Cricut Mug Press 100% Honest review Comparison to a Mug Press from Amazon - Unbiased not sponsored

hey everybody and welcome to another qriket craft video today's video is super exciting and i can't wait to show you guys all about it and i'm so happy you're here to join me for this make sure you subscribe to my channel i put out new videos on wednesdays and saturdays at 7 30 pm eastern standard time i am super excited for this video because this is a new product from cricket we got the cricut mug press so because we got that qriket mud press from them i wanted to do a review and a comparison between a qriket mug press and a mug press that i got off of amazon i got both of these this week i have not used either one until this video and i purchased both with my own money neither company is paying me for this review i paid for everything including the mugs including all the sublimation all the infusible ink everything was paid for by me out of my own pocket you'll see a lot of other people doing reviews and one thing i want to caution you is that if you're watching somebody do a review it's really important to look and see where they provided the products were they paid for their review that can sometimes sway an opinion one way or the other even if they don't necessarily mean it to you want to please the company that's paying you so you're probably going to give them a good review even if you don't necessarily mean to do so so keep that in mind when looking at different reviews getting a 100 percent un biased honest review for me is always important and i want to make sure that i share with you guys all my thoughts all my feelings and all my true things that i feel about these machines that way you guys can really understand some of the pros and cons of both machines they both have their place in the world so let's get started we're going to go ahead and start pressing we're going to use infusible ink and sublimation i'm going to link everything that i used down below for you guys that way you can check out and see if you like any of those products there's everything down below i'll have all the sublimation stuff i used the infusible ink both of the presses and the mugs all linked for you guys so you can check them out and make a decision for yourself as to if you want to purchase one of these purchase the mugs and get started with either sublimation or continue using infusible ink now let me know in those comments down below if you've tried infusible ink or sublimation and if you have which one do you like better is there a reason you like one more than the other or are they kind of the same to you let's get started we're going to start pressing and i can't wait to show you guys all the fun things that these presses do so the first one we're going to unbox is our cricut mug press again just to reiterate i did pay for these by myself nobody sent these to me these were not provided to me in any way shape or form i'm not paid for my review nothing like that i have no compensation from this video from qriket or the other company with the mug press or any of the stores at which you can purchase these so uh it isn't a cute little box um i did check the weight with all the packaging is about nine pounds i thought that was kind of interesting compared to the other one that is almost 15 pounds but we'll see um this one does come in a little tiny box so it's got some seals so let's go ahead and open those this is just to prove you guys i have not opened this at all yet have not looked at it i haven't done anything with it so i'm gonna go ahead and break these helps if you actually cut the tape there we go all right let's see what is in our box shall we okay so we have a little open knee thing up here in the lid i'll pop that out so you guys can see it see this little open me so let's open that and see what it is has a little cricket seal on the back so let's see what that has to say it looks very similar to the ones that you get when you get like the explore and the maker so we have the let's get started activate your product at cricut.com setup and this is pretty thick cardstock and then it has general information inside get to know our mug press over here it shows you all of them over here it shows you all the different buttons and stuff and what they do and then it just tells us to handle our mugs with care because they will be hot and then you have the warranty statement for your mug press so that's all that's in the open me package so i'm going to tip this so you guys can see what it looks like in the box it's completely like plastic sealed and then it has a little bit of like styrofoam around the bottom or like a i don't know a composite and there's some at the top so i'm gonna go ahead and pull it out for you guys that so there's the little mug press and then under the mud press you do have the cord and the usb cord so those are just under the mug press so here is our little mug press you guys can see a little bit better now that's where the mug goes and then this let's see so let's get this opened i think i could probably just poke a hole so here it is all unwrapped you guys can see it a little bit better a little less reflection and then i'll show you guys what the bottom looks like the bottoms got these little grippy feet on it which is nice all plastic and then there's this little open-e hole that's how you grip the mug that's how you grip the mug cool so then it's got um a little note on the power button here that says to get started activate your product now at cricut.com setup i will do that eventually i'm going to open the other press that way they're opened at the same time we can set this one up here's