Jun 26, 2024 8:30 AM

The Best Travel Mugs to Keep Drinks Hot or Cold

Forget room-temperature beverages. These insulated bottles, mugs, and tumblers keep hot drinks steaming and cold ones frigid.

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Featured in this article

Hydro Flask Coffee Mug with Flex Sip Lid

Hand holding up a blue mug with silver rim in front of an open door with a lawn in the distance

4 / 9

One way to quickly ruin a morning is to take a sip from your mug expecting hot coffee or tea only to be met with freezing-cold liquid. Or, on the flip side, desperately wanting ice cold water only to find it warm. For those moments, you need an insulated travel mug. There are tons of stainless steel mugs, bottles, and tumblers on the market. These are our favorites.

We tested each bottle with both cold water and hot coffee, sitting outside in indirect sunlight and inside in the AC. During testing, none of the bottles has failed to roughly match up to their claims of how long they'd keep cold liquids cold and hot liquids hot. It's rare to run across an insulated bottle that's a total failure at doing that these days, but it's also rare to find one that truly stands out. Rather, I've noticed the features that tend to make or break a bottle are leak-proofing, exterior coating, and the cap. While all these bottles can keep cold drinks at temperature, you may prefer getting a dedicated insulated water bottle if that's all you need.

Be sure to check out our guides to the Best Coffee Subscriptions, Best Coffee Grinders, Best Espresso Machines, Best Portable Coffee Makers, Best AeroPress Coffee Makers, and How to Make Better Coffee at Home.

Updated June 2024: We made the Hydro Flask mug a top pick and added Owala’s SmoothSip and W&P’s Porter to the honorable mentions. We've also moved all bottles that use lead soldering to the avoid section and updated prices and links throughout.

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A Note on Lead Soldering

Since we first started testing water bottles and coffee tumblers, it's come to light that some brands use lead soldering to seal their insulated bottles. The lead is on the bottom of the bottles encased in stainless steel. While it's unlikely it would become exposed, we think it's an unnecessary risk given that enough of our favorite brands use other methods to seal their bottles. We've noted which brands have confirmed they use lead in our “avoid” section below and will keep this guide updated as we hear from the others.

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Photograph: Backcountry
Best Overall
Hydro Flask Coffee Mug With Flex Sip Lid (16 Ounce)
Hydro Flask’s powder coating is one of the toughest I have come across on a beverage container. Whenever I can foresee some serious abuse happening to a coffee mug on a trip, I take a Hydro Flask. I’ve yet to dent or scratch one through routine carelessness over the past four years. Without a cupholder in my car, my Hydro Flask lived on the floorboards, rolling and crashing around with every maneuver, and it still held up. The pebbled texture is grippy, so you're less likely to fumble it if your hands get wet or greasy.
$33 at Amazon
$33 at REI
$33 at Dick's Sporting Goods
Photograph: Amazon
A Good Wide-Mouth Bottle
Klean Kanteen TKWide Insulated Mug (16 Ounce)
Narrow openings are fine for water, in my opinion, but for hot beverages, I like having a wider gap so I can take a big gulp. I'm less likely to burn my mouth on hot drinks when I can let them cool off through a bigger opening, too. The TKWide’s Cafe Cap is more like drinking from a regular to-go coffee cup, rather than a water bottle.
All the colors have matte powder-coated finishes, which are more scratch-resistant than the brand’s smooth powder-coated finishes. That said, I haven’t found them to be as tough as Hydro Flask’s powder coating, and the uncoated stainless-steel ring on the bottom of the mug is pretty easy to scuff up.
$33 at Amazon
$33 at Target

Photograph: Medea Giordano
A Great Mug
Hydro Flask Coffee Mug (12 Ounce)
If you're commuting or hiking, you want a bottle that's not going to leak on you. But if you're camping and mostly stationary, drinking coffee around a fire or at the lake, a nice mug with a handle is a great option. Hydro Flask's is affordable, with its signature tough powder-coating that's nearly impossible to scratch.
The lid has a slider so you can open it to sip and then close it to keep it hot even longer and to avoid any woodsy bugs from accidentally landing inside. It's not leak-proof, but it's not going to drip on you as you sip either. If you prefer to go sans-lid, it has a thin stainless steel rim that's comfortable to drink from. The brand also has great colors across all its options.
$28 at Amazon
$28 at REI
$28 at Hydro Flask
Photograph: Ello
Camp Classic
Ello Campy Travel Mug (16 Ounce)
This camp cup is awfully charming, harkening back to the classic blue, enameled camp cups that ooze 20th-century Americana. Like all the tumblers on this list, it’s vacuum-insulated to keep hot drinks hot and cold ones cold. Its screw-on plastic lid, with a sliding lever for sipping, is leak-proof enough. If you leave it upside down for more than a few seconds or shake it, it’ll drip, but I couldn’t get it to leak by knocking it onto its side. The handle is plastic to avoid conducting heat from hot contents, and the inner part of the handle is lined in cork. The Campy isn’t enameled—it’s just painted to look like it—but it pulls off the effect well.
$18 at Amazon

