Thermos E10500 16-Ounce Leak-Proof Travel Mug
by Thermos Nissan
|
List Price: Our Price: $17.84 You Save: $14.16 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $16.96 (click here) Category: Kitchen See more product details |
|---|
Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Thermos E10500 16-Ounce Leak-Proof Travel Mug
Customer Review: Very good beverage hardware
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been using this mug for about six months. I decided I wanted to take my morning's worth of coffee (about 16 oz.) from home to work rather than buying some or making some at the office. My old Nissan travel cup wasn't big enough and lost heat fairly fast, so I was hoping this Thermos fit the bill. And it does, for me. I can still drink hot coffee from it after three hours or more. I do pre-heat the mug with hot tap water while the coffee's brewing.
Here are some design points and trade-offs to consider before deciding if this item is right for you:
Heat retention: This mugs keeps its temperature longer than any insulated cup/mug I've ever had. It is more like a Thermos bottle that you can easily drink from than a standard insulated travel mug.
360-degree drinking position: The lid is a threaded screw-on type. All the way tightened down, nothing comes out. Twist open half way, to a detent you can feel in the threads, and you can drink from the vents in the recessed top. You can sip from any side in the dark without worrying about coffee dribbling onto your clothes from an out-of-position spout.
Seal: I've never had a leak problem from this mug. The lid actually has two seals, one at the bottom for all-the-way closed and the other to prevent liquid getting past the threads when the lid's in the drinking position. Screwed down tight, nothing gets out of this lid.
Mug handle: I used a straight-sided Nissan cup for years and it didn't bother me to drink from, but having the handle gives you more carrying options and is something you can get a grip (or finger-hold) on if you have your hands full. It also comes with a carabiner so you can clip it to your backpack, duffel, bookbag &c.
Top opening: The opening in the top of the mug is pretty small, (about 1.25 in./32 mm diameter) as is the case with a lot of good vacuum bottles, because the most heat is lost out the top. This may cause trouble filling, but it hasn't been an issue for me.
Base diameter: The bottom is fairly wide, about 3.5 in./90 mm. This may not fit in some automobile cupholders. The base is firm but slightly grippy plastic, with "treads" to stabilize it on flat surfaces. The base also projects enough to give some protection from dings if the mug is dropped.
Top operation: You have to turn the top by its edge, the same place your lip goes when you're drinking. If your hands are dirty, this could be a concern. The lid sometimes squeaks -- fairly quietly -- as it's being twisted.
Drinking attitude: Because of the small-diameter top opening, the lower your contents get the further you have to tip the mug to get the liquid over the inner lip. When you get to the very last drops, the mug has to be pretty close to vertical. Besides being a little awkward, this can block your vision or even take your eyes off the road if you are driving.
Cleaning: Pretty easy if you have a bottle brush, a bit of a pain if you don't. I have washed it in the dishwasher, but I am wary of that because I'm afraid it could compromise the vacuum seal.
Durability: Having dropped and knocked this mug around a few times, I'm pretty pleased with its ruggedness.
So I gave five stars because this product met my needs far better than any similar product I've had. Most of the cons don't outweigh the pros for my personal use, and if they did I'd still probably give four stars.
Customer Review: The search is over!
Summary: 5 Stars
Five stars... anyone giving less either hasn't done their comparison shopping, or else is quibbling about things that are personal issues. This is a solid piece of craftsmanship, engineered to do its job, and that is to keep drinks hot for as long as you are likely to be drinking from it. Plus, it looks great, not cheap or flimsy.
To test it, I preheated mine with regular hot water from the tap, and let it sit for about five-ten minutes while I heated 16 oz of water in the microwave. As soon as it began to boil, I pulled the water from the microwave and poured it into the preheated Thermos. Three hours later, it was still too hot to pour over my fingers. (At no time did the cap get "mad hot," as another reviewer has described.) At the nine-hour mark, it was still hot enough that it would need to be sipped, not gulped, if it was coffee. At the nineteen-hour mark, it was still mildly warm. For the entire nineteen hours, this Thermos was in an air-conditioned house.
So far as drinking from it is concerned, I would like to clarify something that is not clear in the product description or in the reviews: The cap has two seals on it, one at the bottom, one partway up. By turning the cap open (counter-clockwise) a quarter-to-half turn, the bottom seal releases, allowing your beverage to come up through small slots in the top of the cap so you can drink it. By the way, the rate of flow for drinking can be adjusted simply by how far you turn the cap: you won't be stuck with either tiny sips or a gushing flow. Meanwhile, the second seal does its job of keeping the beverage from coming out around the edge of the cap and spilling down your shirt. Many thanks to reviewer Pete McGee for the photos he posted! Also, it does hold the full 16 oz, maybe even a little more, without overfilling. They didn't cheat us on this one. And it really is leak-proof.