the other press you can see it's a much larger box um again this one is about 15 pounds with all the packaging that one was about nine pounds so this one's a little bit heavier not by much but a little bit so i'm gonna go ahead and open this again did not open this at all i am opening it right here on camera i'll link all of the stuff below for you guys so you can find it if you want to get either of these this one looks really well packaged which is good this one comes with a user manual a true user manual shows all the pieces parts it's got some technical information the voltage things like that that's something you want to definitely look into before using any kind of heat press is the voltage that it uses because some of them do require higher voltages then this one comes with some safety things over here and then we also have the different pressing times and temperatures over here because this one you can set to different times and temperatures based on your material we have a cord a black cord nothing's again nothing fancy just a standard cord there's the end that plugs in covered in styrofoam so we'll have to clean that off we also got some screws and um an extra two fuses here we got those now i'm going to get the press out now move this box out of the way and here is our mug press now that again it's well packaged um i think both presses are well packaged this one is pretty small i mean it's it's smaller than i thought it would be it is bigger than the qriket one but it is all metal um i don't see other than the handle i don't really see plastic on this other than the handle but i'll let you know here in a second once i get it all out the box is plastic so the heating box like this is where the um like your digital information is is this outside casing is plastic and this handle is plastic but everything else seems to be metal it feels pretty sturdy i got two different kinds of mugs to test so we have the qriket brand and then i got some off of amazon i'll link them below for you guys but these are just some random mugs these are 11 ounce from amazon just see they're just plain white mugs nothing exciting and then i haven't opened the qriket ones yet but let's see how those look the qriket ones are 12 ounce because that's all i could find uh my store did not have the 15 ounce in stock i tried to keep them pretty much the same size that way it would be a much better comparison um for the mugs and for the presses so this is the 12 ounce cricket mug now this will be easy to tell apart the qriket ones do have the qriket logo on the bottom they do feel nice um i think both mugs feel nice but i will say the cricut one which is gonna be this one looks a little thicker in the ceramic part so it's a little bit thicker not much to the point where like a normal person like just looking at it would not know the difference but i can see that it's a little thicker they both sound nice they both feel very smooth and good quality so i don't think that anything too different with the mugs honestly they look fairly similar the handles are almost identical so you can see they're pretty much the same and honestly that one ounce difference they look the same size it has the orange indicator light and that means that it is heating up if you put your hand over this part the circular part you can feel it warming so i'm going to let that warm now remember this part is always going to be cool so i'm going to slide it out of the way really quick that way we can do the mugs and get them ready so just to show you this is the non-cricut and then we have the cricut brand i've wiped them both down with some alcohol just to make sure they're nice and clean and we're gonna use some cricket heat tape for this just to keep everything really kosher so i have two of the exact same designs cut out of infusible ink and i'm going to put them on our mugs when placing your designs on your mugs you want to make sure that you're holding them down with heat tape and you want to make sure that the designs are around the mug super super tight so you'll want to put heat tape all around the bottom rim of your mug as well as the top rim of your mug this is really important to make sure that you get good contact with both of the heat press onto your material and the material onto your mug because of the way these products work you need to have that good contact between the two surfaces to make sure that the color comes off and dyes your mug the way you need it to so that it looks nice and professional okay that's pretty good with the tape so i'm gonna go ahead and bring this back in and again it's not warm except for this section like right in the center it's only warm here so what you'll do is take your mug and you want to put it face up and i'm using the cricut one just so you guys can see i'm gonna start with the qriket one and what you'll do is you'll set it inside this little holder by holding on to the handle and you want to make sure that the handle this part is centered in the slot and you can hold it and adjust it as you slide this closed you're going to push this down and close it and you just can adjust as you go you just want to make sure that this handle stays really really centered and if you're unhappy with it once you've pressed it you can unpress it again but i think that's pretty good all right so what it's going to do now and it might be a little hard to see so i'm going to turn this off and see if you guys can see it better there is a little light right here and i'll and this light is going to count down so typically it says it takes about six minutes this is supposedly optimized to work best with the infusible ink six minutes is a