When we test camping accessories on your behalf, we become hyper-critical, and it’s amazing how certain similar-looking products can actually perform very differently when we compare them closely. When you’re deciding what to take on your motorhome holidays, we know that you only want the best products. Anything less would be a waste of your limited payload allowance!

If you’re looking for great little travel mugs to fill up with your favourite soups, tea, coffee and even cold drinks, you have come to the right place! But how will you be able to tell whether your chosen product is leak-proof, comfy to drink out of, has good thermal insulation properties, won’t taste of the last drink you put in it, pours well, is easy to undo with one hand while driving, and is generally fit for purpose?

We’ve taken a good look at a range of rival travel mugs on the market and gathered them together on our test bench for comparison to try and discover which are the best travel mugs in the UK.

Here at Practical Motorhome we’ve tested the Bodum Double Wall Travel Mug, at £12, a see-through thermal mug that impressed us so much that we awarded it four stars. Then we tested the Bodum Travel Mug, £20, a stainless-steel tour-de-force that can even go in the dishwasher for a thorough clean when you get back home. We also tested the Vango 450ml Mug, which is very cheap at £4. We looked at the Thermos ThermoCafe Zest Gift Set of two travel mugs for £13 at the time of our group test of travel mugs.

In this review we’ll concentrate on Vango’s second offering, the 450ml Stainless-steel Mug, which has a different shape from the first one, the Vango 450ml Mug – and it offers the bonus of both walls being stainless steel. Again, the mug’s exterior was noticeably warm to the touch through our test of its thermal properties, so we were surprised when it achieved reasonable results here. 

In all other ways, the two Vango travel mugs are similar. The best bits are the handle, the easy-to-open lid, the lid’s recessed and round-lipped shape, and the wide rim at the top when the lid’s removed. Less impressive are the impossible-to-dismantle slider, and the splash-proof, rather than leak-proof, design. 

As the name indicates, the Vango 450ml Stainless-steel Mug is made of stainless-steel, with a plastic lining. The handle is strong and feels just right in your hand. We’d be happy to use this mug on the campsite and beside the barbecue as well as on the road. Its double-wall thermal properties will keep hot drinks hot and cool drinks cool for a reasonable length of time. 

The Vango 450ml Stainless-steel mug measures 13cm long, 18cm tall and 9.5cm wide. It weighs 0.216kg. 

Overall, we awarded this Vango 450ml Stainless-steel Mug three stars, which is the same rating as the more bulbous-shaped Vango £450ml Mug. The Summit 475ml Travel mug, which costs £6.99, gained two stars, while the Thermos ThermoCafe Gift Set of two mugs also won two stars. Just ahead of the pack is the Bodum Double Wall Travel Mug, which gained four stars in this test. 

The out-and-out star turn in our travel mug reviews was our travel mugs test winner, the Bodum Travel Mug at £20, which gained five stars! You get what you pay for, it seems.