Today, we're gonna be reviewing The Ember Smart Mug.
And I'll warn you now,
this review might induce a little bit of outrage.
So, why would this product or this review
make you a little bit angry?
Well, let's start with a few things.
This is a smart mug.
It connects to your phone via Bluetooth.
It costs pretty much 80 pounds.
One of the first things that I did after getting this
was connect it to my phone,
and update the firmware on my coffee cup.
Now, all of those things
do make this seem completely ridiculous.
I'm gonna top it all,
I really like it.
Let's explain a little bit more about what this does,
and why it does it and why on earth
I think that this is actually quite a good product.
So, the way this mug works, it is a smart mug,
it has a battery in the base,
as well as an element and a thermometer.
And you tell it what temperature you want your coffee to be.
You put your coffee in the cup,
and it will cool to your desired temperature.
It'll notify you that it's your desired temperature,
and it will hold it at that temperature.
That seems a little bit ridiculous,
and I can already hear you telling me
how nice it is when coffee cools down,
and you can enjoy all the flavors all the more,
and letting coffee cool is a good thing,
and why would you wanna heat it?
And don't thermoses already exist?
And what is wrong with me,
why would I spend 80 pounds of my own money
on a coffee cup like this?
Those are all valid questions.
And frankly, I was a little skeptical of this at the start.
I put out on Twitter to see if anyone had one,
what their experiences were and was somewhat surprised
when there was a universal positive response to it.
And at that point I had to pull the trigger,
I had to buy one.
And I'll be honest, owning one of these will mean
that your colleagues, friends and loved ones
will mock you mercilessly for owning an incredibly expensive
smart mug that holds coffee at a particular temperature
of your choosing.
So I'll give you the moment where this went from being
an amusing novelty, an excess of the internet of things
to being something that I was quite grateful
to have on my desk.
Now this, I think this has a specific audience
which are people who often work at desks
and are easily distracted by stuff and that's me.
I'll be honest, I often work at a desk, not always
but I am very easily distracted by lots of different things.
Let me set the scene.
I sat at my desk, someone came in and poured me a mug full
of filter coffee.
And it was a preview roaster,
kind of a test development rose to be new coffee
that I was pretty excited to taste
and they wanted some feedback on it
and it was too hot to drink,
I was working away and then I got called
out of where I was working to go and do some other stuff.
And it took way longer than I expected, 10, 15 minutes.
And I came back and I sat down and I was a little sad
'cause I'd missed really that kind of peak moment
for capturing flavor notes, where it's not hot,
but it's certainly not cold.
And yet I reached across, grab my cup,
and there it was this perfect temperature cup of coffee
just sat waiting for me.
It had not particularly degraded in the 10 or 15 minutes
that I've been gone even though it had been actively heated
but it had been very gently, very lightly heated.
It tasted great, I really enjoyed it.
And I had this moment of like,
wow, I'm grateful to own this.
Now this is, I know this is a little absurd,
it's all a little absurd.
I kind of get why people who buy these
come to really like them.
Now, if you're someone who has the time and space and energy
and work flow in your life
to brew a delicious cup of coffee, to sit down,
to focus on it, capture it at it's perfect moment
in time and temperature and enjoy it, I envy you.
I am not that person, I live a life full of distractions.
So it's all too easy for me to miss my favorite moment.
And that's kind of sad.
Now this has sort of saved that more than enough times
in a week for me to feel like this was a good idea.
Now, this really is only gonna live on my desk,
it's battery powered, right?
So the way it works is it charges on this little source
of type thing that is plugged into a wall socket.
So I suspect this doesn't live in people's houses really,
I suspect this lives where people work.
It lasts I think a couple of hours,
depending on how hot you want your coffee to stay.
There's a little chart that they give you
when you buy one of these.
So, you know, I'm generally trying to keep my coffee around
the very early fifties in terms of degrees Celsius.
I can't do the other, you know, temperature.
I'm just not into it.
I'm just not, I'll say it now.
I can't do Fahrenheit.
I just can't do it.
So this sits 50, 52, 54 if I'm feeling like I need
a little bit more warmth in my coffee.
And I get it, I get that if you saw me with this,
would want to tease me and you should, and that's okay.
You should absolutely tease anyone who spent that much money
on one of these
but they're also having a kind of a good time with it.
It's hot.
You know, I'm just deeply, I'm troubled by this.
I'm troubled by it.
Let's not say that this is a flawless product.
Let's talk through a few issues that I have with this thing.
And the most obvious one, I think to just about anyone
aside from the price, 'cause it is expensive
is the way that it charges.
Now, it's pretty simple.
There is a two rings here that meet two contactors.
So it doesn't matter which way around you have the mug,
you don't have to have it in a certain position
as long as just on the base.
Now this nature of charging means that
this is not dishwasher safe.
Now I'm sort of stunned that they didn't go for charging
or something like it, and they went through these contactors
because not making this dishwasher safe,
seems like a massive error.
People have put these through dishwashers
and they have survived.
It will certainly be fine with a hand-wash.
It just seems like a weird design decision.
Second thing, you actually lose a reasonable amount
of capacity in the mug to the battery and the heating unit.
So it looks like a decent sized mug
but it's actually quite a bit smaller on the inside
than you think it is.
Capacity is not a huge issue for me.
It's that moment where I pick it up
and I think I have more coffee than I do,
and then I find I don't and I'm sad.
I don't like to feel sad
over things as stupid as not having enough coffee
in my coffee cup.
So it will trick you now and again into thinking
it's fuller than it is.
This one's black, so when you look in the top,
that doesn't really help you either.
Now, finally, this hasn't happened to me.
I haven't had this long enough, but I have read
that some people possibly with earlier models had issues
with the inside coating flaking off.
As I said, that hasn't happened to me
but it is something that I will be paying attention to
and worrying about.
Inevitably, there's an app
and the app is a little over-engineered.
I'm not gonna lie,
I do quite like having a little notification appear
to tell me that my coffee is the perfect temperature
to drink and the control wheel inside
to choose my temperature is very simple to use.
It does offer you some more presets.
You can do coffee consumption tracking,
I don't care about any of that stuff.
And so here we are, The Ember Mug.
It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous.
You're looking at this and you're thinking that's ridiculous
and you're right, but that doesn't mean I can't like it
or that you wouldn't like it too.
Is this the single best way you can invest 80 pounds
or in the US $80 on your coffee experience?
No, no, it's probably not.
Does it meet the needs of every person?
Not even slightly, but if you, like me,
often are distracted, really really love coffee
and kind of wanna experience that kind of sweet spot
for as long as possible, this is a solution
and I'm not sure there's a better solution out there.
I have come to accept that the usefulness of thermoses
is pretty limited.
They keep things incredibly hot
to the point that that drives me kind of insane
when I've driven all the way to the airport
and I still can't drink my coffee.
So maybe there's a middle ground.
Now they do a travel version of this
which is an intense amount of money.
It's like 150 pounds.
That is way too much money.
I am not spending that kind of money on a travel cup.
That's just not happening, but on this little mug,
well, I've spent it now, it's too late, I'm committed.
And maybe, you know, that's clouding my review
but I had been surprised
and a little bit delighted at the ridiculousness
and the wonderfulness of The Ember mug.
If you have one of these, I do wanna hear from you.
Am I alone in this?
Let me know in the comments
if you are watching this and thinking,
this is the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard,
give it a thumbs up.
Let me know, let me know.
If you have seen something similar to this,
I wanna see it.
I am curious.
This has surprised me and I thought I had to talk about it.
As always, thank you so much for watching
and I hope you have a great day.