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Let’s get one thing straight off the bat: the Ember Travel Mug 2+ is for people who really, really, really love drinking their coffee hot.
With an RRP of $299, this product launched in May and is almost exclusively designed for people with more money than sense.
However, if money is no object, then the Ember Travel Mug 2+ is a product that absolutely delivers on its purpose. It is easy to use, comfortable to hold and keeps your drinks hot for up to 3 hours.
But is it worth it? That will depend on just how much you love hot coffee and how much free money you have lying around.
Design
The Ember Travel Mug is massive for how much it actually holds. Capable of storing 354 ml of your favourite hot beverage, the Travel Mug 2+ measures in at 20 cm high and 8 cm across the top.
That means it’s quite tall, and that made filling it straight from my espresso machine quite difficult. It could be done, so long as I tilted the mug at just the right angle.
The mug also has a base unit “coaster”, that is used to charge it up. It has a depressed circle for securely holding the mug, with two metallic prongs that connect to the rings on the base of the unit.
One of my favourite details of the Ember Travel Mug 2+ is the lid’s leakproof design, which can disperse liquid in a full 360°. You can drink from any angle, which is, in my opinion, one of the most attractive elements of this travel mug.
On the front of the mug is a touch-sensitive LED display which allows you to see the current temperature of your beverage as well as set the desired temperature.
There is also an app for iOS and Android that you can use to control the temperature of the drink remotely, and also set time for steeping different types of tea.
The built-in battery has enough charge to keep your drink warm for up to 3 hours, though despite my best efforts, I never needed it to stay warm that long.
Ember says it can keep your drink at a stable temperature between 50 °C and 62.5 °C, and you can define exactly what temperature you’d like for your drinks to the half-degree.
When you finish your drink travel mug will automatically go into sleep mode, which should help keep your battery charged longer
The mug also supports Apple’s “Find My” technology, which means that you should never lose it. This is important considering you have to spend almost $300 to buy this in the first place.
Performance
When you consider that this product is designed to keep drinks hot, then the truth is that it does its job perfectly.
Drinking coffee on a Saturday morning at sport, the drink was hot and comfortable to drink as I sat watching my son play soccer.
It worked just as well another night with a peppermint tea despite the temperature dropping to under 10 °C
As I said above, I particularly like the 360° leakproof lid. You push it down to drink and then push it down again to seal. It screws in securely to the top of the mug, so you never feel like your hot coffee is going to spill everywhere,
Unfortunately, the Travel Mug 2+ isn’t dishwasher safe, as you may expect given the internal battery.
Instead, it’s hand wash only. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but is also kind of a pain given my regular travel mug can sit in the top rack of my dishwasher.
My usual mug won’t keep my drink warm for three hours, but it will keep it warm for a little while, and in most situations in my life that’s all I need.
The charging coaster is discrete enough in itself, but I need to call out that the AC adapter is monstrously large for such a compact device. I found I had to regularly unplug it because it took up so much space in my power board.
Considering I was reviewing a $300 travel mug I never really felt the need to use Apple’s Find My functionality when I was actually using the cup. But testing it for this review, I found it worked well as you would expect.
Verdict
The truth is there is no way I would spend $300 of my money to buy a travel mug to keep my drinks warm for three hours.
But that said, I really liked the Ember Travel Mug 2+ it does exactly what it’s designed to do exceptionally well.
It’s easy to drink from, keeps your drinks hot as expected, and it’s easy enough to clean (though you have to do that manually).
So if you’re deciding whether to buy for yourself or not, you just need to consider how much you value hot coffee sentence. If you can’t cope with the idea of a cold coffee and $300 may not be too larger priced to pay.
Where to buy the Ember Travel Mug 2+ online
The Travel Mug 2+ is available to buy through JB Hi-Fi and Ember directly.
Ember supplied the product for this review.
