DAVIDsTEA Noble Glass Travel Thermos

OMG! I LOVE this thing!!! It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! I used to brew my tea in the morning and throw it into a plastic tumbler from Starbucks. But it always made the tea taste funny.

When I ran into this double-walled glass tumbler at DAVIDsTEA, I knew I had found my one true love. It doesn’t retain the flavor of any previous teas and is super easy to clean and maintain. Plus, I don’t burn my fingers even after pouring scalding hot water into it because of the double-walls. The bamboo lid has a squishy but durable plastic underside that keeps the tea from leaking when the tumbler is jossled around.

The only con I have (and this is very minor) is that since it’s clear, I sometimes get odd looks from the security guards when I walk into work holding a glass container filled with an amber-colored liquid. Even if I just brew a black tea and add milk, they think it looks funny! So, I’m always explaining myself.

But overall, I am in absolute love!! *Swoon.

It’s about time I raved about this in full detail.

I love this mug. I absolutely love it. There are some things about it that I wish were different (I’ll get there in just a second) but overall it’s such a great travel mug.

So: my beautiful mother got me this as a gift for Valentine’s Day because I needed a better way to make loose leaf tea for on-the-go. And I absolutely love it. It’s my most used tea-tool in my kitchen.

Pros:
-Very stylish. It’s sleek and smooth and very good looking. Literally every time I take it to school I get a compliment on it in some way or another.
-It doesn’t hold flavors like other mugs do. Neither does the strainer. The cap does, but that’s okay. But I love that the mug and strainer don’t (even with strong flavors) so I can make different teas in rapid succession (I use it at home to…. I love it THAT much).
-The glass feels so good to drink out of. I’m SO glad it doesn’t have a little sippy top thing like most other mugs do. At first I was hesitant about this fact, but I can’t imagine it having one. I love drinking from the actual mug, it makes it feel more like a cup. Given, it does make spilling easier, but I’m willing to compromise.
-It keeps your tea warm if you leave the cap on it. If the cap is off it will cool more quickly, but with the cap on it will keep your beverage warm for a pretty long time.
-It’s relatively easy to handwash.

Cons:
-Okay so there are quite a few cons, but overall I still love the mug
-The strainer is a little small so it kind of sits sideways in the mug.
-It isn’t dishwasher safe. This is by far the biggest con for me. I hate that I have to handwash it ALL THE TIME. The mug is easier to handwash because like I said, it doesn’t really hold flavors, but the cap holds them BIG TIME, and so it makes it VERY difficult to clean.
-More on the lid-like I said it’s hard to clean because it’s like a huge plastic block with a little ring around the edge (if that makes sense…….), and so I can’t fit ANYTHING in there to clean it out. All I can do to clean it is squirt some soap in there and rinse it a bunch. Also, the lid warps/chips pretty easily, but it does still look good and adds aesthetic value to the mug.
-It smudges really easily and you can see almost EVERY fingerprint on it. That makes it kind of uncomfortable to hold because it feels grimy.
-I realized while writing the con above this that I sound like a whinny American…..
-I’m not I swear
-Okay I can be but not all the time!
-It’s hard to fill it up all the way. This is another big one for me. So the strainer fits onto a lip at the top of the mug (the picture does a pretty good job of showing this). But, you can’t fill the cup up all the way because (as I said) the strainer is a little small and so the leaves leak out (especially if they’re small). Also, when the strainer is in, the water level is higher, so when you take it out the amount of tea goes down :(
-And lastly, I can’t put the cap on when I make herbal or black teas because they use boiling water (I like to put it on to help make the flavor stronger but you have to let the water cool for at least 3 minutes so as to release any pressure) and those are the teas I drink the most, so that is sort of frustrating.

Overall very nice, and I love it and would recommend it, so long as you can live with those cons.

This is great for brewing tea on the go, except for the fact that it is made of glass. I don’t bring it everywhere because I’m afraid to break it, but it’s useful to keep in your office. I have the one with a bamboo lid and this part of the mug is poorly made. When I bought it, there were little cracks in the bamboo. I went back to the store and I found out that they were all like this. I could have got a refund, but I decided to keep it because it was useful. I just avoid to put the lid on when I have tea in the mug to keep the bamboo from cracking more. It defeats the purpose of a travel mug, but as I said I don’t really use it for this. It’s very expensive for the quality. I’ve had mine for more than a year so maybe they fixed the issue.

Dare I say this is the perfect travel mug? Well some may not agree with me but I think its perfect!

I purchased my Noble for two reasons:

1) I am geek at heart and it looks like it should be in a science lab!

2) I was tired of my inferior metal mug leaking from the bottom for some weird reason.

But believe it or not reason # 1 is pretty much the main reason I purchased this mug! I like being able to brew tea’s on the go and I have never been a fan of the crap left behind from tea balls, so the noble seemed like a good choice.

Since my previous mug was only able to be filled at home for the most part a travel mug with an infuser was a must. After getting it I have started little tea stashes at friends homes and at work so all my frequent places have at least one serving of most of my teas on hand, it’s blissful.

I opted for the Bamboo lid Noble as I found it looked a little more refined and classy, but regardless of your choice all the Noble mugs are nice little pieces of artwork, empty they look great, full they can turn heads.

I highly recommend this for the on the go tea head, would make an awesome gift for a tea head as well.

I am sad to say that the beauty of it didn’t match the quality. It is the only time I’ve ever been disappointed in a Davids Tea purchase. The bamboo part of the lid kept swelling and detaching from the plastic part that actually screwed onto the glass. My local David’s Tea location DID however exchange it without any hassle the first time it happened, and then refunded me the entire purchase price when it happened to the replacement. I wish I’d been able to make it work, because I loved the design.

NICE

I had this, but I left it in Vancouver and now I am desperate to get another one. I LOVE this thing and wish I could get another one, but I can’t seem to find anywhere to buy it online. Help? The only thing that I had a problem was when you were trying to drink tea on the bus… you can’t. Unless you want tea leaves all over your mouth and in your teeth. It did get hot so you had to be careful, but the tea didn’t stay warm for a very long time. But I still really like it. So, it’s a cute and very nice mug to have.

I love it. It’s eye-catching. It’s so cool. It’s gorgeous.

Now, on to practicalities:

Pros:
- I love drinking from this. The other day someone came into my office and said, “I love that you’re drinking from a jar!” I loved the feeling of drinking from a jar. You should try it. It’s so much better than those spouts they put in travel mugs left and right.
- Double glass is where it’s at. It’s warm but not too warm.
- I like that it looks like a test tube, and I like seeing my tea.
- Did I say that it’s gorgeous? That too.

Cons:
- I have the one with the bamboo lid, and as a previous reviewer stated, it came with splinters, and it splintered more with use. This bothered me. Eventually, I went to my guy, who is an artist, for help. He pulled out his artist tools and painted the lid all over with this clear stuff (resin?), which made the lid look less fancy and natural but prevented any future bits of bamboo from impaling my hands. I’ve had no problems since. And my hands are splinter-free.
- The cap is hard to clean, though.
- I don’t often use the strainer. I think I might have lost it. Does losing something count as a con?