DynaTec Orion Portable Induction Heater

The DynaTec Orion comes in a handy and portable zippered case, inside this case a molded shell has spaces for the Orion itself, the USB-C charging cable, the included small SnapStash, and a rectangular area to keep your DynaVaps and other small accessories tightly organized.

At about 4.5” long, 2.25” wide, 1.25” tall, it is plain to see that this is a truly portable induction heater, it might not be small enough to fit in the front pocket of your jeans, but it will easily slip into a coat pocket or any bag that you have. Compared to an iPhone 11 Pro Max, it has a much smaller footprint, and it has roughly the thickness of the bottom two layers of a brilliant cut grinder. I would say it’s like holding a large deck of cards.

The Orion is super light, when I weighed one it was actually slightly lighter than a brilliant cut grinder at under 150g. I think they could even make it a little heavier, a little extra weight would just be reassuring in the hand.

The DynaTec Orion charges via USB-C, which is great to see, and it will charge from completely dead to full in about 90 minutes. You can use any phone charger or laptop to charge it, but if you have a really high-powered USB-C charger that outputs more than 5V or 2A it may be too powerful to charge the Orion. Personally, I haven’t tried it with anything that didn’t work, but it’s something to be aware of if you’re having issues.

They have designed the unit so that you consistently get at least 50 hits per battery charge, during my testing I got 66 hits from a full battery. Some of those hits I pulled out right at the click, some were shorter heat cycles from doing a hit right before, and then some of them were heating it up for a few seconds longer to get a bigger hit. Overall, I think the claim of 50 hits per battery is pretty fair and I couldn’t imagine you getting less.

That’s a substantial amount of hits for a portable induction heater. If you imagine that you’re doing two hits an hour, 16hrs a day, it would last you at least a day and a half. If you’re doing ten hits a day, that’s five days worth of battery life, so overall I think it’s very practical for out of the house use.

Keep in mind, if you leave your device in standby mode and allow it to shut itself off after seven minutes of no activity, that will have some impact on your battery life. It doesn’t use a lot of battery in standby mode, but for the absolute best battery life, turn it off when you’re done with your hit.

The Orion is encased in a hard plastic shell, and despite its light weight it feels pretty solid. Mine hasn’t experienced any major drops, it has however had a couple of minor ones and they haven't affected its operation. Keep in mind that this is a sensitive piece of electronics, so dropping it should be avoided, we all know accidents happen though.

Beside the USB-C charging port you will find the power button, you click it three times to turn the Orion on, and helpfully it has three little dots here, in case you haven’t used it in a while and forget how many times you need to click it. Another three clicks will turn it off.

On top of the heater there’s a magnet which is useful for holding your DynaVap in between sessions. It also does a great job of cooling off your vape so you can do another hit faster. One thing that’s really cool about this magnet is that it really wants to pull that DynaVap right to dead center. When your DynaVap is placed on the edge of the magnet, if you give it a nudge it kind of jumps to the center point, it was designed like that for the very particular/obsessive ones among us who like their equipment just so. I wouldn’t have noticed this if it wasn’t pointed out to me, but once you notice it it’s a really cool subtle feature.

Above the magnet you will see the LED light which is in the shape of a DynaVap cap. A very cool little detail, they could’ve just used a plain LED, but I think using the cap design adds so much more personality. This LED changes color to indicate when the device is heating up, as well as the battery level.

The first cool feature, and probably my favorite thing about the heater, is that when you look into the heating chamber it’s just a solid high temperature material surface; you don’t see the usual sort of circuitry and clicking mechanism. This is because the DynaTec Orion has a feature called intelligent activation, meaning that it senses when you put your DynaVap tip into the chamber and automatically starts applying heat. This is an ingenious feature, and for me it really changes the entire experience of the device. Instead of holding it in there and waiting for the click, you can just set your DynaVap down in there and do other things while you wait, for example I was making a note on my toke log. Then when you hear the click you take it out and hit it. I absolutely love this feature and it makes using the device virtually foolproof.

You’ll notice that once the intelligent activation engages, rather than the LED simply turning red to let you know that it’s heating, it instead turns red and blinks. This is so that if you’re in an environment where you can’t hear the click or even feel it, you can count the number of blinks of the LED to know when to hit your DynaVap. I mainly use it to count how many blinks I want to go past the click if I’m going for a bigger hit, it’s an extremely useful feature.

Another cool feature is that the Orion is designed to function as a tactile amplifier, meaning that if you hold it while your DynaVap is heating you will be able to physically feel the click, this adds greatly to the accessibility of the device. To make use of this feature, when inserting your DynaVap, instead of placing it dead center in the heating chamber, simply have it touch the side of the chamber.

Finally, the last thing I really like about this device is that they have tuned it to have a more aggressive heating profile compared to the Apollo 2 or The Rover. It applies more heat to the DynaVap in a shorter period of time, and as a result I tend to do one hit rather than my usual two when using this heater. Keep in mind that this can be affected by numerous variables, such as what type of tip and cap you are using, how recently your last hit was, the ambient room temperature etc. Variables aside, the Orion definitely heats up faster and as a result I need two hits less often.