Travel Coffee Mugs

Cook's Illustrated reviewed travel coffee mugs recently. The full review may be found here, and the summary is below. I naturally don't know your particular grievances, if any, with past experiences with coffee mugs (spillage, leakage, not the right thickness of rim for drinking or not enough room for a long nose to comfortably drink...you get the idea), but I do know there are general frustrations out there. I typically don't take coffee to work or other places, but hopefully I have Made Someone's Day by posting this review and providing the answer for which you have been seeking, but did not want to bother with trying out many mugs.

In another review, I was happy to see that the lemon squeezer I have, love and use for juicing limes and lemons won hands down in the equipment tests.

These caramels sound intriguing and rich, recommended by Cook's Illustrated. Pricey though, eh?

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Summary of Travel Coffee Mug Test

First recommended product - Thermos Travel Mug
Also recommended - OXO Click N Seal Travel Mug

"...we ordered 11 mugs of different materials, shapes, and sipping structures and organized a battery of tests designed to define the ideal mug, which left us feeling a little like test drivers as we careened around corners trying to spill the coffee or dislodge the mugs."

It's a funny thing to imagine the cooks taking driving tests just to see if coffee spills! Haha. On with the review...they measured how varoius products came out in the following areas (perhaps you have had issues with some of these):

• Heat retention
• Spill proof
• Clean taste (flavors not transfering from one use to the next with different beverages)
• Handles
• Sippability/Drainage (easy to drink, excess liquid draining quickly back into mug)
• Cleaning
• Fit (into cup holders)
• Stability (not top heavy or prone to tip

What they said about the two that came out on top:

The Thermos Stainless Steel Travel Mug with TherMax has a twist-on lid that clicks into 3 locations—for closed holes, open holes, and lid removal—and can also be turned to open the sip holes to different sizes. We found the lid to be secure; even a little resistant to turning when wet. It has sip holes all around the rim, so users can drink from any location. The cup provided good insulation, and the rubberized band that covered almost the entire base earned a rating of "most comfortable to hold." And with almost no moving parts, the mug was a cinch to clean. We had only two problems—excess liquid could take a few seconds to drain back in...and with the rubberized grip, the mug didn’t fit comfortably into two wire-style dashboard cup holders.

The OXO Click LiquiSeal Travel Stainless Mug is comfortable to hold and has excellent insulation (we also tested the plastic version, which is not recommended). A button in the middle of the lid lowers and locks an inner plastic lid, opening a space large enough to allow the liquid to flow through the sipping hole at a good speed. The hole itself is located in a little trench that provides excellent drainage. Our complaint was cleaning—liquid can get trapped in the inner layer and around the button. We recommend rinsing the lid as soon as possible after drinking.

The review mentions the products not recommended based on their tests.