Hardware Bistro

Product: USB Cup Warmer with Hub
Manufacturer: Brando
Supplied by: Brando
Price: 16USD/RM59
Launch Date: NA

 

USB devices are being widely used nowadays with its greater support and with that many creative devices are born. Today we are going to bring you a creative device; USB Cup Warmer with Hub. It is a device which is used to keep the coffee/tea/drink warm. Interesting? Let us dig this out further.

 

Company Profile

usb.brando.com.hk, member of Brando Workshop, offers a wide range of special, useful and helpful USB products for our customers. We deliver happiness and convenience to everyone.

 

Features

- USB Cup Warmer with 4 USB ports (USB 1.1)
- Keep coffee/tea/drink warm at 50-60°
- Easy installation, no driver required, plug & play
- With on/off switch
- Red LED indication when the cup warmer is turned on
- Quality insulation material around the metal hot plate prevents burns
- USB powered, no batteries needed
- Size: 90 x 105 x 20mm (approx.)
- Weight: 88g

 

Package & Contents

 

USB Cup Warmer with Hub comes with a simple packaging box where there isn't much information available on it. This is acceptable since USB Cup Warmer with Hub is an OEM and simple product which doesn't require any technical knowledge at all; plug & play.

 

USB Cup Warmer with Hub is kept inside a bubble bag to protect it from being damaged especially during shipping. There isn't anything comes along with USB Cup Warmer with Hub; no user manual as well. It isn't a big deal but user needs to have some imagination to find out how to use this device.

 

USB Cup Warmer with Hub

 

The dimension and weight of USB Cup Warmer with Hub are ~ 90 x 105 x 20mm and 88g which is pretty small and light. This USB Cup Warmer with Hub from Brando is a solo cup warmer device without any cup so user needs to get him/herself one. There are plenty of similar products from Brando online store; further detail can be found here. Our sample unit here is a USB Cup Warmer plus a USB hub.

 

USB Cup Warmer with Hub is made by two major materials; aluminum base and quality insulation material around the metal hot plate to prevent burn. USB Cup Warmer with Hub comes with two LED indicators; green and red. Red LED indicates when the cup warmer is activated while green LED indicates when the USB device is being accessed.

 

USB Cup Warmer with Hub comes with four USB ports; two ports at each side. However all these four USB ports are just USB 1.1 not USB 2.0. We prefer two USB 2.0 ports rather than four USB 1.1 ports as USB 2.0 (480 Mbit/s) is much faster than USB 1.1 (12 Mbit/s) in ideal case with Hi-Speed device.

 

At the back of USB Cup Warmer with Hub, there is a small piece of regulation information. Besides that there are four rubber feet to allow this device to be held firmly on the surface. These feet are made by soft material which will be worn after sometime. There is a ON/OFF switch near the USB cable which is used to power on the USB warmer or you can call it as USB heater.

 

At the bottom of the USB Cup Warmer with Hub, there are some air vents which are used to dissipate the heat in order to keep the device's lifespan as long as possible. The USB cable of USB Cup Warmer with Hub is around 3 feet long and the cable comes with very nice silver shielding.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

As we mentioned before USB Cup Warmer with Hub is a device that doesn't require any driver installation as it is a plug & play device. Hence we will skip the installation process since it doesn't have one. First of all, we will test out its warmer/heater feature which is the main objective for purchasing this device. Before that user needs to look for a suitable cup; of course a good conductive cup likes aluminum or steel. We have a hard time to hunt for a suitable cup as the size that can be supported by this device is very limited but we still managed to get one at the end.

The heater will be start working once the USB cable is plugged and the switch is turned on; red LED will be lighted up. Around 2-3 minutes the surface of the USB Cup Warmer with Hub is starting to generate some heat and we have placed the aluminum cup on top of it with a cup of plain water (ambient temperature). The plain water became a bit warm after around 10 minutes and it was maintained at that level. It is a bit disappointing because it is not up to our expectation yet. However we believe that its performance will be better if it is used in non air-cond environment and use a cup with flat bottom base so that the heat will be transferred to the cup more effectively.  

 

Besides the heater feature, we have included some basic USB performance of this USB Cup Warmer with Hub although the USB hub is an additional feature of this device; green light will be lighted up.

 

Surprisingly the USB hub performance (right chart) is quite good; even better than the direct connection on the notebook USB port (left chart). We have repeated the test few more times and the results are still the same. Anyway we will stop here since it performs better than it should be.

 

Conclusion

USB Cup Warmer is a creative device which allows user to keep his/her coffee/tea/drink without having hard time to keep on refilling with hot/warm drink. The heater is a bit underpowered where it is just able to keep the water slightly warm; the room for improvement is still there. For those are interest to get this device, we will suggest you get a unit which comes along with the cup since the cup is validated to achieve the expected result and besides that it will save the time to look for a suitable cup. Brando USB Cup Warmer is just ~16USD which is not expensive at all; you may get one to play around with it.

 

Pros:

* No driver required, plug & play
* USB powered, no batteries needed
* Acceptable price

Cons:

* A bit underpowered
* Hard to look for a suitable good conductive cup

 

Thanks to Brando for providing this sample for us to review.

 

 

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