The Cup That Tells You What’s in It

vessyl-2Today I read about a really interesting innovation. It’s a clever invention that feels like something from the future…yet I can’t decide if anyone will ever use it for anything.

It’s called the Vessyl, and as the title of this blog post suggests, it’s a cup that tells you exactly which liquid is inside of it. It will also tell you the dietary content of the liquid. The cup reports the information to your smartphone so you can track it. The cup even knows how much liquid is inside of it, so if you’re a heavy coffee drinker trying to cut down on the caffeine, the cup could track over time when you seem to be drinking the most.

All of this for $99. Pretty cool, right?

But something about it just doesn’t seem all that…useful. Like, the cup can tell you how much water you’ve been drinking, and you can have it remind you to drink more water. That’s cool, but do you really need an app to tell you when you’re thirsty?  And it’s neat that it can measure the dietary content of a liquid, but most liquids have the dietary content printed on the side of the bottle or can.

Then there’s the price. $99 is perfectly reasonable for this level of technology. But are you really going to carry around a $99 cup all day so you can drink every liquid out of it? Because to get the full functionality out of the cup, you need to use it for every liquid you consume.

I don’t know…I want to like this, but I just can’t see anyone actually using it. Would you buy it? Would you use it?

7 thoughts on “The Cup That Tells You What’s in It”

  1. Yeah, we wondered about that at work. The only truly useful application we came up with is the possibility it could tell you if your drink has been tampered with when you step away. If you need that though, the price tag on the cup is the least of your problems.

    Reply
    • Ha ha, that’s a good point. Imagine getting an alert on your phone telling you that someone is currently drinking out of your cup. That would be surreal.

      Reply
  2. Actually, I think this is brilliant and super useful for those with dietary restrictions (i.e. pregnant women who must watch their caffeine intake, people with gluten allergies–is there gluten in liquid?). They should definitely lower the price point though.

    Reply
  3. I have a colleague that has an app that tells him when he should hydrate himself. That lasted for about a week. Turns out, our body is pretty good at telling us when we’re thirsty.

    I also find a device that can analyse dietary content a bit suspect. The linked article also mentioned the cup can do this without being in direct contact with the content. Further, the team is keeping the technology ‘close to their chests.’ As far as I know, and I’m quite ignorant here (so take it with a grain of salt–no pun intended), depending on what you’re looking for, you’ll need different methods of analysis; most of which needs to be done in a laboratory setting using various equipments. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all device, certainly not one that fits inside a mug.

    Reply
    • Penumbra: That’s a good point, if the cup works as well as it claims.

      Allen: Yeah, I agree–I’d like to see the cup in action to see if it can do what it says it can.

      Reply

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