Ember Mug Review for 2026

TL;DR of our Ember Mug 1.0 review: This cup that keeps coffee hot does keep your drink warm, but may change its flavor subtly. The Ember Mug works pretty well, but the battery charging and need for an app might also annoy you. On the whole, I’m happy I have one but I honestly mostly use normal mugs. You can buy one on Amazon.

With that out of the way for those who didn’t want to read 1000+ words on the topic, let’s settle in friends and go deep into the specifics to get to the bottom of if you should buy an Ember mug (for yourself, a friend, lover, etc.)—or just use the microwave or a thermal cup. That’s the real heat (😜) here, in this author’s humble opinion about the popular coffee mug warmer called the Ember.

PSST! We’re testing version 2.0 (and the Next Mug)

Stay tuned as your fave coffee nerds update this guide with the newer version of the Ember Mug, plus how its performance compares to one of its top competitors, the Next Mug.

Spoiler: That lid makes a HUGE difference.

Read the results of our heated coffee mugs comparison here »

The GREAT Things About an Ember Mug

For the uninitiated, the promise of the Ember mug is pretty simple: What if your coffee (or tea, lemon water, any warm beverage) was always at the perfect temperature? Is a self-heating mug be as good as it sounds? The idea is pretty compelling no doubt. Especially for someone like me who drinks half of every cup of coffee hours after it was brewed.

An Ember mug will keep appropriately HOT!

An Ember mug (especially when on its charging puck, more on that in the Downsides section below) does live up to that promise. Select your ideal temperature of 135F and your coffee will just be right at that temperature for hours as you slowly sip. No need to think about it. Your coffee just magically never cools to an unpleasantly room-temperature level and instead is always perfect.

It does change the game. I actually find that when I’m drinking out of my Ember mug, I intentionally slow down my consumption of the coffee. Why waste the opportunity by taking a few extra sips of my coffee now when I know I can come back in 17 minutes (or 74) and it’ll still be at that same ideal temperature? So I go a little slower—which is both good to moderate my caffeine intake and to also make my day a little more pleasant.

Embers are pretty

Obviously different people like different things. Few thing are more true about humanity than that. But personally I’m rather fond of the kind of minimalist-futurist aesthetic I’d describe my Ember mug as having.

The shapes are really pleasant, and the size of my mine (at 10oz) is just about perfect for my usual coffee cup. It’s pleasantly full when I take my 300mLs from my V60 brew every morning, and it looks great as it steams down to the appropriate temperature where it’ll just be infinitely and effortlessly held at.

Tip: Keep volume in mind when shopping! People who regularly fill those bucket-size coffee cups might not find any Ember size adequate—and will definitely prefer the 14oz size.

The mug I use (and photographed here) is a hand-me-down promotion. So, no, yours won’t come with my awesome You Are Enough sticker out of the box, but the monogram that I covered with the sticker also looked great. And the simplicity of the un-monographed ones is actually my favorite.

» Learn more: The Guide to Onyx Coffee, One of the Best Coffee Roasters in the U.S.

Look cool on video calls ;p

This is a bit of a specific expansion on the above point.

I had a few co-workers a few years back who had weird gold rings on the bottom of their mugs. I couldn’t help noticing these during remote-work sessions. It looks different, and to my mind way cooler to have those rings on the bottom of the mug. Sure, a “Don’t talk to me before I have my coffee” printed ceramic mug is cool. But it’s got nothing on the quiet flex of those gold rings on the bottom of the cup.

The rings I’m referring to are how the Ember is charged by the puck. The puck has two little “fingers”/”needles”/etc which “mate” with the double gold rings on its bottom to charge. So part of the reason that this is especially cool is that they’re functional rings, not just decorative ones. 🤓

Downsides of the Ember Mug

While overall I’m quite happy with my magically-keeping-drinks-warm mug, no Ember mug review would possibly be doing its job without grappling with the downsides. And they’re not trivial. This $100ish mug is totally worth having, but not without downsides.

You Have to Worry About a Battery

The thing that most annoys me about the Ember mug is that it’s another device whose charge I have to manage. And particularly because the one I have is a slightly-older v1 mug, I’m always finding that if I don’t ACTIVELY think through making sure I put the mug where I have a charging puck, it’ll unpleasantly surprise me by being cold at some point.

Like a normal mug?! YUCK! Can I speak to your manager?

Admittedly, it usually has gone cold because I just left it sitting on my side table (without a charging puck) for an hour. And mine seems to die after something like 40 minutes of actual heating.

