YETI Rambler Review

YETI is a brand that has taken the outdoors and cottaging world by storm in recent years due to it’s ability to blend strong clean aesthetics with impressive performance. So today, we’ll take a look at 3 of YETI’s most popular travel mugs.

There is some debate as to what defines a “travel mug” as opposed to a thermos, but the Rambler Mug from YETI takes the term travel mug to a whole other level. If you are the type of person who is known to set your coffee or tea down and forget it for long periods of time, or simply someone who enjoys sipping your morning brew over the WHOLE morning, this mug will be perfect for you.

Taking the form factor of a traditional “mug” and adding the heat retention of vacuum insulated sides, makes this a stealthy way to keep your drinks hot or cold longer.

While the mug on it’s own does maintain temperature significantly better than you’re average coffee cup, it’s once you install the included lid that the differences really become night and day.

Another reason I enjoyed using the lid was the added spill protection. Everyone is familiar with the “full cup waddle” you’re sometimes forced to do when carrying a full cup of very hot coffee down to the dock. With the YETI mug, this was a non-issue, with the lid keeping my hands, and feet, completely safe from scalding hot coffee.

While the mug is a great choice for once you’ve reached your destination, it doesn’t exactly have the right form factor or pit-stop-inducing capacity required for a long road trip.

For that, you’re going to want to look to YETI’s most popular product, the classic YETI Rambler. The rambler takes the already good heat retention and capacity of the mug, and turns them both up to 10.

It delivers additional performance in a more conventional form factor that will fit in a car cup holder,

but still manages to look unique in a world filled with silver contigo travel mugs.

The rambler comes in 20oz and 30oz sizes, and a wide variety of tasteful colours. Well… mostly tasteful…. The one you’re looking at now is the 20oz in Navy Blue.

A common theme of all these YETI travel mugs is the build quality. These aren’t your typical stainless travel mugs, and they certainly aren’t your average coffee cup. The sides are THICK metal, coated in a slightly textured finish for better grip with wet hands or gloves. I was impressed that YETI was able to make these travel mugs feel like they were worth the price.

Now, no product is without fault, and YETI’s signature magslider lids are what I found to be the single biggest drawback of these products. They are slosh-proof, but they are certainly not spill proof. Knocking over either of these mugs will result in some spilled liquid, and you definitely don’t want to be just throwing either into your backpack.

For that task, you’ll want to step up to the YETI bottle. A screw-down lid will make this as spill proof as physically possible, and once again improve heat retention.

If you don’t enjoy drinking from a wide mouth bottle like this, have no fear. YETI offers these bottles with a “Chug Cap” which is essentially just a removable narrowed spout for mess-free drinking. Again, the YETI bottle is available in a huge variety of colors.

Overall, I was very surprised with the YETI travel mugs I tested over the past few weeks. Due to the massive hype that surrounds these, I was expecting yet another product driven purely by marketing and outdoor brand snobbery, but I was genuinely impressed with the build quality and unique design that these offer. Almost every time I put one of these down on a table, someone would ask “hey, are those any good?” and I was glad I was able to answer “Yeah, they really are”.