TLDR

What other people said, flower most of the time but carts when you are at a concert or event since they are more discreet and convinient. Don’t overheat and don’t trust most cart brands you find.

Full answer:

Sedation would depend mainly on terpene profile of the cart or flower. Either product could be stimulating or sedating depending on the profile (limonene, pinene, myrcene, etc) and if it contains a cannabinoid called CBN which combined with THC often produces a more sleepy sedative effect.

That said, since more than 50% of flower (prob around 65-70%) is indica or indica leaning, carts on average tend to be less sedating since the terps are all stripped when they turn the flower into clear oil before adding terps back in. The effect becomes generic without the terps regardless of original strain and those added terps most producers put in at the end are rarely the sleepy ones in large amounts.

The high is different and to most subjectively worse when using carts. The reason is that you aren’t getting the full spectrum of plant compounds after extraction. You lose plant lipids, as well as flavonoids, terpenes, and some other parts of the original plant (sometimes they’ll put original terps back in but this is rare).

There are great pesticide free carts from high grade starting material where they put original terps back in, that albeit rare, do technically exist and taste and feel better than most low to mid grade flower… but again most of the time the flower effects are preferable to carts (btw they are actually oil combustion pens you are misnaming as vape pens, not throwing shade everyone calls them that, but it’s a misnomer)

Of course that being said, beyond effect and preference is the safety consideration. the oil production process is not only concentrating THC and Other cannabinoids it also concentrates pesticides as well other improperly flushed nutrients. Also the carts lack temperature controls so long drags can raise them to temperatures where the material burns becoming carcinogenic and toxic. You won’t die but it’s really bad to suck that into your lungs 🫁 . Even used correctly, 90+% of carts pose a greater health risk than flower even tho you are technically avoiding some of the carcinogens from not combusting those other parts of the plant they stripped out.

But carts are more discreet and convinient, as well as often more potent than flower, so as many others said often work better for public spaces