Shii electric hookah 2026 – Everything you need to know!

Nils Große •Updated August 5, 2026 •10 min

What exactly is the Shii?

At the Shisha Messe 2026 in Frankfurt this May, a brand new device was presented at the XKAH stand, and people have been talking about it ever since: the Shii. It is an electronic hookah that replaces the entire water pipe. You no longer need a stem, a base, a bowl or a smokebox. You put a single device on the table and get going.

That puts the Shii in the same category of electronic hookahs as the Ooka or the Gookah, only with a different ambition. The manufacturer writes on its site that the Shii is the first electronic hookah where you do not have to choose between smart and beautiful. Judging by our first impression at the trade fair, there is something to that.

Frankfurt was the world premiere, by the way. According to the manufacturer, this was the very first time the device was shown and the first time the brand was officially announced.

The target group, the manufacturer says, is deliberately not the hardcore of the scene. The Shii is meant for people who like the principle behind the electric XKAH Pro or XKAH Lite but do not own a hookah yet. Anyone coming over from vaping and taking a first look at hookahs runs into exactly this problem: an XKAH is only a bowl and an HMD, not a complete setup.

XKAH technology in an electronic hookah

The Shii is not a competitor to XKAH but a joint product. Behind the brand stands the Russian distributor of XKAH, and by their own account the heating plate in the device is the same one that sits in the XKAH Pro. We are one of two official XKAH importers in Germany and are in direct contact with the manufacturer. The XKAH is still the only electric system that has genuinely convinced us.

A practical side effect for anyone who already owns an XKAH: the accessories stay compatible. Pods and tongs fit, and the ecosystem around it is meant to stay the same on purpose. The controls with their button shortcuts are deliberately kept close to the XKAH as well, including the beeps.

A pre-release version of the Shii is already sitting in our office, and it convinced us on first impression. The one place we see potential trouble is cleaning, more on that further down.

How the Shii heats

The heating element sits on top, exactly where the charcoal would sit on a classic hookah. The manufacturer combines contact heat and convection and expects a session quality from it that is meant to beat a classic setup. Whether that holds up will become clear in a proper test.

Heat is adjusted across 11 levels of 5 °C each, covering a range from 265 to 315 °C. You set it with a wheel on the device, and the light ring shows you the level by colour: at 315 °C it glows dark red, orange in the middle of the range, and white at the lowest temperature. On top of that there is an automatic mode and a manual mode. If you do not want to fuss, you switch it on and smoke. If you like tinkering, you set the temperature level by level.

You can switch back and forth between the two modes mid-session. The automatic mode keeps calculating in the background. So if you smoke manually for 20 minutes and then switch back, the automatic picks up where it would have been without the detour. Handy when the phone rings. According to the manufacturer, the heating keeps the bowl alive even when nobody draws for ten to fifteen minutes.

For pre-heating you get two options: Standard for most tobaccos and Aggressive for blends that really need heat. You start it by holding the button, skip it with a long click, and the device beeps once it is ready to go.

Built for the Russian way of smoking

For many people the interesting part of the Shii is not the features themselves but the intention it was built with. According to the manufacturer, a decade of Russian hookah experience went into the device, and you notice that in three places in particular.

The temperature window sits higher

The XKAH Lite runs from 260 to 310 °C. The Shii does 265 to 315 °C. Both work with 11 levels of 5 °C, so the whole window on the Shii is shifted up by exactly one level. At the top end that gives you 5 °C more than the Lite.

That sounds like very little, but with electric systems it is the difference between "running" and "never getting going". The top level is meant for particularly strong tobaccos. The stronger a blend, the more heat it needs, and 310 °C can be the point where you hit the ceiling.

How wide the range of dark blend strengths actually is becomes clear in our Dark Blend Guide. There we sort the tobaccos on the German market into six levels, from super mild to extremely strong, and right at the top sit heavyweights like Maduro or Tangiers. In Russia the market goes further still: there are tobaccos there that sit above what counts as extremely strong here. The Shii's higher top temperature is meant for exactly those.

Aggressive instead of double pre-heating

The second pre-heat mode follows the same logic. With strong tobaccos it is common practice in Russia to pre-heat twice so the tobacco really gets going. That costs time. Aggressive replaces the detour: it takes just as long as normal pre-heating but starts out at much higher temperatures.

Session timer and draw

The session timer is set to 50 minutes. The reason is charmingly unspectacular: in Russia people usually smoke for an hour, which works out as roughly ten minutes of pre-heating plus a 50 minute session. Once the time is up and the tobacco still has something left, you simply start a new session and skip the pre-heat.

The draw was designed around that same strong style of smoking. The silicone bowl holder sits tight on purpose, because the air path has to be sealed. And because the base has a straight inner wall, a hard draw tends to splash water upwards. That is what the silicone splash guard at the bottom is there for. How open the Shii really draws is something we will tell you after the full test.

