This Ember Smart Mug Keeps Me Caffeinated, and It’s 36% Off for Black Friday

I love iced coffee, but I loathe cold coffee. Intentionally iced coffee is perfection, while hot coffee that's gone cold is disgusting. You can, of course, microwave coffee to return it to a drinkable temperature, and I have—many times. But a sad mug of microwaved coffee is no replacement for sipping a freshly brewed cup as close to its original temperature as possible, and that's always going to be a losing race against time.

Enter Ember, and its "smart mug." Unlike your dumb mug, Ember's cup can keep your drink at a stable temperature of your choosing, ranging between 120˚F and 145˚F. You set the temperature in the Ember app, pour yourself a cup of joe, and sip at your own leisure: Every time you take a drink, your coffee, tea, hot chocolate, what have you, will be the same temperature as the first sip.

I have been using an Ember mug for a while now, and it really is great—if not slightly surreal. It's an odd thing to pick up a mug of coffee that's been sitting around for half an hour, take a sip, and find it as steamy as when I first poured it. As odd as it sounds, this means it comes with a bit of a learning curve, at least if, like me, you are used to taking larger and larger sips of your coffee the longer it has been sitting around. Don't throw back a cup from your Ember, is what I'm saying. It'll be a bad time.

A piping hot cup for over an hour

Ember will eventually stop keeping your drink hot when the battery runs out. When new and fully charged, that's a generous 80 minutes, which is a long time to enjoy any single 14 oz beverage. However, if you tend to drink multiple cups a day, that battery will wear out before you've finished your afternoon spreadsheets, so I recommend storing the wireless charging dock wherever you're most likely to be drinking from the Ember mug—perhaps your desk, or on an end table. That way, you can place your mug on the charger instead of a coaster, and keep the battery constantly juiced.

The dock is also on sale for Black Friday, down to $27.99 from $39.95, but the mug comes with a dock, so you only need to buy one if something happens to the one you already own or you want more than one for some reason. (No judging.)

Don't let your brew burn

The Ember mug isn't perfect. My one gripe is with how it handles the last sip or two of your beverage. It seems the heating element is so strong, it burns, or at least alters the taste of, any too-small amount of liquid. My advice is to finish the cup before it gets to this point, keep your temperature set lower, or turn off the heater via the app when you get about three-quarters of the way through it.

A critical note: Do not put your Ember mug in the dishwasher. This mug is hand-wash only. It's safe to scrub it in the sink, and even submerge it in water up to one meter. However, the abrasive nature of your dishwasher's jets will be too much for both the outside coating and the electronics inside the mug. It's a little extra work to hand wash it after each use, but you'll have plenty of energy thanks to having downed that never-cooling cup of coffee.