Thermos FBB500SS4 Vacuum Insulated 16 Ounce Compact Stainless Steel Beverage Bottle Import To Shop ×Product customization

The good, the bad, and the uglyThe good: This thermos is a good replacement for a similar thermos I’ve had for many years. It fits perfectly in my Jeep’s cup holder. It’s the perfect size to hold a single serving of coffee from my small Ikea French press. It’s easy to hold onto, even when I’m unscrewing the cap. It doesn’t leak. It keeps my coffee warm a long time.The bad and the ugly: I just bought this thing, and now it’s already damaged. It’s impossible to completely remove the sticker and glue from the bottom of the thermos. (I tried WD-40, Goof Off, Krud Kutter, stovetop cleaner, and Barkeeper’s Friend, plus I soaked it in water for a few hours. Nothing worked. I’m wondering whether the manufacturer deliberately chose this glue to cut down on the number of customer returns.) To add insult to injury, while trying to scrub off said sticker, it was necessary to scratch the bottom, plus I accidentally scratched the top of the thermos as well. Finally, the stainless steel shows fingerprints. These sorts of glitches may not bother some people, but they sure bug me!

Keeps hot for a long timeI bought this to take hot water to work so that I could make tea whenever I wanted, morning or afternoon without having to take my heavier 32-oz Thermos. It keeps freshly boiled water hot for several hours, allowing me to brew my tea perfectly. It easily fits into a side pocket on my backpack, and the smaller profile makes it easy to carry. I love it.

Well thought out designI’m a product designer, and it’s really nice to see something designed (almost) exactly how I would have designed it. Great job Thermos engineers!I use this container without the cap/cup. I don’t drink coffee and I’m not a big fan of pouring into a little cup and sipping from it- no offense intended toward tea and coffee drinkers. Instead I purchased this container to keep a good amount of water ice cold. I therefore use it more as a water bottle. Although it is not ideally suited to this purpose, it does the job extremely well. More on that later.The shoulder strap has little plastic connectors, so you can attach or remove it with minimal effort. I removed it immediately. I imagine it would also be nice to carry it somewhere with the strap and then easily remove the strap for drinking/serving purposes.The cup has a smaller cup inside for sharing. I don’t plan to share, but it’s a nice feature.The inner lid is amazing. There’s a little red toggle latch you push to release the flip cap. The flip cap springs open on its own. You may be wondering what happens if the button gets pushed accidentally. Thermos thought of this and put a little formed wire retainer you can employ to keep the flip top shut even if the button is pushed.The cap itself is very well thought out. It employs a bypass type seal instead of a seal squeezed between the container top and the lid. Why is this important? It seals better, is less likely to wear, and it allowed them to design the cap so it always locks in the exact same position relative to the handle. This means it will always pour from the same location every time.Inside the flip cap are two holes. One for dispense, the other for air to replace what is poured. It doesn’t gurgle. It just produces a steady stream. Liquid doesn’t come out the air hole either. Thermos designed a clever little snorkel to allow air in but not liquid out. The pour hole is relatively small. I think anything beyond tomato soup in chunkiness would have a hard time coming out the hole. Campbell’s chicken noodle maybe, but definitely not alphabet soup! Forget chunky soup unless you entirely remove the lid.There’s also a formed lip in the container that serves as the max fill line. I figured this out the hard way through overfilling with ice water and then putting the cap in place. This forced ice water past the lid seal that dripped out when I tipped the container. Water can also get trapped between the bottom cover and the stainless vessel. This will leak out when the container is tipped. I would have tried to design in weep holes or a better seal on the bottom.The handle extends and retracts. I personally would have liked more detent on the open position so it doesn’t close very easy. It makes it a little difficult to carry upright. It would work fine for pouring, but does not lend itself to being used as a mug handle.It’s nice that the container doesn’t get condensation on it from the ice water. I got tired of cleaning up a puddle on my desk.For drinking purposes it’s a little of a behemoth, but that was my intention. Lots of ice cold water always at hand! It’s a little big to be gripped easily in my hand. I have larger than average hands, so keep that in mind. Most people would need to two-hand the container unless they were the pour and sip type of people. As well, when I tried to put it in the refrigerator (without the cup/cap) it had to go next to the milk because that was the only spot tall enough.As well for drinking, the handle is 90 degrees from where I would like it. See earlier comments on pouring vs. mug handle.Now onto the insulating properties. I put quite a few ice cubes in at noon and still had ice at 7pm. Ice lasts quite a long time, and the water stays cool even longer. I’m not sure about 24 hours though. It depends on what the acceptable temp rise is. My acceptable limit is probably lower than most people and likely much lower than their 24 hr test limit. Even so, I haven’t had a warm drink of water yet.I hope this helps you in your decision. I don’t work for thermos or anyone that sells thermos. If this were my design, I’d be proud of it.