Battery, runtime and power

The Shii runs either on mains power or on battery, through a standard USB-C port with no special connector. What matters here is the wattage: for smoking and charging at the same time you need 65 W, and then the device runs practically without limit. With less power it will charge, but not do both at once. A long cable is included.

The battery is replaceable, and you can do it while smoking. It sits magnetically on the back of the device, you pull out the empty one, put in the full one, and the session carries on from the same point. How long that buffer lasts is something the sources disagree on: the manufacturer's website says three minutes, at the stand it was five.

The standard battery is good for up to 120 minutes, and a larger one is planned that reaches up to 180. Both are built to the same size, the big one simply holds more capacity and is sold separately. To start up, the device needs 10 to 15 percent of charge left, because pre-heating draws a fair amount.

Controls and design

The Shii is operated through a soft-touch encoder ring that you use to set the mode and the temperature. A light ring shows the temperature level and has its own animations for the different modes. For late nights you can switch the sound off with the silent mode.

• Retractable handle: for carrying the device or parking the mouthpiece.
• Bayonet mount: a quarter turn and the bottle and heater are locked in place.
• Magnetic connectors: on both ends of the hose, so at the mouthpiece as well.
• Water level window: with min and max markers so you do not have to guess when filling.
• Built-in diffuser: meant to make the draw smoother, but fixed in place.
• Silicone bowl holder: removable and washable on its own, dishwasher included.
• Silicone splash guard: sits at the bottom, because a straight base wall tends to splash on a hard draw.
• Swappable panels: magnetic, in two colours. Engraving and lounge branding are planned.

There will be two models, and they differ purely in colour. Technically both are identical.

The mouthpiece is another small highlight

It sounds like a detail, but in everyday use it is the part we talked about most. The handle is not fixed to the hose, it sits on a magnetic connector. And it rotates freely through 360 degrees.

Why that is more than a gimmick becomes obvious when you pass the hose around. Everyone knows the situation: the hose reaches you twisted, you untwist it, the next person twists it again. On the Shii the handle simply follows along. You pass the hose on and it lines itself up with its new position, without anything winding up somewhere. That is especially handy on the road and in group sessions.

The magnetic connectors also pay off when travelling. The mouthpiece is modular anyway and comes apart into two pieces plus the connector for easier transport. If it needs to go into a suitcase, you just take it off instead of coiling a permanently attached hose around everything.

The purge on the Shii is a genuinely beautiful thing. The smoke comes out of the base as a 360 degree waterfall. A nice detail behind it is a rim running all the way round that catches the condensation and guides it back into the base instead of letting it run down the outside of the device. Anyone who has ever wiped a puddle from under their hookah knows why that is a good idea.

On top of that, the housing stays below 50 °C according to the manufacturer. So if the device tips over, it will not burn a hole in your sofa. With a table full of glowing hookah charcoal that would look rather different.

The diffuser is fixed in place. The manufacturer does say it may offer an alternative for it later on.

Cleaning: this is where you need to pay attention

The manufacturer advertises that the device can be rinsed out with water, and the bottom part is removable. For a device with electronics inside, that is good news to begin with. But this is also where we see the most sensitive point on the whole Shii.

At the stand, the advice came with it straight away: hold the middle section at an angle while rinsing so the water does not reach the electronics. That already tells you how fine the margin is, so cleaning calls for some care.

From our point of view, something like that can absolutely go wrong in everyday use. We would not run water through the middle section in the first place. For one thing, on the device itself we would reach for distilled water or isopropanol, because tap water leaves limescale marks and isopropanol dries off much faster. For another, our first impression is that it works better to take the seal out and clean only that part in water. Molasses and condensation collect underneath it over time, and this way you get to exactly the spot that matters without flooding the device. One important point here: isopropanol does not belong on the seal. Alcohol dries silicone out over time, it turns hard and brittle and eventually stops sealing properly.

Tobacco and what is in the box

Two reusable metal pods are included, and you can pack them with any hookah tobacco you like. That sets the Shii apart from closed systems such as the Ooka, where you are tied to whatever the manufacturer sells. Your favourite blend keeps working.

According to the manufacturer the box also holds the S battery, a dust cover, the long USB-C cable, a soft-touch hose, the modular mouthpiece, tongs for removing the pod, a packing tool, a set of spare balls and the manuals.

What does the Shii cost and when is it coming?

At the trade fair the manufacturer gave a preliminary estimate of around 430 euros as the recommended retail price. How closely that matches the actual price in the end remains to be seen.

The device is definitely meant to come to Germany, which was explicitly confirmed at the fair. Germany counts as an important market for the manufacturer because people here smoke in a similar way to Russia. When exactly the Shii will reach the market here is something we will have to wait for. We will publish updates in our newsletter.

Author

Nils Große

Nils has been part of the team since 2022 and, as a copywriter and designer, turns well-founded hookah knowledge from the community and team into content that is clear, easy to understand and enjoyable to read.

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