This High-Tech Kickstarter Drinking Straw Is Really Silly

Sometimes your beverage is too hot, which burns your tongue. Sometimes your beverage is too cold, which causes brain freeze. This high-tech drinking straw, launching on Kickstarter, purports to make every sip just right.

I’ll be honest with you, dear reader: I’m only covering this because I’m entertained by how silly it is. This is a drinking straw called Slo (yes, that is the name) that is supposed to make hot drinks cooler and cool drinks hotter, thus bringing a beverage to a comfortable temperature by the time it gets to your mouth.

Slo achieves that with a special PCM (Phase Change Material), rather than some kind of electronic thermal management. As it changes state from liquid to solid, it absorbs a lot of heat. As it changes state from solid to liquid, it releases a lot of heat. So if you put phase change material in hot liquid, it will quickly absorb some of the liquid’s heat and make the liquid cooler. If you put the same material in cool liquid, the liquid will quickly absorb heat from the PCM and warm up.

This straw does that to your beverage of choice with an inner core of PCM. It is kind of like dropping a room temperature copper cube into your drink, just more efficient and without the funny taste.

Why is it silly? For so many reasons.

First, there isn’t that much PCM material in the straw. It can’t absorb or release very much heat before it reaches equilibrium with the beverage.

Second, the phase change occurs at 82°F (about 28°C), which means it is pulling the beverage to that temperature to reach equilibrium. Even if it worked perfectly, the outcome is that all of your beverages are now slightly lukewarm. But, as mentioned, there isn’t enough PCM material to do much. In reality, you’re just nudging the beverage temperature towards that equilibrium.

Third, it requires “recharging.” The campaign page says to put it in a refrigerator for 30 minutes to recharge

Fourth, it costs $57 for one Slo straw, with the super early bird discount.

The Kickstarter page shows data to prove its point, which is nice! For example, it says that it Slo brought beverage temperature from 80°C down to 55°C in just one second. The only issue (aside from the remarkably round numbers) is that they don’t specify the volume or composition of the beverage. Maybe it was only a few milliliters of water. Who knows?

In the real world, I don’t understand how this makes more sense than popping an ice cube into an overly hot mug of coffee or asking for your water without ice if that is too cold.

But if you’re like the 30 campaign backers and disagree with me, you can back Slo on Kickstarter until February 14th.