Photograph: Amazon
For Coffee Purists
Fellow Carter (16 Ounce)
Instead of a tiny sippy hole, the Carter’s screw-on cap reveals a wide tumbler that lets you breathe in your coffee’s aromas as you drink. The opening is 69 millimeters wide, so you can use most manual coffee brewers, such as an AeroPress or Hario pour-over, directly on it. That’s too wide for many cars’ cup holders, but it’s plenty stable, and you won’t have to worry about tipping it over on a desk. My average-size hands had no issues, but some buyers with smaller hands might find it difficult or uncomfortable to hold.
The interior is ceramic-coated, so you don’t get any metallic flavors, and the thin metal lip is curved like a cabernet glass. Its textured matte exterior coating is tough and held up as well as the mighty Hydro Flask’s coating. It's been completely spill-proof too. You should have no concerns throwing it into your laptop bag completely full.
$35 at Amazon
$35 at Fellow Products
Photograph: KeepCup
A Classy Paper Cup Replacement
KeepCup Brew Cork (12 Ounce)
The Brew Cork is greater than the sum of its parts. This double-walled, insulated mug is meant to replicate and replace paper coffee shop cups. It’s fun to drink out of. Many other tumblers’ lid openings are blocky or mash your nose, but the KeepCup is ergonomically on point. It’s not the best for road trips, nor the best for keeping a ton of coffee hot for hours, but I highly recommend the LongPlay if all you want is a reusable cup to cut down on single-use waste and keep your drink warm long enough for you to actually drink it. That said, the lid is a bit dribbly. While the interior and lip are glass—no metallic off-tastes here—the exterior shell below the rubber grip is plastic.
$30 at Amazon
$32 at KeepCup

Photograph: REI
For Cans
Hydro Flask Cooler Cup (12 Ounce)
Tumblers and travel mugs are generally designed for you to pour your chosen beverage into, but what if you just want to put a can in there? These kinds of insulated drink holders are particularly useful when I'm out and about, drinking a canned soda or beer, and want it to stay cool in the summer heat.
Hydro Flask shines here too. Not only can you put the can directly into the drink holder, but you can also pour it into the Hydro Flask and drink directly out of it, if you wish. Just remove the collar, and now you've got a handsome, stainless steel rim to sip from. The collar fits over the bottom of the can to stabilize it too, so you won't lose it. This is the 12-fluid-ounce version that fits a standard beer, soda, juice, or wine can. There's also a 16-fluid-ounce Tallboy Cooler Cup for $28 if you're feeling particularly thirsty.
$25 at Amazon
$25 at REI
Photograph: Amazon
Honorable Mentions
More Travel Mugs We Tried
We've run through many travel mugs, and not all of them are winners. These are a few we like, just not as much as the ones above.
KeepCup Thermal for $32: This is the answer to those who like the paper-cup-imitating feel. It shares the Brew Cork's slightly dribbly lid, although it loses some of the novelty of that one's glass construction.
Oxo Good Grips Thermal Mug for $30: We reviewed this bottle in 2022 and liked its solid build and dishwasher-friendliness, but since it's older it now fluctuates in and out of stock.
Owala SmoothSip for $25: We love Owala water bottles and enjoyed the SmoothSip nearly as much. It kept coffee warm all afternoon and, despite the lid having an open spout for easy drinking, coffee didn't slosh out while I walked around. Don't throw it in a bag, but it should be fine in the car. The simple lid makes it easy to clean too.
W&P Porter Insulated Bottle for $35: W&P has become a WIRED favorite, thanks to its many eco-friendly reusable products. We loved its insulated bottle too, which has a ceramic coating if you dislike drinking directly from steel. It also has a silicone sleeve for more grip and softness. The two terrazzo colors are particularly pretty, with a speckled, textured sleeve. It's also dishwasher safe and usually dips below $35 on Amazon.
REI Co-op Camp Mug for $23: There are getting to be an awful lot of insulated camp mugs in this basic style on the market, and REI's stainless steel cup is a perfectly fine option that doesn't particularly stand out. The exterior coating was tough enough to show no scratches, even after knocking it over a few times outside.
Hydro Flask All Around Travel Tumbler for $35: If you like drinking both cold and hot drinks from a straw, Hydro Flask makes a great tumbler akin to the Stanley shape without the lead. It comes with the same bomb-proof powder coating of other Hydro Flasks that resists scratches and chips very well.
GSI Outdoors Glacier 15-Fluid-Ounce Camp Cup for $20: It's not too easy to find at retailers, and when you do, they tend to be available in just a few colors and go in and out of stock. This cup is awfully simple with an incredibly basic lid, but it's more than a little endearing, particularly in the "blue speckle" color that imitates classic enameled camp cups.
Zojirushi Stainless Steel Mug for $29: The lid locks to avoid accidental spillage, and I once accidentally left hot tea in it for 18 hours and found it still hot when I opened it again. It’s also small enough to fit in my jacket pocket on chilly morning walks. It’s not my preferred mug for daily use, simply because the lid has three separate parts—a mouthpiece, a gasket, and a lid—that are deeply ridged and hard to clean.
Purist Mover for $48: The Purist has a thin layer of glass over the interior of the Mover, which removes the possibility of taste transfer from previous drinks. We didn’t experience leaks from the Element top, but a high number of customers have reported their Purist lids leaking over time.
S'well Traveler Tumbler for $30: S’well boasts that its tumblers are triple-walled, but we didn't find it kept beverages hotter than its double-walled competitors. What sets the brand apart is its designs, from plain colors to elaborate patterns like blue marble and wood.

