Similar to the Ember mug, but designed for both hot and cold beverages, the all-new Yecup 365 from Armenian company Yecup Technologies is claimed to bring your drink to just the right temperature and keep it there for hours. It heats your coffee or tea from lukewarm to piping hot and cools your water or Gatorade from room temperature to comfortably chilled. Beyond beverage service, it can also charge your smartphone or tablet. If the Yecup 365 makes it through to production, it will set new IQ standards for the "smart" travel mug.
Yecup's active heating and cooling gives it a leg up on mugs designed only for hot beverages. The company says that the mug can heat beverages up to 158° F (70° C) and cool them to 50° F (10° C). That upper figure falls well short of water's 212° F (100° C) boiling point, an important distinction only because Yecup uses "boiling" terminology in some of its press materials. You wouldn't want to drink boiling coffee or tea, anyway, and Yecup offers a pretty versatile temperature range for your drinking enjoyment.
Yecup's double-layer stainless steel mug connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, where the Yecup app lets you adjust the temperature of your beverage with a simple swipe dial. The thermoelectric temperature regulation system then brings it to the desired temperature, and the cup alerts you with its glowing logo and a smartphone notification when it's ready. The mug keeps it at that temperature so you can enjoy at your leisure.
Since not everyone wants to rely on a smartphone middle man for something simple like drinking a beverage, the Yecup 365 also includes built-in "heat" and "cool" buttons. The illuminated indicator lets you know whether the drink is hot or cold or if the battery is charging.
While the heating and cooling features are nice, they're not necessarily lightning fast. Yecup tells us that it would take about 30 minutes to bring a cup of coffee from room temperature (70° F/20° C) to 140° F (60° C). Assuming you start with a room temperature beverage, cooling will prove a little quicker, dropping from 70 to 50° F (10° C) in about 10 to 15 minutes. So you'll save some time cooling your spring water versus waiting for it to cool in the refrigerator, but you might want to give your cold coffee a spin in the microwave before pouring it into the Yecup 365. The company claims that running the mug from a 12 volt car outlet instead of off the battery will roughly double the speed of heating and cooling.
The combination of on-the-go heating and cooling makes for a useful travel mug on its own, but the Yecup 365 packs one more trick. Its 10,000 mAh battery pack can be used to charge smartphones and tablets via the USB port. That battery lasts between three and eight hours when powering the mug. When it comes time to recharge, the mug includes both wireless charging capability (5 hours) and an AC adapter (2.5 hours).
Designed to fit into a vehicle cupholder, the Yecup 365 is a straight cylinder that measures just under 3 in (7 cm) in diameter and stands 8.7 in (22 cm) tall. It weighs 12.3 oz (350 g) empty.
Yecup tells us that it's built several working prototypes and developed an app for iOS and Android. It also plans an Apple Watch app. It launched an Indiegogocampaign this week to raise the funding it needs to move into production. It's offering a 12-oz (354-ml) 365 mug at pledge levels starting at US$109 and a 14-oz (414-ml) mug at $129 (+ shipping). Add-ons like the wireless charging dock and engravings are available at higher pledge levels. If its development plan moves along without a hitch, deliveries will begin in September. The campaign has already shot well past double its $30K goal.
