I drink coffee normally. When I drink at home, I make it via a drip coffee machine (these day it’s a Moccamaster) and have it black. I try to get beans that drink well black so that’s usually what I do. I say this upfront because it matters? It’s a weird coffee person thing but while many little details matter, some also don’t. So it doesn’t matter which beans I use, or how finely it’s grounded, or if I freshly grind or not. The brewing method does, because as you’ll see the starting temp when it hits the cup does, in Burnout’s case.

So Ember is this brand of coffee (or tea or whatever) mugs that have an active heating element built into the cup at the bottom. It’s not unlike other coffee mugs that you can plug into a power source and keep warm, but it’s “smart” in that it can connect to your phone via app and bluetooth, and you can set the temperature to keep warm at, for how long, and other misc functions. I have had one since around 2021 when working remotely became a fixture of my life. Since I’m at my desk most of the day I put it in the charging dock so the coffee can keep at the same temp all day. By itself the battery runs out in about 90ish minutes, but now after much use it’s probably barely 60 minutes? Anyways, it’s on the dock most of the time when it’s being used so the battery life is not important.

It’s a known entity, so much so that I got it from Costco? Well, only after my dad microwaved my first mug and the battery inside (2 of them, smaller than AAA, fwiw) exploded. The first mug I got online since I guess the smartphone functionality was kind of subpar in terms of working well. And, yes, kids, don’t microwave either the Ember or the Burnout.

The Burnout is the only competing product in the category that I think is worth trying. It is also a coffee mug, but more specifically it’s made of heat shield ceramics that is designed to absorb heat above a certain temperature and keep at that temperature by releasing heat it absorbed. Well, that doesn’t sound that fancy if you realize any o’ cup or mug does this. Some fancy drip brewers even tell you to warm up the carafe with hot water before using, for more or less the same reason. What is different about Burnout is that it can actually do this in a credible way now that I have tested it. it’s also different from many of the plain thermos and hot water bottles that it isn’t purely trying to insulate as well as it can, since freshly brewed coffee at like 180F is only about 170F after an hour in my Cinderella Girls thermos (circa 2015, made in China, purchased in Japan) and that’s still too hot to drink.

In contrast, when I put it in the Ember or the Burnout it would be drinkable in less than 10 minutes (150F). In Ember’s case it’ll remain at the temp I set it at (like 140 usually) for hours on end until its power saving kicks in and shut off. In the Burnout, well, I didn’t measure it, but it is drinkable in the same or maybe even less. What’s more important to note is that the Burnout does keep it warm up to 4 hours later, even if at a tepid 90-100F at that point.

The marketing for the Burnout says its some rocket heat tile technology, and it seems right, but making an insulation that behave this way is not rocket science anymore, so the one piece of science was tweaking the mug material that it does this functional cutover from absorption to retention of heat, and figuring out the formula in the physical, testing it, etc.

Which is to say the Burnout is still mainly a classic heat retainer/insulator. It is sold with a plastic lid that has rubber connectors. It is important that you use this lid to keep your drink warm, because without it, it behaves not unlike a normal cup. Which is also to say, if you want to A/B test the Burnout you need to try it with a normal tumbler.

The Ember doesn’t need this at all, naturally. And yes you can see rings of black in my Ember mug as coffee evaporates, lol.

So, is it worth it? I think you can get an Ember pretty cheaply now, so if you drink a lot of coffee and is serious about that experience, it’s a worthwhile buy. I mean I use mine nearly every workday and even on some off days, unless I am traveling. Even if it’s a very mild lifestyle improvement I got so much use out of it that the $100 or whatever I paid felt well worth the price. (It was more like $180 since I had to buy 2 because one blew up, but anyway.)

I bought the Burnout (version 1) for about $38 during a sale. I don’t think it’s worth more than that. It’s really just a thermally insulated mug that is much more suitable for normal weekday coffee drinking at the office desk. If you’re not doing this scenario, it might not be a good buy.

In terms of other small details, both Ember (v2) and Burnout (v1) have a tapered base, which I’m not a huge fan of, as it’s not the most stable to handle. It’s OK on a flat surface, but it’s more about handling. Neither are very travel-friendly, although I think you can buy a travel version of the Ember and the new Burnout has a cylindrical shape that is more stable, and it has a metallic exterior which is more grip friendly.

