is straightforward. Instead of throwing away a whole battery every couple of days, you keep one device and swap prefilled pods into it. The headline puff figure is not one pod’s worth; it is the total across the pods included in the kit. That distinction gets lost constantly in online chatter, and it is the single most important thing to grasp here.
Design and Build
This is a chunky device, and I mean that descriptively. It has the heft of something with a real battery inside, sits in the palm rather than the fingertips, and will not vanish into a jeans pocket the way a slim bar does. Trade-off accepted.
The finish is better than I expected. Panels are tight, there is no creak when you squeeze it, and the mouthpiece is a wide, comfortable shape rather than a hard plastic spout. Pods seat with a definite click, which matters more than it sounds: a loose connection causes most of the flooding and gurgling complaints on devices like this. Mine has been dropped twice onto tile and has the scuffs to prove it; nothing cracked, nothing leaked.
The Prefilled Pod System, Explained
Here is the part worth reading twice. The Pro Ultra Plus is a rechargeable device that takes sealed, prefilled 2ml pods — 2ml because that is the ceiling UK TPD rules impose on nicotine e-liquid, and every compliant product sold here works within it, regardless of what the front of the box shouts.
So the maths is simple: you get a device plus a set of prefilled pods, and the advertised puff total covers all of them combined. When a pod is spent, you pull it out, click a fresh one in, and carry on. No filling, no coil fitting, no fiddling with bottles. Replacement pods are sold separately, which is the whole point: the expensive, resource-heavy part stays in your pocket for months.
In daily use the swap takes about four seconds and there is no cross-contamination worth mentioning — a couple of puffs of the new flavour and the old one has gone. That beats a refillable tank, where switching from a dessert to a mint means either a muddy half-tank or a coil change.
Flavour Highlights
Hayati’s flavour list is enormous, which is a mixed blessing: plenty to explore, and plenty of filler. The house style is sweet, cold and fruit-forward, and that is where the range is strongest. Blue Razz Cherry has become my default — properly tart, with the ice giving it a clean finish rather than a numbing blast. Watermelon Ice is the safe recommendation for anyone coming off menthol cigarettes. Pink Lemonade genuinely tastes of lemonade, which is rarer than it should be.
The weaker end is predictable: dessert and confectionery profiles flatten out after a day into generic sweetness, and tobacco vapers should look elsewhere entirely. Range-wise, the hayati pro ultra plus pods come in the usual UK strength spread of 0mg, 10mg and 20mg, so you can step down over time rather than being stuck at the top. If you are moving off a twenty-a-day habit, start at 20mg — going in too low is how people end up chain-vaping and buying twice as much.
Battery and Performance
The battery is the quiet strength here. It comfortably outlasts a full day of heavy use, recharges over USB-C, and — crucially — the device keeps its output consistent as it drains. Plenty of big-puff products fade to a warm, thin whisper in their final third; this one holds steady until you are actually low.
The draw is a restricted mouth-to-lung, tight enough for ex-smokers and nowhere near the airy pull of a sub-ohm kit. Vapour is generous without being theatrical; this is not a cloud-chasing device and does not pretend to be.
Value for Money Against Disposables
This is where the argument is won. Buy single-use bars and you pay for a fresh lithium battery every couple of days, which is both expensive per millilitre and indefensible environmentally. Buying the hayati pro ultra plus pod kit costs more up front, then drops your running cost to pods only.
It will not beat a refillable setup with bottled liquid — nothing prefilled does — but that comparison misses the point: this is for people who want disposable-level convenience without disposable-level waste and cost.
Verdict
Pros: solid build with a reassuring pod connection; excellent battery life with consistent output to the end; USB-C charging; strong fruit and ice flavours; far better cost-per-millilitre than single-use bars; much less landfill.
Cons: bulky next to a slim bar; proprietary pods lock you into Hayati’s flavour list; desserts and tobaccos are weak; the headline puff number describes the whole kit, not one pod, and the packaging does little to make that clear.
Recommended, with that one caveat firmly attached. If you currently buy a disposable every other day, this is the obvious and cheaper next step.
Vaping products are strictly for adults aged 18 and over, and are intended for existing smokers and vapers only — never for non-smokers, and never for anyone under 18. Nicotine is addictive. If your goal is to stop using nicotine entirely, your GP or local stop-smoking service is the right place to start.