The App is Just-OK

The Ember app—which is mostly required if you want to futz with setting some of your beverages to something like 130F and others to 135—is just OK. It’s not a bad app. I’ve dealt with a lot of actively bad apps in my time using a smartphone. And it’s not fair or accurate to say that Ember’s app has ever been (in my 3ish years of using it) bad.

But it’s also never really felt “great” or “fun” to me.

For a while, I didn’t realize there was this “presets” feature (pictured at right) because it was hidden under a kind of opaque arrow. I only discovered it existed in my 4th use of the app in like 2022. And I’m a person that most others in my life turn to for tech support! (In their defense, that particular design choice is also now gone from the app.)

Hand-wash only!

This one’s probably obvious and intuitive to most people: an electronic device doesn’t go in the dishwasher. But as a big dishwasher fan, I can’t omit the issue. Whether you favor ceramic mugs or double-walled glass, dishwasher-safe-ness is one of their best features. And the Ember simply doesn’t offer it.

Flavor notes

We wouldn’t be coffee snobs if I didn’t offer you a bit of nitpicky complaint: my coffee tastes noticeably better when it first reaches that perfect drinking temperature than it does after sitting at that same temperature for 45+ minutes in the Ember while I’m distracted. I’ve found this regularly enough that I do want to report it. Perhaps it’s a placebo effect, but it definitely feels real enough to me.

And it does make sense. One of the reasons us coffee snobs dislike Mr. Coffee-style machines (or feel skeptical about heated coffee mugs) is that a glass carafe on a hot plate just starts to taste worse the longer it sits and reheats. And that is basically what the Ember does with a good deal more precision.

So whether I’m noticing this effect because I expect it, or because I have a bad habit of being lazy about cleaning the Ember (for those already-mentioned hand-wash-only reasons) I can’t be 100% sure.

Alternatives to the Ember Mug

There are a LOT of different ways you can solve the same basic goal as an Ember mug. To quickly run through things I think of that are less-obvious:

• Microwave your coffee when it’s gone cold in a conventional mug
• Use a thermally insulated mug (either a “commuter” type or double-walled glass) to keep the coffee hotter for longer
• Leave more of your coffee in the brewing machines thermally insulated carafe or (worse from a snob perspective, better from a heat perspective) the machine’s glass carafe warmer
• Get a different perfect temperature smart mug. For those, the most-liked one I found was the “Nextmug by Nextboom”. We did a deep dive of Nextmug versus Ember here »
• We’ve been crushing hard on the Ohom Ui Self-Heating Mug as of late. Its charging pad doubles as a wireless phone charger. 🤯

Is An Ember Mug Worth It?

Well, if you’re the kind of person who forgets about their coffee (hi, same), or someone who values a consistent sipping temperature as much as they value the actual taste, then yeah, probably.

It’s not a “need” in the way that, say, oxygen or burr grinders are. But it’s a delightful little luxury. It solves a specific and recurring annoyance for coffee/tea drinkers and does so in a way that feels quietly fancy without being showy.

That said—this isn’t a slam dunk for everyone. If you’re someone who finishes your drink in 10 minutes flat, doesn’t want to deal with hand-washing or app setup, or if you’re just trying to avoid adding yet another battery-powered gadget to your life… the Ember may feel more fussy than fun.

But for me? I’m glad I have one. Even if I still reach for regular mugs half the time, it’s nice knowing that on slow mornings or distracted afternoons, I’ve got a warm cup of coffee waiting—at the exact right temperature. No reheating. No rush.

And that little bit of predictability? In this house, we call that self-care.

What Else You Need to Know

Can I charge my Ember Mug with coffee in it?

Yes, you can charge (and heat) with coffee inside — but it won’t recharge the battery until the liquid’s gone or it’s powered off.

Will the Ember Mug heat cold coffee?

The short answer is yes, but with limits. Most Ember smart mugs technically can raise the temperature of cold coffee to your chosen drinking temp — but they’re designed to work best with hot liquid and to maintain temperature, not heat something very cold quickly.

Where to buy temperature controlled coffee mugs?

For most consumers, the easiest place to buy an Ember Mug or other temperature controlled coffee mug is on Amazon.

Ember Mug: To Buy or Not?

Do you need an Ember mug? Of course not! But if you’re thinking of getting one for a friend or as a treat-yourself toy, you’re not wrong. Do it!

That’s the reason you’ve got to read a full Ember mug review ;p It really is the best option in the field. Both my personal experience with one and most of the rest of the internet agrees. It’s not without its foibles but it is both reliable enough and useful enough that you’ll likely get your money’s worth. Happy sipping!