I feel like the Ember is versatile if you can get it to work correctly, so much so that it’s worth it if you drink a lot of hot beverages in a setting where you’re not always making more, if that makes sense. It’s nice to be able to use it to heat up a drink also. I’m not sure how the Burnout will work out exactly outside of its most common use case, other than as a fancy and kinda heavy mug. It’s made in the USA, so maybe that means something.

Long time no blog.

As with the other white-collar types during the Pandemic, I worked from home a lot–almost exclusively now. That’s great for my hour+ commute life, but I had to upgrade my home IT equipment to make things work well. I can probably get deeper into this at the end of this post.

But it’s in this backdrop that Razer drops their latest wireless gaming headset, which comes with this T-shaped USB-C dongle that works with Playstation, PC, Switch and your smartphone, most likely. I think that’s awesome, and I didn’t really try it out on the smartphone, for reasons I’ll explain, but that’s great on paper. For $99 MSRP that’s a nice set of reqs.

In addition, there’s a proper microphone on the stalk that even has L/R directionality. The padding on the ears are memory foam. It provides great passive audio isolation for a $100 headset arguably for gamers. Prior to the Barracuda X, I was using the Logitech G733, which is, uh, way too gamerZ for this old man who is using it to run, uh, raids, the dungeons are called “Quarterly business review” and “customer escalation bridge.” I mean, I do talk to my team every day, we are on vc often, just that we battle using Zoom, Slack, email, Jira, and, well you get the idea.

Razer Barracuda X‘s sound quality is significant better than the Logitech. The mic quality is also better. There’s more isolation. It purports a longer battery life, and is charged in the same way through a USB-C charging cable. Volume control, secondary button (which is mapped to the power button), and a mute button, plus volume, all on headset. The wireless range is on par with the G733. It’s about the same price. The T-shaped USB-C dongle also comes with a USB-C(f) to USB-A(m) cable for sanity’s sake if you have to plug that into a PC or a crowded laptop port.

It all made sense to me, which is why when it was released, I bought it the day of and went right at it for almost a week. Turns out, this product just didn’t quite cut it, for these reasons:

1. The memory foam doesn’t dissipate heat well, and my ears get warm after an hour. That’s not going to cut it especially in the summer months.
2. My head is on the large side, and the fit is a little tight. The G733 uses an elastic band to basically double-support the top of my head (think AKG), while the Razer looks a bit like my Sony WH1000X-MK4. I’m happy with the Sony (in fact I flew transpacific with them all the time no issues, back when that was a thing qq). It’s just that the Sony headphones are notably bigger than the Razer, and actually is meaningfully “over ear” where as the Razer is more “on ear.” Without those comforts the heat and pressure become a notable factor in short order.
3. The microphone stalk has a cover that is symmetric (like a grape), it is also symmetric once you cover up the mic part with the cover. Which means people may not hear you properly if you didn’t orient the stalk correctly given it is a stereo mic. It’s all black and symmetric, so you wouldn’t be able to tell if the mic is oriented correctly unless you 1) figure it out by touch or 2) remove the cover. This got me on a work call, which basically soured me on this headset completely, even if I now know why and can address it. The funny thing is for people without stereo output on their headsets, they’ll hear you fine. Imagine that confusion while raiding. No thank you.

Overall, this is a great pair of headphones and I probably would be able to put up with these pitfalls, but they’re showstoppers versus what’s on the market now. I don’t think there are better wireless PC/gamer headphones than these on spec, however, especially given the $99 starting price. It’s surely going to get discounted, and these would make pretty good work headphones too.

If Razer makes a v2 that address those 3 problems, they have a winner. Actually all they need to do is make a more directionally visible mic stalk that captures the audio correctly (maybe they can also do a software cue), and make these bigger. For now, back to Amazon they go.

