I owned a glo Pro for about a year before I started paying attention to what was actually happening inside it. The battery went from a full day to most of a day. The preheat, which used to be a non-event, became the part of the ritual I noticed most. And somewhere in the middle of all that I had quietly stopped buying glo Neo sticks in the six-pack and started buying them one at a time, which is not a thing I noticed I was doing until I was already doing it.
That last part is the actual subject of this comparison. Not the spec sheet. Both devices are well specified and both will do the job. The question is what happens to your habits, and your money, when you move between them.
The GEN2.0 figures come from our own specification sheet. Everything attributed to British American Tobacco and the glo comes from their published specifications. I have not opened either device.
Where the two devices actually differ
| Spec | HEATX GEN2.0 | glo Pro | Glo Hyper Pro |
| Weight | 69 g | 98 g | 150 g |
| Size | 34.8 × 20.6 × 92.5 mm | 82 × 43 × 21 mm | 9.6 × 3.6 × 2.1 cm |
| Battery | 1800 mAh | 3000 mAh | 2580 mAh |
| Charging | About 90 minutes | About 2 hours | Not published |
| Sticks per charge | 18 | About 20 | Not published |
| Heating | 360° resistive, 0–320 °C | Ceramic chamber, about 280 °C | Not published |
| Preheat | 30 seconds | 20 sec standard / 10 sec BOOST | Not published |
| Session | 240 seconds | 4 min standard / 3 min BOOST | Not published |
| Display | Battery, 16+13 puff count, preheat | No screen | No screen |
| Stick format | ILUMA / TEREA format | glo Neo only | glo Neo only |
| Controls | Insert self-start or button start | Single button, vibration feedback | Not published |
| App / Bluetooth | None | Not published | Not published |
The Hyper Pro is worth a mention because it is the odd one out. It is heavier than either device in this comparison at 150 g, and it has a smaller battery than the glo Pro, which tells you these numbers across the category are not standardised in any useful way.
Heat from the sides versus heat from a cavity
These are two genuinely different answers to the same question, and neither is the wrong answer.
The glo Pro uses a ceramic heating chamber. The stick sits inside a heated cavity, the walls heat up, and the heat arrives at the tobacco from every direction at once because the tobacco is surrounded by hot ceramic. Our documentation calls this an about 280 °C chamber.
The GEN2.0 uses a patented 360 degree circumferential resistive element. Instead of a cavity, there is a heating element that wraps around the length of the stick. The heat still arrives from all sides, but the mechanism differs: it is direct contact with the stick's circumference rather than indirect conduction through a chamber wall.
In practice this is the difference between a device that is optimised for one stick format and one that is not. The glo Pro runs on glo Neo sticks and only glo Neo sticks. The GEN2.0 accepts ILUMA and TEREA format sticks. That is a bigger practical difference than either heating method, and I will come back to it.
There is a third thing about circumferential heating that I only appreciated after a few weeks of use. Because the element wraps the stick, a stick you have already used once can go back in for a second pass without any rotation, extraction or re-seating. The heat path does not need the stick in a particular orientation. You get 16 puffs on the first pass and 13 on the second, 29 in total, from one stick.
Preheat and session length, side by side
The glo Pro is faster here and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Ten seconds in BOOST mode, against thirty seconds on the GEN2.0. That is a real difference and in a specific situation it matters: standing on a platform with a train coming, twenty seconds is a long time.
Ten seconds of BOOST preheat versus thirty seconds is a twenty-second gap, and the glo Pro is genuinely the better device if the session is short and spontaneous. That is worth saying plainly because everyone who compares these two devices for you will only mention battery size.
Session length runs the other way. The glo Pro gives you 4 minutes standard, 3 minutes in BOOST. The GEN2.0 gives you 240 seconds, which is 4 minutes exactly. The second pass is where the difference opens up. On the glo Pro, a session is a session. On the GEN2.0 you can run the same stick again for another 13 puffs without doing anything to it.
