GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Looking for a cup to keep that coffee hot? Need another way to have your phone interact with something?
The Ember Temperature Control Smart Mug promises to keep your drink perfectly hot, with and without your smartphone's help. But does it work?
Let's try it!
The Ember Temperature Control Smart Mug includes a ton of packaging and the mug, and the charging plate. After the initial charge, you can sync it to your smartphone with their app. The app allows presets and color changing and tells you the status of your drink. It also lets you increase and decrease the temperature. You can also use it without a phone, but it will default to 135 degrees.
For our first test, we decided to see how it would warm up a room temperature cup of water. We poured it into the cup and selected our desired temperature in the app. And it slowly started warming the water up. We tried this using just the battery. And it almost made it to 145 degrees on just the battery. But we placed it on the charging coaster, and it hit its mark. It took around an hour to warm it up to about 60 degrees.
Then we tried it out by pouring a fresh cup of coffee into it. We also poured a regular cup to compare it against. The typical cup of coffee quickly dropped in temperature, and the Ember took a bit longer, even with the mug not active. Once the mug hit our desired temperature, it turned on and held the temperature of our coffee. While the regular ceramic mug still dropped the temp. And when comparing the two mugs, the Ember stayed cool while the ceramic was hot to the touch. Even just keeping temp, the battery on the Ember quickly drained, so we put it on the charging plate. After an hour, we tasted it, and it did not taste burnt, just the same as when we first poured it.
The smart mug will wake up when you fill it and remember the last temperature setting you had it on. So no need to search for a phone in the morning. It also has tea timers for making tea with its lists of presets. So the results.
The positives:
- Keeps liquids at a solid temperature
- Will heat up cold liquids
- Nice app features
The negatives:
- Battery life
- Not dishwasher safe, so you'll need to be careful with it.
- Price
The ember mug is only for those serious about hot beverages with a price tag over $100. Since it passed all the tests, we rate this as a "buy it."
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