PS. Just as a matter of spilling it out, I basically converted my everyday workstation for work purposes. I put a VM on it to do the VPN stuff. I hooked up part of it with OneDrive for work. I drive my apps mostly via old copies of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and a Chrome window doing everything else (like email and stuff I don’t run local). Since I already run 3 monitors, this makes working easier than I had on hand in the office. For audio, at first I ran with my Blue Yeti with a pair of headphones as monitor, and I would run the Zoom audio into the Yeti. This probably sounds great, but I had to be talking into the mic and it’s tiring for long calls, plus the Yeti picks up all the background sounds. I also tried my previous go-tos, like that Fiio bluetooth dongle I used with my wired earphones back when I get to travel more. I also used my WF-1000m3s. Those all worked, but the mic quality were lacking. The BT transmission is not great either, so the range isn’t good enough–not even so I can sneak into the bathroom. That’s when I went to the G733, about a couple months before the holidays in 2020. In short, the G733 fixed all the issues, even if it is not a great headset either, especially in terms of quality. For video, I had this kind-of-old Logitech C920, which worked perfectly fine. I also did not have a shortage of laptop and laptop-likes that had front-facing cams. Only thing that I wish would work better was the action cam I got, which couldn’t quite just work like a webcam straight and required finagling.

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my Sony WH-1000X, the OG wireless bluetooth cans with badass sound cancelling–the one that didn’t use SBC! I went from mark 1 (technically they’re just not mark anything, but I’ll call them XM1 to keep it simple) to XM4, so there are actually some big differences. Most of them are probably already there if you got the mark 3s.

For one, I went from a refurb pair to a new pair. My 1000X was $180 refurb back in 2017 holiday season. It’s 3 years later and I went up to about $275 for these. I think that is a stretch, not because the sale was not big enough for me, but because I haven’t had a regular commute to work since March. If I had my usual workday commute, $300 for a three-year investment is well worth it, because these cans are just great all around.

Since I’m comparing the XM4 with the original, it is probably easier to just say what remained the same between the two, and what didn’t.

SAME SAME:

• Sound signature: still a tad thick overall versus neutral, is what I’d call it.
• LDAC and AAC support
• Basically the same form and form factor, with small changes.
• Still comes with a carry case with the same fold style and shape
• Still comes with a 3.5mm jack for wired use
• Same kind of ear pads
• Still fits my large-ish head comfortably, if on the snug side
• Still comes in black (I got the black one, but there’s also a silver XM4)
• Freakishly good ANC
• Touch control on right can, buttons on left can (only 2 buttons now on XM4)
• Mic still not great (XM4 is better though)

Differences:

• XM4 has nearly double the battery life
• There’s an app. Since XM2 there was an app but the XM4 stuff is pretty wild. It’s the same app for the WF-1000 line (I also own a pair of WF-1000XM3).
• Seamless pairing thanks to Android advances (not that it was particularly an issue before, just much easier now). Also smooth onboarding that’s more or less automatic.
• More…bass in the XM4. By a good amount.
• XM4 is lighter and less rigid than XM1, which addresses the stress tension failure they had in the OG.
• Multi-point support–it’s barely working but it does work. Only caveat is it only supports SBC/AAC when you enable this feature, up to 2 devices max. Honestly AAC is fine for me, but sometimes I still prefer LDAC with the high resolution stuff.
• The case is a bit lighter but also a bit flimsier. XM1 case is quite rigid and took a lot of beating (I beat on it a lot, on that note). XM1 case is also a tiny bit more circular and thus a tad bigger. It also didn’t have the little hole in the divider inside to stow the airplane adapter, 3.5mm cable, and possibly your charger cable.
• Oh, USB-C on these, so I probably will just ditch the charger cable in the case. My XM1 was literally one of the last two things I carry that still used micro-USB. That said I am likely still to carry a micro-USB cable around even when I go to 0 micro-usb items just because I have some packrat tendencies. [The other micro-USB thing is a BT audio dongle/DAC.]
• I think the USB-C port on the XM4 actually has data, where as it’s just power on the XM1, correct me if I’m wrong here.
• The XM4 also is $50 more on MSRP, but this is the kind of thing you would never buy MSRP, so not a big deal. I got mine for $278 plus tax minus some credit card promo. Not bad for newish hardware on a Black Friday sale, as the XM4 came out in August 2020.
• XM4 sound is more delicate than XM1, but I think this is just a general improvement on Sony’s part.

Overall I think once the ‘rona stay-at-home vibe is over I will be working these hard. I find these headphones teetering more and more towards “need” than “want” over time, even if obviously I don’t need them. It’s just such a nice luxury. Also my XM1 is heading towards physical breakdown due to the headband stress fracture issue. It’s not beyond repair, that said, so maybe they’ll make as great backup or a hand-me-down.