really long time i think um the other press will be interesting to see the manual for the other press says that a ceramic mug should take 120 to 170 seconds so i guess we'll wait and see what happens i didn't catch it beeping i'm sorry but it beeps when it's done you can see all the lights are flashing and then it beeps again apparently so what i'm going to do now is release the cup and make sure you have some sort of heat resistant surface to put this on whether it's a silicone mat or a pressing mat call me yourself so what you're going to do is lift up this top flap now the handle should stay cold so you can touch that and all the white parts are cold but the mug itself and the inside is hot so be careful so we're going to do is remove that i'm going to go ahead and set this down we're going to do the same thing that we did with the qriket brand one and we're gonna slide this in i'm just gonna show you one more time this is the off brand from amazon so we're gonna do the same thing we're gonna slide it in carefully not to touch the innards make sure it's centered within the slat slot thingy and press and again you can adjust as you need to as you're pressing it closed until it gets too tight and then you can't adjust it anymore but you can always reopen it and adjust it now i will say this um seemed like it adjusted pretty easy to that mug so that's good i'm going to go ahead and let this one heat and do its thing this one is still cooling over on the side here but we'll get them both out we'll cool them both and then i'll show you what they look like mug number two is done so we're gonna go ahead and pull this up and pull our mug out again being careful not to touch the sides now we are gonna need to let these sit i let these cool for about 15 minutes they're good to go nice and cool so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start with the cricut one just because that's the one we did first and i'm going to peel the tape off [Music] um and so here's our mug from cricut this is the cricut brand i'm gonna pop that off now i do have a little spot here it might have been a little too close to the handle because you can see it's not quite centered so i do think this was a user error issue right there where there's like a little bit of a spot that would be because it was too close to the handle but like it happens and i do think it looks pretty nice i did just see a spot that i missed weeding though oh no it's okay it's fine nobody will notice there's a couple little spots that i missed weeding but it still looks kind of cool actually so now we'll come around and do this cup the same way now now i'm going to go ahead and peel this off i mean honestly they look pretty much the same i don't really see any difference other than like the spots that i missed weeding again i was a little close to the handle so i think that's something you need to really watch is right here where the handle piece is you need to make sure that you're not super close to the handle um because it does leave a little bit of like a shadowy like not super pressed kind of look for this test we're gonna test sublimation prints so i just printed this on my sublimation printer and i just need to cut it out normally i would use a paper trimmer but i can't find mine so i'm gonna have to use scissors which is fine i can't cut a great straight line but it'll be fine so you're going to cut just along your edge and just like how the cricut gives you those little tabs i'm going to leave these edges and i'll trim them down once it's time to put it on my cup because i want to have just a little bit of a tab so that i can put some tape on that edge so i'm just going to go ahead and trim this down now keep in mind these unlike the um in infusible ink sheets don't have like transfer tape so you'll need to use that heat tape to tape these down again i'm going to use the cricut brand heat tape just so everything's very much the same between all of my tests i'm going to try to keep everything the same as possible which is why we're using the same design for the sublimation prints on all four cups that we are testing so i just want to keep everything really really the same so i'm going to finish cutting the edges off of this then we're going to get them taped to the cups and then i can show you guys it into the cricut mug press and then we'll do the other mug press i'm going to go ahead and turn the mug press on while we wait let that warm up so get that out of the way and we'll go ahead and we've got the two different mugs i'll show you we've got the cricut and the off-brand mugs you can tell because cricket has the logo on the bottom the off-brand ones again are from amazon so i'm gonna go ahead and trim some of the edge off of this because we don't really need quite that much and we can trim it down as we place it on to our cup now when you do a sublimation print if it has words on it which this does you need to make sure that you have mirrored your image so you can do that in your printing software so i'm just going to wrap this for a sizing issue now i didn't size these perfectly this is the first time i've actually printed a mug size so i'm sure they're going to be a little short which is fine not the end of the world but they look like they fit pretty good so that's pretty even i think that'll be okay now one way to tell you can just look and see where your print is and i just try to get it kind of centered along where that mug um handle is and you can kind of slide it around until you're satisfied with where it's sitting now that the press is all heated up we can put in our cup so like i said i'm going to start with the cricut mug first and