Let’s not bury the lead: $80 is a lot of money to spend on a coffee mug. And I can almost see your eyes roll as I justify the hefty price by saying, “But it’s a connected coffee mug!” Despite all that, I decided to get my wife the Ember Ceramic Mug for Christmas, and honestly, it’s worth every penny.
The Ember is a high-tech cup that allows you to keep your hot beverages at a precise, consistent temperature. Since your beverages don’t cool down, there’s no more slogging through the last bits or microwaving cold coffee. Using the accompanying app on your phone, you tell Ember what temperature you want your coffee (or whatever drink), and the mug does the rest.
Yes, this sounds indulgent, but as my wife will attest, it’s changed the way she drinks coffee.
Out of the box, the Ember comes with the cup and the charging saucer. Both feel solid and well built. The mug is a good size and has the right heft. There’s an LED light at the base of the mug that gives you a charging status and serves as a temperature indicator.
There’s also an accompanying app to control the temperature of your mug. Installation of the app as well as it pairing with the mug was a snap, and worked without hassle. The slider screen to pick your temperature is intuitive and easy to set.
The biggest surprise of the day came from how much my wife liked her Ember. She was used to enjoying the first sips of the morning, and then diminishing returns as she slowly made her way through the first cup, eventually microwaving half a cup, altering the taste.
With the Ember, the last sip was as perfect as the first, as evidenced by the fact that she unwittingly downed about four cups of coffee on Christmas morning. Just as my colleague Ashley loved the (even more expensive) Ember Travel Mug, the Ember coffee mug was something my wife never knew she needed.
I recognize that half a cup of cold(er) coffee in the morning is a very high-class problem. And there is also something to the fact that if coffee is something you enjoy every morning, you should enjoy every last drop of it.
I got the Ember mug for Christmas and LOVE it!!!! I must say that it did indeed encourage me to drink more coffee than I usually do but every drop was amazing!
I wish I could say the same thing. I have had terrible trouble getting it to connect to bluetooth, and support is available via email only. You cannot call them. I’m thinking of returning mine.