Chiming in with a glowing reviewBased upon the excellent critical and positive reviews here, I purchased this Thermos, and I’m not at all disappointed. It’s exceeded my expectations, in fact.An example: I filled it with hot green tea yesterday at noon. It’s now 9:30am, more than 20 hours later. I was expecting lukewarm, or even room temperature, tea, and was surprised to be greeted with steam when I unscrewed the stopper! It’s still hot! Not as hot, of course, but I also did not “pre-warm” the thermos with hot water before putting in the tea.Other things I’ve done wrong besides not pre-warming would be filling it too full, then screwing in the stopper and causing a little overflow (there has to be room for the stopper, obviously). Even with the stopper in tight, this is a recipe for spills as the liquid moves around, expands and contracts, plays cards, whatever those crazy liquid molecules do in a Thermos. However, the “lid/cup/cap” thing you screw onto the very top caught 99% of the spill after the overfilled thermos Jostled around in my accouterments. I know this because the inside of my bag was not a mess (a tiny little wet spot on a paper, but I like tea stains anyway), but when I unscrewed the lid/cup/cap thing, all the spill came out. Thank you, lid! That could have been bad. This is a product that compensates for user-error.The construction is fantastic. It’s strong and pleasant to look at, and it feels like it holds much more liquid than you’d think it should by its appearance. When I’m filling it, I keep pouring and pouring. Isn’t it full yet? No? More! It’s shiny, though, and will show fingerprints and water spots. Not that I care. It’s very LIGHT. I was expecting it to weigh much more. It’s lighter by far, even filled to overflow, than all the books I lug around with me.I only have two (minor) critical observations. The stopper must be screwed tightly into the bottle. This can make it difficult to open if you have, say, lotion on your hands (I often do). It’s also a little hard to clean. It’s not a big deal if you have a bottle brush, and even if you don’t, you can just fill it with water, a little soap, and shake it around. Just make sure you get all the soap out. And finally, the pouring is not flawless. It dribbles a little. I don’t really care. If I do it with skill, it doesn’t dribble at all, and it’s pretty ingenious to use the stopper as a pouring mechanism (you pour with the stopper in place but unscrewed somewhat).Is this a Japanese design (Nissan) with an American label (Thermos) manufactured in China? Or an American design with a Japanese label manufactured in China? I think it’s the former, making use of some Thermos patents. It is definitely a bi-lingual product, having instructions in both English and Japanese hiragana on the stopper. That way, if someone who does not know what “pour” means, they will hopefully know what “susugu” means.I’ve had it about a week. It does come under warranty (it says 5 years on the box, but it says 1 year in the instructions, seems like a finicky replacement program, and you have to send the thermos away for a new one, and only at their option), though I don’t expect to need it. If something went wrong after a few years, I’d happily buy a new one. I suppose the warranty is to catch defective units, like one described in another review which did not hold temperatures.There was also a complaint by someone that theirs smelled like coffee. I really don’t think Amazon is selling used units. They just kind of smell like that (the materials and processing do smell vaguely like coffee, I’ll admit, but it is not coffee).Thank you to all the reviewers who made this excellent purchase a no-brainer for me. I hope my review will be equally helpful in assisting other potential buyers.

Excellent Thermos with Excellent Heat RetentionThis is another of those products that I didn’t realize I needed until I bought it. I bought two, one for my girlfriend and one for myself, because she had been talking about wanting a Thermos. After reading the reviews, I decided to get this one. I’ve been using it for about a month now, and it’s become something I can’t live without.Okay, first of all, the heat retention ability. They say that if you put something into a preheated Thermos (preheated by letting hot water sit in it for five minutes) at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit (95 Celsius), it should still be at 150 Fahrenheit (66 Celsius) 24 hours later. Although I haven’t actually tested it scientifically, I can say anecdotally that this is probably true. I use mine for tea, so I’ll preheat it in the mornings, drop in a couple of tea bags, and pour in boiling water. If I haven’t drunk all of my tea, when I pour it out the next morning, it is still steaming and warm, but cool enough to drink immediately. From morning to evening, though, it remains so hot that I have to give it a few minutes before drinking.Next, the form factor, durability, convenience, and size. It is advertised as being made out of unbreakable stainless steel. I haven’t tried really hard to break it, but I have dropped it several times and have seen no marks, dents, or anything of the sort. It certainly feels quite durable. I haven’t owned it long enough to say whether or not the heat retention ability sticks around for a long time, but the only piece in it that seems like it could possibly degrade is the little silicone (or some other type of plastic) bit that seals in the cap. The form factor is good. It looks like a typical Thermos. The size is pretty much perfect. It’s not so large as to be inconvenient. It fits nicely into the water bottle slot on my backpack, and it fits into most car cup holders easily. The capacity is perfect for my average workday, as I can get three full cups (typical coffee cups) out of it. It holds 26 ounces (a bit over 0.75 liters), so just measure it out and see if that is enough for you. They do make a larger one, but I haven’t felt as though I needed anything more than this. As for convenience, the ability to pour without completely removing the cap is fantastic. It keeps the heat trapped inside while allowing for convenient pouring. Remember you don’t have to unscrew it all the way; as long as the seal at the bottom is broken, you’ll be able to pour, and the less you open it, the better. The stream of water does tend to splash a bit if you pour too fast, but once you get used to it, it’s not a problem.Pros:- Good size- EXCELLENT heat retention (haven’t tried cold, but it’s the same principle)- Nice, solid design- Convenient pour spout- The outer cap doubles as a cup if you need itCons:- Not great for on-the-go drinking; you need to be somewhere where you can pour it out (note that this is a good thing because an on-the-go mechanism would probably lead to awful heat retention)- Nothing else I can think of!This is a fantastic product, and one that I would definitely buy again. It’s great for working (and not having to spend millions at Starbucks), camping, or any other situation in which you won’t have easy access to a nice hot beverage.