again it's going to be done the same way you're going to place it in to the little round hole for the mugs and you want to make sure that your handle is centered and then you press down on the little levery you can kind of adjust it as you go you do want to be careful that nothing slides around that's why you put a lot of tape on it and close now we're going to let this thing do its thing which takes about six minutes but it just depends on the cup there's the ding so now you can release it by pulling up this plastic door and remember the mug itself is hot but not the handle so go ahead and pick it up by the handle you want to be careful and then set it on to a heat resistant surface which i'm just using my pressing pillow and same thing i'll just show you guys this is the off brand from amazon and i'm gonna slide that on into our little muggy holder and again make sure that your handle is centered you'll see as you kind of close the door that your handle will move a little bit so that's why you kind of need to adjust so i'm going to let this thing do its thing and we'll come back and pull it out and then we'll let everything cool and see how it happens this one should be ready in just a second so i flipped it over so you can see this was the qriket one it's still pretty warm i usually have been letting them sit about 10 minutes to cool down because you want them to be cool you don't want to burn your hands it's a safety thing of course um with these but again the mug handle is cool to the touch so you can touch that but i wouldn't recommend touching any of the main part of the mug now this again will give us a little ding when it's done there's our little ding all you got to do is lift up that little door over here and carefully pull out your mug again only touching the handle and there's the mug all finished i'm going to flip this one upside down as well so you can see qriket brand and the amazon brand now make sure to turn off your mug press when not in use i also do recommend always unplugging things like this just in case because you don't want it to turn on if somebody's messing around with it or if you have kids or something like that i also would recommend not storing this clothes i would recommend storing this open um just because it's gonna cause you see how it like gets pressure i feel like leaving it closed is just like leaving the heat press closed you're gonna wear out the um springs or the mechanism that squeezes your cup so i would recommend just storing this with the little door open the mugs are cool so we are ready to go i'll start with the cricut one just because that was the one i did first so again you do need to peel all of the tape so i'll do that and speed it up all right so i'm gonna pull this one off again this is the cricut mug just so you guys can see qriket mug i'm gonna go ahead and pull this off this is the sublimation print printed from my sublimation printer at home which is an epson et4700 i know you guys are going to ask so it is the epson i love it i'm super pleased with it i didn't peel the tape off well enough over there and i got a little piece of tape right on there that's okay um guys this is gorgeous look at that oh it's so pretty so so far i don't see any flaws on this at all i do have a little spot where like the paper was a little too tall but that's okay because it looks fine so i think this one looks really fantastic the colors are super bright everything came out really really nice so now let's reveal this is the amazon brand so we'll go ahead and do this one next now don't fret you can see where it's kind of like ripped a little bit of the back of the paper don't worry that's totally okay it does that from time to time it's just because the heat tape when it gets warm that adhesive gets a little extra sticky but that's okay if it rips the back of the paper it's already done pressing so we don't have to worry about it all right let's reveal oops i can get the tape off wow this one got messed up a little bit um i think when i adjusted it to move it a little bit i think the paper might have slid so we have a little bit of a blurry spot that's what's called ghosting can you see how that house is super blurry um that's like a ghosting on it and that was probably my fault so again user error but the colors are beautiful it really came out nice but this one did get a little blurry again i think it was more just user error on my fault than the press itself so i would say so far so good the colors look very very similar on the cups i don't really see a lot of difference as far as color saturation for this goes this heat press is from amazon and this is the butter sub press i paid 139.99 for this press i will link this below so i'm just gonna tell you a couple things i noticed right off the bat this press is mostly metal with the exception of the top of the handle and the box that goes around the heating element information center if you will um that is plastic but i imagine a lot of what's inside is metal now this can only fit 11 12 i haven't tried other cup sizes but from the reviews it sounds like it really only does like 11 or 12 ounce mugs before you even turn it on you do need to adjust your pressure so if you're gonna do more than one or two sizes of mugs this may not be a great option but what you're gonna do is take your mug and slide it in to the little cup holder and to adjust your pressure you use this little knob here which is why you want to do it before you turn it on and what you'll do is hold your mug and keep that handle centered just like you do on the cricut one and press it down and make sure that you don't have any gapping around the sides so you'll