“Do you want to put your mug on charge?”

This is an odd sentence — which I had never thought to say, let alone said before this month — but has entered my life this November, with the arrival of review copies of Ember’s 14 oz white Mug 2 and 16 oz black Tumbler travel mug.

For the unaware, Ember are the premier makers of self-heating beverage vessels; a staple of the modern gift guide that promises to ensure your coffee never goes cold. Their mugs and tumblers are like reduced electric kettles, keeping your drink at your chosen temperature, all controlled by the Ember app. It recommends 134 degrees for coffee, 136 degrees for black tea, and 132 for cappuccino, but you can set it at exactly the temperature you prefer, between 120°F – 145°F.  It also has built-in timers so that, when you put a cup of tea to brew, you don’t leave it too long.

It’s a neat idea, meaning that coffee stays hot longer, a cup of tea doesn’t get forgotten when brewing and your flask of coffee isn’t cold by the time you’ve reached your destination; and it’s genuinely an extremely pleasant, small little improvement to your home life. Often, I will make my girlfriend a cup of tea when I wake up, only for the drink to be cold by the time she gets to it; but with the Mug 2, that has stopped. Similarly, if I’m working in a flow state, I will come out of it, only to curse myself for the now freezing coffee I abandoned on the kitchen counter. That’s over with an Ember product; and ridding yourself of this small inconvenience and disappointment is quite lovely.

Similarly, one of the great pleasures of the Tumbler has been being able to make some coffee, put the flask in my bag turned off, and when I’m near my destination, press the button on the bottom to turn it on, slowly reheating my coffee so that when I go to sip it, the drink is now toasty hot. It feels like a magic trick.

This entire product category is totally unnecessary, and yet, a wonderful luxury. Once you’ve tried them, it’s hard to keep your cynicism.

The trade-off is that, unlike an average mug or flask, you have to — as the opening quote notes — charge them. I thought this would be a real hassle. But this isn’t done through a USB cable into the side of it, but rather, by sitting the mug or flask on a coaster, plugged into a socket. Very quickly, it just becomes second nature to think “this where I set the mug when I’m not using it,” so mine were never without charge. And, unlike most other flasks I own, I always know where the Ember one is, not stuck at the back of a drawer.

The Mug 2 has a battery life of 80 minutes — up to 90 on the 10oz mug — but you can also keep a coaster puck on your desk, meaning it will always stay hot. Though I’ve never had an issue with cleaning them, they can be submerged for handwashing, and the two lids for the Tumbler —  a sliding lid for sipping on the go, and a handle lid for easy carrying — are dishwasher safe. The Tumbler offers the same temperature range as the Mug, but lasts for 3 hours on a charge.

All in all, they’re great products; but there’s a saying that goes “there are no bad products, just bad prices.”

A 14 ounce white Mug 2 costs $150. The Tumbler is $200.

That’s just a lot of money.

The Tumbler travel mug seems like the more practical choice — it’s bigger, with a longer battery life — and if you use it around the house, it is. I write this, slowly sipping some chai tea I made a few hours ago that is still toasty hot. The only downside is that the Tumbler only comes in a powder black, whereas the Mug 2 comes in a range of fun colours from bright red, sandstone, and sage green, to metal rose gold and silver, as well as the classic white of my review unit.

But for the “travelling” part, the Tumbler doesn’t make a lot of sense. A reliable vacuum flask will also keep your drink warm for hours on end, bur for less than a fifth of the price, and there are only a limited number of situations where the ability to reheat the drink is actually useful. In most of my outdoor uses, the Tumbler was just keeping the drink at my preferred temperature for the duration of my walk, as I sipped it, walking along. That’s lovely, but my coffee still would have been warm were I finishing a traditional flask; just not as warm as when I set off.

The rational, reviewer part of my brain doesn’t see $150 – $200 of value in these products. But luxury is hard to quantify, and if you want to give someone a great gift that adds something special to a normalcy in their daily life, you can’t go wrong here. I was prepared to write these off as overpriced gimmick products. But the Mug 2 has almost 12,000 reviews on their website, and 8,000 reviews on Amazon, both with a 4.5 star rating. And I’m still drinking out of mine, and would be disappointed to go back to a standard mug. And that sort of says it all.