Oh hey!
I didn't see you there.
Have you ever found yourself browsing around online and seeing something you like and think
to yourself, man, I would love to take that apart and see how it works?
That's what happened to me and this smart mug right here.
This thing has an internal battery and heater that brings it up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's pretty impressive.
I can be out here drinking hot chocolate in the middle of nowhere, and have a drink hot
for hours inside of this electronic thermos.
This video is actually sponsored by YouTube.
YouTube is launching a new channel called Unboxed, where they'll have a bunch of unboxings
from different creators.
All the latest and greatest stuff for the holidays.
My unboxings are rather unique, so I'm glad YouTube reached out.
With the holidays coming up, YouTube's new channel is a great place to find gifts for
those hard to shop for people...gifts like this smart mug that keeps your drink warm
for hours.
I'll leave a link for you in the description of this video for YouTube's new Unbox channel.
But now, let's unbox this mug and see what makes it tick.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
The Ember wireless temperature controlled mug is here.
Something I never needed or wanted, but now I just need to own one.
A normal thermos can keep drinks warm for quite a long time, but this particular Ember
mug has a built-in heater that can actively heat up liquid on the go.
Pretty cool.
Inside the first box, we get another box with an orange Ember themed color scheme.
Kind of cute.
And here's the mug itself.
Incredibly high quality cold thick plastic – had me thinking it was metal at first.
But the razor blade of truth showed the exterior was in fact plastic, as a lot of thermoses
are.
It's not a big deal in this case.
The lid unscrews with this watertight rubber seal.
During my time using this mug, it never leaked out the top.
Inside the mug is all metal and has a few more instructions tucked down inside.
Now one cool thing about this mug is the way it charges.
Inside the other half of the box we have a wireless charging station for the mug which
allows it to keep beverages hot all day long, as long as the mug is sitting on the pad.
The two golden pins match up with the golden circles on the bottom of the mug, so it doesn't
matter what orientation the mug is when you set it down.
It'll charge no matter what way it's facing.
The mug itself has a 2 hour battery life to keep things warm away from the dock.
It's pretty cool that it charges so easily – nothing ever needs to be plugged in.
The lid has a little circle inside that can be pressed down to let liquid out, and pressed
again to seal it all up and keep the heat inside.
The Ember logo is touch sensitive, and a long press of 3 seconds gets the mug to turn on.
And then I can adjust the temperature of the mug with the physical dial at the bottom.
Since this is a thermos, it can keep cold drinks cold, but it doesn't have an active
cooling system in place – just heat.
And along with everything else these days, there's an app that can control this thing
from your phone, but it's nice to see that the mug has it's own dials.
It also does Celsius if you're into that kind of thing.
Not calculus – just Celsius.
Even though those are probably about the same thing to most Americans.
Now I'm 93% sure that this mug is never supposed to be taken apart...I mean, it's a mug...but
there are electronics in here somewhere and I want to see how it works.
The expedition for screws yielded 8 underneath the bottom rubber grip.
The larger 4 screws fit my T8 bit, and the smaller 4 screws fit my T5 bit.
The removal of these screws allowed the metal plate to lift up and the bottom dial to pull
away from the bottom of the cup.
And unfortunately, this is where the salvageable disassembly ends.
There are no more screws.
Everything is permanently molded shut.
But we're going to continue anyway.
Sacrifices must be made.
I'll start by breaking the seal between the heavy thick plastic outer layer and the metal
insides of the Ember mug with my razor blade.
Then it's time to utilize the old rusty saw blade trick.
It works every time.
Now I don't blame Ember for making their mug difficult to take apart.
It's literally designed to hold liquid and things that hold liquid need to be seamless
and sealed.
So they definitely get a thumbs up for extremely solid construction in my opinion.
The plastic molding rolls all the way around the sides of the cup and seamlessly splices
at the bottom of the mug.
Finally, I was able to separate the internal guts from the outer shell and get to the interesting
stuff.
This big circular pad on the side is the thing sitting under the Ember logo as part of the
system that senses your finger and turns the mug on and off.
Right below that we have the LED panel that gives temperature readouts – both in Fahrenheit
and calculus.
And by pulling up the white insulating layer, I can get a glimpse of the liquid level indicators
running up and down the side, connecting us all the way down to the blue circuit board
at the bottom.
I'll disconnect the heater coil ribbon cable just like a little Lego, and the battery plug
with my plastic pry tool, because, like you know, we don't want to like damage the mug
or anything at this point.
The motherboard is held in place by two black plastic clasps on either side and the whole
thing can pull away from the mug base revealing the equally blue battery.
This little guy is an 1,120 milliamp hour battery that gives the mug 2 hours of heat
on the go.
Finally the bottom plastics can come loose revealing what I believe is the temperature
sensor for the liquid inside.
Remember that heater coil I disconnected earlier?
Well that's hidden under all this black foam wrapped around the base of the Ember mug.
The location makes sense.
Heat rises, so having the coils wrapped around the base of the mug is a pretty efficient
design.
Overall this is a pretty impressive system.
If everything else is getting smart these days, why not your cup too?
The design seems solid from the inside and the outside.
And that heater coil was especially interesting.
Definitely worth the tear down.
As always, thank you so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed the unboxing of this mug and the tear down.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below and don't forget to check out
YouTube's new Unboxed channel Thanks a ton for watching and I'll see you around.