OG Ember and OG Gameboy. Sippin’ some Switch Hybrid brewed Harrar and slammin’ some Tetris blocks.
May your pours be perfect and your brews balanced this weekend.
Cheers.
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TIL there are bluetooth connected, self-heating coffee mugs.
The GameBoy looks like it’s in fantastic shape for a vintage handheld device!
I thought the line goes
Pokémon would probably be more apropos than Napoleon Dynamite you’re right!
Fuck the Ember mug, I can’t un-reccommend it enough. Here’s a review I wrote earlier:
Firstly, I do think the hardware is impressive. It does keep coffee warm. I also appreciate that you can acquire new battery packs for it and replace them pretty easily (though it could’ve been easier, and Ember could’ve sold them instead of having to seek a third party replacement). It’s nice that within those battery packs are just two 18650s, a standard battery type. All of that said, I don’t appreciate that after replacing the battery pack and capacity testing the two 18650s I took out of it, they were completely fine and still had loads of capacity - the mug just refused to charge them. As for the pogo pins, I have read about issues with them, though I haven’t personally had any. I’m not sure how they could improve this design without increasing the size of the mug. At least they put the fragile part in the cheaper mug base instead of the expensive mug.
I do honestly see the benifit to having a BT connected self-heating mug. Being notified when your coffee is the perfect temperature would be nice, and being notified if the mug is running out of battery would be nice. I also appreciate the decision to go with BT and not WiFi, I don’t need my damn mug phoning home. However, if it doesn’t work, and is the only way to interact with the mug, that isn’t OK. I have a $15 label maker that connects to BT immediately and automatically after turning on every single time, yet Ember just couldn’t figure it out. If I had to guess, I’d guess that Ember is using a low power BT connection to conserve energy, and that could be the culprit of the issues, but I’m not sure.
You can also just browse the subreddit to see what a shitshow the smart functionality is for a majority of the users.
I now have the Nuwave mug and it’s better in every way aside from the materials and size, it’s larger and has a soft plastic finish on the outside.
Hmmm, I got one for Christmas, been working fine thus far, but I’ve not had it long enough to worry about battery replacement yet. I will say a mug like this, whatever brand, is a godsend to those with ADHD. No more tiny window of opportunity for me!
I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with an expensive coffee mug. I can understand those frustrations if you are really looking to utilize the BT functionality. I had issues with it early on, but once you send your desired temp to the mug (131F for me!) it retains that regardless of any connectivity. I decided early on this was just a really nice mug (with no plastic on it) for keeping my coffee at an ideal temp for prolonged periods of time. Almost a decade out the battery life isn’t that bad at all for doing what I want it to do and it does alert me with a red light when the battery is low. After about 6 years or so I had my charger pins go bad but bought a $6 replacement kit on ebay and repaired it. I’ve had plenty of paint-chipping issues with it, but micron scale over time - no paint chips floating in my coffee or anything like that. I’ve heard the ember 2 does a little bit better with BT connections, but I can’t even remember the last time I bothered to connect via the app anyway. The look and the larger size of the Nuwave are personally turn-offs for me.
