Are you someone who regularly forgets about their cup of tea or morning coffee, letting it get cold? If you’re sick of chucking your beverage in the microwave for a quick heat-up, the Ember Mug 2 could be the answer to your problems. This smart mug allows you to control and maintain the temperature of your beverage, so you won’t need to worry about it going cold ever again.
If you’re constantly re-heating cold coffee or, shudder, powering through lukewarm mouthfuls of tea, then the Ember Smart Mug 2 might be the answer to your problems.
What can it do and how does it work?
The mug is ceramic-coated stainless steel, which gives it a nice heft and feel. The mug’s battery and heating element are located in its base, making it bottom-heavy, which I liked. On the rare moments when I knocked it, the mug always felt stable.
The mug will stay warm for up to 90 minutes on a single charge, or all day when placed onto the charging coaster and plugged into a power source. The mug won’t start heating up until the temperature begins to drop below your desired setting, so you’ll get a longer battery life keeping a hot drink hot, instead of heating something that starts cold.
When I first took it out of the box, I was worried that it was going to be too small for my preferred size of coffee (the Mug 2 can hold 295mL). Despite seeming small, after buying large coffees from a few different local cafes, I was usually left with a mouthful of coffee after pouring the takeaway cup’s contents into the Ember Mug 2.
The charging coaster is powered by a DC cable, which surprised me as I’m so used to things being able to charge via a USB cable. It would’ve been nice to see a USB charging option, especially when I imagine one of the main places the Mug 2 would be used is at an office desk.
Like every other smart device, the Ember Mug 2 requires a companion app to control it. As far as experiences go, the Ember app is pretty easy to navigate. The moment you open it, you’re given the option to pair your mug via Bluetooth and then you’re able to set the mug’s temperature.
The Ember Smart Mug 2 has a built-in temperature sensor and a customisable range from 50°C to 62.5°C, and the app will send you a push notification once you reach your desired heat. If you aren’t sure what temperature you want to have your coffee at, the app includes a list of presets for a few popular types of hot drinks (see the above image). There’s also a tea timer, to help ensure that you’re steeping your tea for the correct length of time.
While the Mug 2 is designed to keep an already hot drink hot, I wanted to see how it went with heating something that’s gone cold. Depending on how hot you want it, you might have to wait a bit. To test how quickly the mug could heat something from a cold start, I filled it with room-temperature tap water (25°C) and adjusted the heat to the maximum setting (62.5°C). I did this a few times, on different days, and it took around 37 minutes to hit that temperature.
As far as other features go, you can customise the LED light colour, which is a nice if somewhat unnecessary feature – unless you own multiple mugs and need to differentiate them. The app also has a very short list of drink recipes, and you’re able to pair it with the Apple Health app to track your caffeine intake.
Should you buy the Ember Smart Mug 2?
I don’t think the Ember Smart Mug 2 is for me. That’s not to say it’s bad – the Ember Smart Mug 2 does one thing, but it does that one thing very well. It keeps your coffee nice and hot all day long, with very little hassle when it comes to set up. From a functional perspective, I can’t fault it.
How you consume your hot beverages is the deciding factor when it comes to buying this smart mug.
Ember Smart Mug 2 is designed for people who habitually forget about their hot drinks or people who love the cozy feel of sipping on a warm coffee as much as they like consuming it. However, at $199 a pop, this thing doesn’t come cheap. This is a case of weighing up whether or not this is worth the investment. Do you think you’ll use it a lot or only a couple of times before sticking it in the back of your cupboard?
If you only drink cafe-bought coffees and/or will bin multiple cold coffees a day, then I can see the long-term value of the Mug 2. But, if you’re like me and are the kind of person who rarely, if ever, lets their coffee get cold, then you can probably give this a skip.
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