Photograph: Amazon
Avoid These Travel Mugs
You Can Do Better
We’ve tested a great many tumblers, and not all are winners. These aren't anywhere near as good as our picks above.
Greens Steel Beast 20-Ounce Insulated Tumbler for $21: The Beast tumbler has over 70,000 positive reviews on Amazon, but we found the rubber seal around the lid easily comes out of place. That meant it leaked like a sieve.
Toaks Titanium Double Wall 450ML Cup for $40: More often than not, we champion Toaks gear as an affordable source of titanium camp cookware. But this mug is $12 more than the Hydro Flask mug we recommend above, and its finishing is rougher.
GSI Outdoors MicroLite 500 Flip for $30: The actual bottle isn't bad, but the lid is overly complex to clean and gimmicky. Under the button-activated, flip-up lid there's a contoured bowl that you drink from, as if somebody cut the top half off a plastic cup. It didn't do anything that just drinking from an open bottle couldn't do, and it tended to collect stray water droplets after I was done drinking. There's a twist-off lid version that does away with the gimmicky cap, but the carry strap is narrow and not as robust as we'd have liked.
The following mugs aren't bad options—some are past favorites— but these brands have confirmed the use of lead soldering to seal their insulated mugs. Enough brands use other sealing methods that it feels unnecessary. We haven't heard from every brand on this list, but we'll keep it updated as we do.
Miir Climate+ for $25: We liked that the Climate+ resembles a cup more than a bottle and it has a tough powder-coated finish. The lid is also made from recycled plastic and the insulation uses 25 percent less steel than traditional insulated mugs. We also liked Miir's Flip Traveler for $28 and Camp Cup for $28. Both were leak-free and tough.
Stanley Classic Vacuum Pint for $26: Stanley has been around forever and we liked the pebbled exterier reminiscent of classic flasks. There's also a few extra ounces to accommodate foam (or splashing hot coffee).
Contigo Luxe Autoseal for $36: Contigo's bottle has a lock to prevent leaks, which worked remarkably well. Despite some reviews saying the lid got too hot, we found it barely got lukewarm even while holding scorching, molten coffee.
Yeti Rambler Stackable Cup for $30: Yeti has a durable powder coating, so it's among the toughest options. We also liked this model is stackable, so you can keep a few in your pantry without taking up much room.
OtterBox Elevation for $30: The Elevation has a copper lining that the company says helps better maintain your beverage’s perfect temperature, although we saw no noticeable difference.

Medea Giordano turned her shopping problem into a career as a product writer for WIRED. She covers a little bit of everything but loves health, beauty, and pet tech. Prior to WIRED, she was an assistant editor at Wirecutter and an assistant in the newsroom of The New York Times.... Read more

Writer and Reviewer

TopicsShopping buying guides Travel kitchen outdoors home

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