My personal quibbles: The handle is not really comfortable, just functional. The base is bigger than necessary - but it does fit into my Tacoma center-console cup holder. However, these things are minor, and personal, NOT design flaws. This Thermos rates all of five stars, and is worth every penny. I'm getting two more, one for when I forget mine at work, and another "just in case." Because nothing else comes close.
Customer Review: Handy New Thing
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had these mugs for a few years. Unlike some of Thermos's 'newer' offerings, they still seal perfectly and securely even with boiling water... but the problem was that they don't fit into most car cup holders.
Now I have a solution. The plastic bottom pops right off. After a few dishwasher cycles, the glue holding it on softens up (as does the glue holding the plastic part of the handle on - NBD). Anyway, if you can twist the bottom, then you can pry it off with only a little bit of fingertip 'persuasion'. Once off, the bottom is FLAT, and the mug fits in my new car's drink holder again! Yay!
The bottom can then be 'snug fit' back on for desk use without jamming it all the way back over the lip, and it more conveniently pops off for travel. The first time you pop it off, prepare to get wet. Because it was trapping dishwasher water the whole time. Now it can be washed in the dishwasher separate from the rest of it and not collect water.
The edges are quality welded and burnished (at least on all of mine) but you'll want to make sure it isn't razor sharp. If so, a little sandpaper would sort it.
Still the VERY BEST thermos mugs I have after three or four years, and I've tried a few others.
Probably one more small tweak would be finding something rubber to stick directly to the bottom of the mug. It's not terribly stable without the plastic bottom, but with some sort of bottom glued or molded on (but no wider than the outer edge) it would be acceptably stable AND still fit in most cup holders. At least as stable as the comparatively rotten Thermos Stainless King 16-Ounce Leak-Proof Travel Mug, Midnight Blue, which is pretty much in a state of utter seal failure after only a couple of months of use. That mug is a loser.
Customer Review: hands down the best
Summary: 5 Stars
This mug is so much better than any other travel mug I've ever used for coffee and tea. First of all, it retains temperature extremely well - as other reviewers have noted, you should let a hot beverage cool to a drinkable temperature before putting the top on. For my coffee this is not a problem, as the milk I add brings it to a nice temperature, but I do have to leave the top off or add an ice cube to tea. I've done the same with previous thermoses I've owned, but usually you pour those into a cap where you can blow/cool the liquid, whereas with this product its so easy to just drink the piping hot liquid straight out of the thermos - its also easy to scald one's lips. Which brings me to the best design feature - the 360 lid. So simple. It really feels like drinking out of a mug.
The product comes with a carabiner for clipping onto a bag, but its so leakproof that if there's room in my bag I just toss it in!
Significantly, this is one of the few stainless travel mugs I have seen that says its safe to go in the dishwasher. Since the coffee stains the inside of any cup and mucks up the top, I always put travel mugs in the dishwasher and have had to discard many where water got into the "vacuum" space (icky). With the solid Thermos construction I don't anticipate any problems, but its nice to have their guarantee.
This mug's design is just short of perfect. My only complaint is aesthetic - the yellow trim makes it so "hardware" looking. I would have preferred all black. And initially, I thought the "shock-absorbing" bottom was overkill, but it really does give stability to the base on a desk and avoids the bonky sound/feel that a normal thermos makes when you set it on a hard surface. Even such small things make this mug a pleasure to use. I bought two.
Customer Review: Truly leak proof
Summary: 5 Stars
For the basics on the seller, I picked this up as an Amazon Prime deal with free 2-day shipping. The item arrived in 2 days, which was to be expected. It arrived exactly as described, well packed with bubble wrapping padding the box, and with no damage.
For the product itself, it's wonderful! I wanted a good travel coffee mug that kept my coffee hot for longer than an hour or so and that wouldn't leak or spill and that had 360 degree drinking. I work part time at a coffee shop while I'm in school and, while I really like many of the travel mugs we sell, none of them had everything I wanted. This keeps my coffee hot for several hours and, if the top is closed, it will not spill. Unlike many 360 drinking lids, this one works on a very simple principle: Screwed all the way down and it's a closed thermos, loosen it half a turn or so and you can drink from any spot on the lid. Since the lid is one piece rather than two, it's much easier to clean and doesn't have all the nooks and crannies that many 360 lids tend to have. Plus, since it's leak proof, I can tighten down the top and toss it in my bag and not worry about any spillage. Nice when you have a lot to carry.
The only bad things are minor. As other reviews have said, the opening is very small so you'll really need to pick up a bottle brush of some kind to clean the mug out. They say it's dishwasher safe, but I'd rather not run the risk of messing up a seal or getting a bunch of water in under the rubberized base. Also, that base is a bit too big to fit into most drink holders, which isn't such a big deal since you can just lay the mug down and it won't spill.