Contigo Autoseal Travel Mug (updated)

I've been using the Thermos travel mug for a couple of years, but I was never happy with its insulation. The metal surface gets burning hot to hold, which is a sad indication of how it holds on the heat of the liquid, or rather not. Also, it's not tight (and not meant to be), if you tip it over, it'll spill somewhat.

So I got the Contigo Autoseal Travel Mug instead (on the left here). So far, way better, It's completely tight, and when you drink from it, you press a spring button on the back, which opens the smallish opening (right-sized) to drink from.

And it holds the heat much better. The Thermos mug uses "foam" insulation (don't know what the foam is made of, but I'm not impressed), the Contigo uses vacuum. And the outside of the Contigo mug hardly gets warm at all. And of course, at the end of a (really) leisurely drunk mug full of tea, it is still hot at the end, which I couldn't say about the Thermos mug.

Indeed the foam insulation takes up more space inside the mug, but it's still much less efficient. 

I wonder how they seal the vacuum so tight that it will last for years, not air seeping in at all? 

Update:

 Ray said...
Strange that Thermos would let itself be outdone by a competitor when it was Thermos that originally
made it big with glass vacuum bottles held in place inside a metal casing decades ago. They were fragile in the sense that dropping it could break the glass, which was relatively thin, but if cared for, they worked like a charm for years.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...
Yes, exactly! I thought Thermos was king.

But the Thermos one eats *so* much heat. Even after pre-heating it with boiled water for three minutes, no less, I still had to heat the milk when making tea. If I did that with the Contigo, the tea would scald me for at least an hour. Very remarkable.