The 2 Best Travel Mugs of 2025

We’ve considered and evaluated several other Zojirushi travel mugs throughout our testing. Here’s a breakdown:

• Zojirushi SM-VH: This stainless-steel mug with stainless interior insulates as well as the SM-KHE and so far resists denting about as well. We have tested the KHE for longer, though, and have more confidence in it.
• Zojirushi SM-YAE: This 16-ounce mug costs a little more than our main pick. It comes with an electro-polished interior, like the Zojirushi SM-KHE, but has a shape that’s stouter than other Zojirushi mugs and short enough to fit under the spout of a single-cup brewing machine. In our tests, however, it fell short of our picks in insulating performance: After eight hours, the water temperature had dropped to 100 degrees, 58 degrees cooler than the water in our top pick.
• Zojirushi SM-SHE: This mug has persistent stock issues; it also broke during our drop test.

The Owala SmoothSip fits in a car cup holder securely and it’s one of the most comfortable mugs we tested to hold and drink from. However, it doesn’t insulate as well as our top picks, the locking slider tab is difficult to move, and it’s available only in a 20-ounce and 12-ounce size—not our preferred 16-ounce size.

The Mighty Mug uses trapped air under a suction-cup-like base to secure the mug. The mechanism worked well on smooth surfaces, and the mug also insulates almost as well as our top pick. The Mighty Mug is one of the most expensive mugs we tested, though, and when we dropped it, the mug was severely dented near the lid and had a dent bad enough at the base that the anti-tipping mechanism no longer worked. (Mighty Mug told us it would replace a mug with this kind of dent.)

The Splitflask holds both cold and hot liquids in the same mug, but in different chambers. It insulates poorly, and the lid opened when we dropped the mug.

The Stanley Aerolight Transit Bottle insulates almost as well as our top pick, but the flip top lid opened when we dropped the mug. We also found it difficult to take small sips through the sipping port, which led to a burned tongue.

Our former pick for drivers, the Stanley Trigger Action, was recalled in December 2024 due to a lid that can detach and potentially cause burns. Stanley sent us a warranty replacement lid, but it was a different flip-top style lid without a spill-proof button. Stanley is not selling the mug on its site and has not announced any plans for an updated Trigger Action mug.

The JoeVeo Temperfect Javabliss 16 Travel Mug brings a scalding drink down to a drinkable temperature and holds it there by using a third layer in its wall to capture excess heat and then release it over time. It isn’t leakproof or spill-proof, though.

The 17-ounce Kinto Travel Tumbler insulates well—so well that it was the third-best contender at insulating in our tests behind the Zojirushi SM-SRE and the now-discontinued GSI Microlite 500 Flip. Drinking from it requires fully removing the lid, though, and finding a place to put the lid.

After dismissing previous iterations of the Hydro Flask travel mug, we tested the 20-ounce Hydro Flask Coffee Cup with Flex Sip Lid, and it was a clear improvement over older models. It kept drinks hot for about a half day, and it resisted denting better than about half of the other tested mugs. The lid requires two hands to open and close, however, so it can be tough to open while you’re distracted, and it has a tendency to “burp” a small amount of liquid when you rotate the lid from closed to open.

The 16-ounce OXO Good Grips Thermal Mug with SimplyClean Lid resembles—and insulates about as well as—the Hydro Flask mug we tested, keeping drinks hot for a half day. It also shares that model’s flaws, requiring two hands to open and close, and burping some liquid.

The 18-ounce Purist Mover with Scope Lid insulates nearly as well as our picks and has a 360-degree sip lid, which lets you drink from any side of the mug. It requires two hands to open and close, though.

We broke the flip-top lid of the 20-ounce Welly Traveler, as well as the glued-on product-label plate on the bottom of the mug, the first time we dropped it.

The 12-ounce Ketiee Travel Mug is cheaper than most mugs we looked at, and we wondered what we’d get for the price. It kept drinks hot for about two hours during our tests, scoring near the bottom. Our main complaint is that the molding process left a pointy knob on our test unit, right above the drinking port, that pressed into our testers’ noses. Also, the product page states that it’s spill-proof—and we found that it wasn’t, whether the flip-top lid was open or closed.

The battery-powered Ember Travel Mug 2 promises to keep your beverage at a specific temperature (up to 145 degrees) for three hours—if you remember to charge it. Without the battery, it scored at the bottom on our insulation test; we also managed to break its inner seal during our drop test. Although we like the standard Ember Mug 2 (read more in our mug warmers guide), we can’t recommend this even more expensive sibling.

We also tested and dismissed travel mugs by GSI, Klean Kanteen, Stanley, and Zojirushi that have since been discontinued.

This article was edited by Ria Misra and Christine Ryan.