An electronic cigarette vaporiser includes a heating element 35 for heating an e-liquid and a microcontroller； the microcontroller determines the type and/or characteristics of the e-liquid being used and uses that as an input to automatically control the power delivered to the heating element to heat the e-liquid in a manner suitable for that specific type of e-liquid. In one or more embodiments, the e-liquid is from a cartridge and that cartridge includes a record of the type of e-liquid stored in the cartridge and/or its characteristics and the microcontroller reads that record or is provided data from that record. The record may comprise a chip or memory. Water content may be used as a variable for the type of e-liquid. The vaporiser may also contain or co-operate with an electronics module that monitors the resistance of the heating element and used an inference of temperature derived from said resistance as a control input. The module may infer the temperature from resistance using data that has been empirically obtained for the specific design of heating element. The module may also apply multiple techniques to ensure the heating element is at its optimal temperature and may weigh the signals from each technique.
