Seeing as how the work-from-home life is here to stay for the foreseeable future — for better or for worse — I’ve been digging into our past posts for ways to improve my own home office space. (Turns out, our writers are extremely helpful!) One of the items I’ve always wanted but never bought: A self-heating coffee mug.
While we’ve covered the Ember smart mug back when it first launched, it’s not the only smart mug in town anymore. So leave it to my tech-research-loving partner to track down what he thought I’d love best this past holiday: The Ui Mug and Warmer Set from OHOM Design. And I do!
It comes with the ceramic mug, the Qi charger, the charging cord and plug, plus a fitted lid
It checks all my boxes:
-I wanted a self-heating mug that just looks like a beautiful mug and not a high-tech experiment.
-I definitely didn’t need an app to control the temperature, which feels like overkill for me.
-I wanted a mug in a nice color to break up all that black-and-white and metallic on my desk — I got the robin’s egg blue, shown above.
-Above all, I wanted a self-heating mug that will keep my coffee at an even temperature all morning, because sometimes I get lost in writing, and by the time I reach for my mug again, my coffee is cold.
I’ve been really impressed with how coffee stays warm on the conductive Qi charger — and bonus, the charging plate will charge my phone when the mug isn’t on it, leaving me with one less cord to manage. Sometimes, I even pick it up an hour after I’ve made coffee and it surprises me that my coffee is just that hot. But it’s a surprise in the best way.
Ooh — and wouldn’t the red make a beautiful Valentine’s Day gift? If only for yourself.
Find the Ui Mug and Warmer Set by OHOM Design at Nordstrom, or I found a few colors on sale at Wayfair. You can also find yours at the MoMA store, which is where mine came from — and I’m always happy to support a museum shop with my purchase.
One Additional Note: I’ve read a few complaints about the Ui Mug and mostly they are about an older model made with a weaker ceramic that was prone to cracking, and OHOM seems to have fixed that. Other complaints come from the expectation that the mug itself is what keeps your coffee warm. That’s not the Ui Mug. It’s actually the combination of the ceramic mug in combination with the conductive Qi charger, which functions like a warmer, while the mug is sitting on it. That plus the fitted top is perfect for me — but it’s not like you can walk around your home or your office holding hot coffee all day.
If you do want to be able to walk around with warm coffee for hours, you’ll need either something like the Ember temperature controlled mug (which is $$$), or a regular, non-smart, thermal mug like the Yeti — which works wonderfully. at a nice price. But for me, then I’m reverting to sipping coffee from an updated Thermos and not a pretty coffee mug, which is what I was hoping to find in the first place.
