It’s cliche at this point to make fun of the overabundance of “connected” items (like a fork). But from the looks of this Co.Design piece, the new Ember connected coffee mug might actually be… useful?
Designed by Ammunition, the Ember ceramic mug keeps your beverage heated to a precise temperature (up to 145 degrees) for up to eight hours. No more reheating cold coffee in the microwave! For safety reasons, the heating stays active if it senses movement and shuts down after two hours of sitting idle.
The mug uses Bluetooth to talk to your phone, where you can control the temperature via an app. The Ember Ceramic Mug follows Ammunition’s previous release, the Ember Travel Mug, which lets you keep your beverages at a precise temperature with both heat and cooling capabilities (we liked that one too!).
All this temperature-controlled convenience doesn’t come cheap. The Ember Travel Mug will set you back $149, and the new Ceramic Mug is *only* $79. But if you consider that coffee drinkers have a daily habit, that’s just about twenty-one cents a day (after a year). That easily beats multiple trips to Starbucks.
While there may be an overabundance of connected devices, the Ember Mug seems like something people will actually connect with.
From their support site:
> *Hand wash only. Do not use the dishwasher to clean your Ceramic Mug.
Price aside, this is where it often falls apart for me. You’re sacrificing one convenience in ease of cleaning for another (maintaining temperature). The idea is intriguing, but the price needs to come down, and they need to figure out a way of making these water and heat resistant so they can be cleaned in the dishwasher instead of festering, unwashed by lazy desk jockeys like me.
True, it would be nice to be dishwasher safe, but I’m fine running a soapy sponge across a mug. Lots of things aren’t dishwasher safe for various tech and non-tech reasons.