I love my old Contigo AUTOSEAL no spill travel mugs, so when I saw that there is a new version I had to check it out. The Contigo AUTOSEAL Metra no spill travel mug (via Amazon) has a newly designed body and more importantly a new lid design.
Just to get this out of the way, the 16 ounce Contigo AUTOSEAL Metra travel mug has a newly designed body, but its really just that they have wrapped about 2/3 of the stainless steel body with a very nice texturized rubber grip. Nothing crazy fancy, but its really nice and a great improvement. The real upgrade here is with the lid and how the valve works plus some additional protection for the top to keep things cleaner. The picture above shows the top of the new lid design and the fully exposed valve that makes it MUCH easier to keep things clean. The spring loaded lever flips back to completely expose the rubber stopper that seals the hole in the top of the lid. The older versions did not allow anywhere near the same exposure to the innards like this and could result in some difficult situations for keeping things clean.
The inside of the new lid is seen above and you can see that little round hole (as compared to the oval slit on the old version) that is plugged up by the rubber stopper we saw in the previous picture. The way that the Contigo AUTOSEAL Metra travel mug is sealed up along with its double walled stainless steel body help to keep your hot beverages hot for up to 5 hours and your cold beverages cold for up to 12 hours.
In the first picture you may have also noticed two other things about the lid. First is that the push button which is the grey component that says “AUTOSEAL” on it above is now in a horizontal instead of vertical orientation. Personally I like this orientation better because it feels more natural to press it while drinking from the travel mug this way. Instead of a part of your finger going across a small portion of a vertically positioned button, this lets you use the entire length of your forefinger apply pressure to the entire button making it easier to press. There is also that “Twist to Protect” sticker there, lets take a look at that feature next.
If you look at the first heads down picture of the lid earlier on in this post you can see the little round drinking slot exposed, but in this picture its covered up all nice and neatly. The part of the lid there that says “Contigo” is about 3/4 the size of the entire lid and actually twists so that you can cover the spout where you drink from which is really nice. Additionally when you twist the lid to cover the drinking spout, it also locks the button so you cant accidentally try to open it and make a mess with your beverage spilling all over inside the covered up part of the lid.
Overall I’m super happy with my new Contigo AUTOSEAL Metra travel mug so far. I’ve only gone through two hot beverages and a 3-4 rounds of water with it so far but its definitely performing as expected and I love the feel of the rubber grip in addition to the easier to press button and the tidy, neat, and clean addition of the rotating lid to cover the drinking spout. Two things to note though, the lids are not interchangeable with other Contigo mugs and although its listed as having 16 ounces of capacity, thats only if you fill it to the very top which would make it almost impossible to put the lid on at that point, so maybe more like 15.8 ounces. Regardless of all that though, this is the best looking AND functioning travel mug I’ve ever used and I highly suggest you get your hands on one too. They also come in a few other color options, so check out all of the Contigo AUTOSEAL Metra versions (via Amazon) and get your own.
©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.
