Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

The Mug+ turns cups into Bluetooth speakers, whether it’s a good idea or not

Kris Wouk
By

If you’ve spent a fair amount of time on the internet, chances are fairly good that you might have stumbled across a tip that placing your phone inside a cup can amplify its volume. The Mug+, launching today on Kickstarter, takes that idea and runs with it. The speaker doesn’t have a cabinet of its own. Instead, as the name implies, the creators urge users to stick it on top of their favorite coffee mug.

Of course, coffee mugs are far from the only suggested homes for the hermit crab-inspired Bluetooth speaker. Looking over the project’s Kickstarter page, you’ll notice a photo of a fish bowl (including an unhappy looking fake fish) being used, along with mentions of antique tea pots, paper boxes, and even Pringles cans being used with the speaker.

Recommended Videos

If you’re left feeling somewhat dubious regarding the sound quality, it’s with good reason. There are indeed ceramic in-ear headphones on the market, but while we’ve seen our fair share of speakers, we’ve never seen a speaker with the cabinet made entirely out of ceramic. The Mug+ Kickstarter page explains the benefits of different materials, with a paper cup offering sound that is thin, resonant, and clear, while metal is supposedly more punchy.

Related

The Mug+ uses a 3-watt, 45mm driver with a fundamental frequency of 130Hz, so you won’t be pumping earth-shaking bass out of your water glass, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. The speaker is meant to sit on top of openings from 6 to 10 centimeters, so while the company mentions containers used mainly for food, a user could create their own cabinet for the speaker, though whether this would be worth the time is questionable.

The speaker will use Bluetooth 4.0 for connectivity, and claims battery life of up to eight hours of playback time. It will charge via a Micro USB power located on the bottom of the speaker, meaning you’ll likely have to remove it from its temporary home in order to charge it.

Fortunately, if you’re looking to experiment with the Mug+, you won’t have to spend a fortune to do so. While the team behind the Mug+ says the speaker will eventually retail for $60, the standard Kickstarter price is $45. Early Bird pricing brings the price down to $40, while Super Early Bird pricing lowers the price even further to $30, though these are limited to 200 and 250 backers, respectively.

If the campaign, which launched on Tuesday, reaches its funding goal of $15,000, the team expects to begin shipping the Mug+ in February 2017. As with all Kickstarters, there is some amount of risk here, but if you’re already looking around your home for ideal places to stick the Mug+, you can find out more about it on the Kickstarter campaign page.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kris Wouk
Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
Edifier MP230 Hands-on Review: The pint-sized, retro Bluetooth speaker brings a vintage vibe
An Edifier MP230 Bluetooth speaker is sitting on a mantle next to a plant and some decorative letters.

If you look too quickly, you might think the Edifier MP230 Bluetooth Speaker is actually a bedside radio from the ‘60s. While visually, that’s by design on Edifier’s part, the performance of this handsome little Bluetooth speaker is more than its surface-level aesthetics.

In general, Edifier has carved out a nice little space for itself in the market -- developing high-design speakers that punch reasonably well above their price point in terms of audio performance. While the brand is known for unique designs going as far back as 2014’s e25 Luna speakers that look like something out of a Jetsons episode, the MP230 is taking a page out of the old and trying to do something reasonably new.

Read more
Marshall’s third-generation home speakers go eco-friendly with a wider soundstage
Marshall III speakers are sitting on an entertainment console.

Marshall’s line of in-home wireless speakers has always aimed to bring powerful sound and elegant design to your bookshelf, and the third generation available now carries that just a bit further into the modern day. The new lineup features the small space-friendly Acton III, the mid-sized Stanmore III, and the flagship Woburn III speakers.

Everything listeners love about the Marshall speaker line is still here. There's still decent power on deck with 15-watt tweeter amps on all models, and 30-watt, 50-watt, and 90-watt setups for each of the main drivers on the respective speaker models. The Woburn also folds in dedicated mid-frequency drivers for more fullness in general. There's also solid integration via Bluetooth aptX codec support, plus an array of wired inputs. But now Marshall is putting an emphasis on a few additional modern specs.

Read more
Ikea launches $65 Bluetooth lantern speaker with Spotify Tap
Ikea Vappeby Bluetooth speaker in blue.

Ikea's latest speaker is a rechargeable, portable, and weather-proof lantern known as Vappeby. With 360-degree sound, a built-in LED light, and an integrated carry-handle, it looks like a miniature version of LG's XBoom 360, but with one key difference: The Vappeby is the first Bluetooth speaker to integrate Spotify Tap. It will be available at Ikea stores and online starting in April 2022 for $65.

Spotify Tap lets anyone with a Spotify account (whether premium or free) resume their listening session with a single button press. Until now, the feature has only been supported on select wireless headphones and earbuds, like the Sony LinkBuds, Jabra Elite 4 Active, or the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700.

Read more