Last Updated on: 12th April 2018, 03:24 pm
I have a cup or two of tea or hot chocolate pretty much every morning. And because I am an easily distracted person, sometimes I forget that it’s sitting there and by the time I want a sip, it’s freezing and I have to heat it up. So the thought of a mug that would keep my drink at just the right temperature for hours at a time is kind of an appealing one. That’s where something like the Ember Ceramic Smart Mug might come in handy, were it not for literally everything about it.
- Right off the bat, the damn thing costs 80 dollars. If you’re willing to spend that much money on a single mug without batting an eye, you either have too much money or you’re the reason for our country’s horrible household debt statistics.
- You have to control it with an app. It’s morning. I’m tired. Or maybe I’m trying to plow my way through a project on a dreary afternoon or in the dead of night. Either way, I have other things on my mind, and this is a cup. Put a temperature dial on that shit.
- Speaking of the app, I am going to include this passage from the review in the hopes that all of you will spend the next few minutes seething in a manner similar to that in which I am right now.
Most of the time the Bluetooth re-connected with no problems, but on a couple of occasions it refused to pair back up until I toggled my iPhone’s wireless off and on. Ember is meant to ping you with a notification when it has reached the preset temperature, too, though often that never actually arrived.
There is not a single thing about those two sentences that doesn’t make me want to beat someone half to death with either the iPhone or the mug. But if I decide to, I’ll probably do it with the phone, because…
- The mug is fragile and small.
The matte white ceramic can scratch easily if you’re aggressive with a metal spoon, too. Ember says you should hand-wash it, and you’ll want to do that with a fairly soft cloth or sponge in order to avoid scrapes.
My biggest issue, however, is the capacity. Fill it to the brim and you’ll get around 10 oz in there; more reasonably, figure on a usable 8 oz. I probably drink too much coffee, but even so I found I was refilling the mug more frequently than with my regular, larger cups. - And apparently the battery sucks too, which leaving aside the fact that it is a cup and as such should not require a battery, kind of defeats the whole purpose, no?
You might have rolled your eyes when your parents told you to use a coaster, but figure on using the Ember charging coaster frequently if you want to keep drinking perpetually-hot beverages through the day. Ember’s roughly hour-long battery life is at the default 130-degree temperature. If you crank it up higher, expect to see that drop: at 145-degrees, figure on around 35 minutes of use. Ambient temperature in the room and how much liquid is left will have an impact, too.
Broken record time, but seriously, who in the blue hell is this for? What’s wrong with dropping a few bucks on a decent insulated travel mug or just getting up and trucking your ass and your regular glass mug to the microwave? You’re probably sitting too much anyway.