So the honest summary is this. The glo Pro gets you going faster and stops when it stops. The GEN2.0 takes longer to warm up and lets you finish what you started.
Weight and shape, which is not a trivial difference
The glo Pro is 98 g. The GEN2.0 is 69 g. Twenty-nine grams sounds like nothing until you have carried both in the same pocket for a week, and then it sounds like quite a lot.
Then there is the shape. The glo Pro is 82 × 43 × 21 mm, which means it is short, wide and flat. It sits in a jacket pocket well and disappears in a way the GEN2.0 does not. The GEN2.0 is 92.5 mm long and 20.6 mm thick, so it goes into a pocket flat against your leg, and at that width of 34.8 mm it is narrower than the glo Pro by a fair margin.
This is entirely a matter of which pocket you have. A shirt pocket suits the glo Pro. A trouser pocket suits the GEN2.0. My own preference is the flatter one, because the glo Pro shape has a habit of sliding down a jacket pocket and landing face down.
The ecosystem question, which is the real decision
Everything above is a spec comparison, and honestly, on specs these two devices are close enough that you could justify either one. The difference that actually determines whether you will be happy is the stick.
The glo Pro runs on glo Neo. That means a proprietary ecosystem. There is nothing wrong with that, and the argument for it is straightforward: glo Neo is widely stocked, so you will always be able to buy it, and you will always be able to get it serviced or replaced through an established supply chain. If you travel a lot within Europe, that reliability is worth a lot. If you want a device that slots into a supply chain you already know works, the glo Pro is the safe answer.
The GEN2.0 takes ILUMA and TEREA format sticks, which is the format most of the wider heated tobacco category uses and the same format the IQOS ILUMA runs on. Moving to it does not trap you in a single manufacturer's chain. It also means you are one step closer to the device most people searching for an alternative to IQOS already end up looking at.
What you give up for that freedom is a guaranteed future. There is no loyalty scheme tied to your device, and there is no manufacturer standing behind future stick availability in the way there is with a house ecosystem. That is a real consideration and I would not skip past it.
The parts I would not buy again
Two things.
The glo Pro's shape I have already covered and it is a preference, not a fault. Whatever.
The GEN2.0 has no app, no Bluetooth and no firmware updates. There is nothing to connect to your phone and nothing will ever be added to it. If the connected side of the glo Pro matters to you, you are giving up something real, and I would not want to hear you discover that after the purchase.
Beyond that, the GEN2.0 is 1800 mAh against the glo Pro's 3000 mAh, and on paper the glo Pro wins the endurance comparison at about 20 sticks against 18. Those are close numbers and they are the closest the comparison gets. Everything else, the heating philosophy, the shape, the stick format and the second pass, separates them more clearly than the battery does.
Which one I would buy
If you want the fastest start, the shortest session and a device with a screen that shows you nothing, the glo Pro is a good product and the ten second BOOST preheat is a nicer experience than 30 seconds.
If you want your existing ILUMA and TEREA sticks to keep working, if you want 29 puffs out of a single stick, if you want a device that fits flat in a pocket at 69 grams and 20.6 mm thick, and if you would rather not run an app to use a device, buy the GEN2.0. The 360 degree heating and the two-pass design are the reason, and the full spec sheet and photos are on chillmistvape.com.
What I would not do is switch purely on the numbers, because the numbers are nearly identical. Switch on the stick format if your sticks are ILUMA format. Switch on the shape if you know which pocket it goes in. Those are the two decisions that do not get made again.
Health, law and where to buy
Heated tobacco is not harmless. Avoiding combustion reduces exposure to a number of the toxicants in cigarette smoke, but it still delivers nicotine, and nicotine is addictive. Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing in this article claims that either device is safe.
If you do not already use tobacco or nicotine, there is no reason to start. Age limits and tax rules differ by country and change, so check where you live. Buy from licensed sellers only. The glo and British American Tobacco figures used here come from the manufacturer's published specifications; the GEN2.0 figures come from our own specification sheet. Compare the numbers, then decide which device fits how you actually use a heated tobacco device.