look at each side and you'll see if you have any kind of gapping i can't really show you i'm trying and it's not going there you go so you can see where the mug is sitting in here it looks pretty good and secure and then you'll want to just double check and make sure it doesn't wiggle because that's a great way to check for any kind of gapping so it's not gapped we're good to go so i'm going to open that and take my mug out now to turn it on there are some buttons here on the front and i will show those to you guys here in just a second i've got a heat press plugged in there's a little on off the switch right on the side so i'm going to go ahead and switch it on and you'll see that now it's giving me some information it's heating you can do celsius or fahrenheit now i'm in america so we're gonna do uh fahrenheit so i believe if i hit the ok button it's gonna give me my programming options i'm gonna turn off my light because i can't see the there we go now i can see it so 385 is where i've been pressing a lot of stuff but according to the press this one comes with a manual so according to their manual super helpful i have to say i like the little manual it comes with they have a little heating guide in here so for a ceramic mug it says for 360 to 120 to 170 seconds so what i'm going to do is use the down arrow and just change it down to 360. now i'm going to follow their directions since we don't change anything on qriket i'll follow what they say so then i'm going to hit ok and my programming 2 is going to be how many seconds so i'm going to turn this way up because it wants me to go to 100 it says up to 170 so let's do 100 and fifty that seems pretty good and then programming three is just your fahrenheit versus celsius so again i don't know celsius so i'm gonna let this heat up and while that heats up what we'll do it looks like it's heating pretty quick is apply the stuff to the mug that we need so that we can press them so for comparison's sake we are going to do a amazon mug and a qriket mug with the same designs on the same materials so i'm using infusible ink i have two of those and then we're going to do two with the same sublimation pattern that way we can really get a good look at what is what and i'll make sure to mark the ones that we did with the amazon press versus the ones that we did with the cricut press now i'm going to slide this out of the way so it's just a little out of the way but it is it does get pretty warm i can feel the heat radiating off of it already so i'm going to go ahead and apply the images to our mugs i do find actually this heating mat is super helpful it doesn't let the mug roll around as much so i'm gonna go ahead and slide this over um i will say so i'm gonna just touch because i'm curious as to what parts on this are warm so i'm gonna touch very very lightly this is fully heated i'm going to touch all the parts super lightly just to see what's hot this part is warm not hot this part is hot i can tell you that as is this outside portion also hot this is going to be hot not hot not hot not hot not hot not hot the base is not so really i think the only part on this that actually gets even the remotest bit warm is right here because the heating element is right under it and then i wouldn't touch anything that is the silver parts or the insides so what i'm going to do is slide my mug in very gently and remember we checked the tension already because we want to do that before the mug press was on and then we're just gonna press now hopefully the timer goes but i don't know how to set the timer we may need to check how to set the timer because i don't honestly know there's got to be a way to do it what that is i don't know ah okay once you put that down you press enter so it heated for a few more seconds so i'll make sure to heat the other one for about 15-20 seconds more than i did for this one our mug is done so that is a really annoying alarm um oh okay you have to hit okay to turn it off so i released my mug now i'm not sure if the handle on this is gonna be cool so i'm gonna check it it's pretty cool it's not like cold but it is cool enough that i can like slide my mug out so i'm gonna slide out my mug and set it to the side slide this bad boy back out of the way because i need to finish taping this mug up a little bit and once we're done taping we will heat this mug [Music] so i'll pull this back in and we're going to heat this one again i will do this one for about 20 seconds more because i accidentally didn't understand how to turn on a timer so i'm going to try to slide slide this mug in this one fits a little tighter not sure why but it does hopefully it'll press so again i can touch over here to hold it down but this one's really tight oh this makes me nervous i'm not liking this this whole situation so i'm going to again wait about 20 seconds and hit enter because i did heat this one longer so i just want to make sure that i'm trying to do them the same now that i understand how to turn the timer on though we should be okay turn the timer on okay annoying alarm going off so we're gonna go ahead and take that out and again very very hard to open so i'm going to let this i'm going to check the handle i don't want to touch the handle right away because i'm just not confident that it's cool but it is it's cool i'm going to go ahead and slide that one out and i'm going to set this one off to the side as well and we'll leave this heating in the corner because i need to put on sublimation ones for our next set of mugs so we're going to do the sublimation ones i'll let you guys watch me do that in fast pace [Music] okay let's start with the cricket mug with the sublimation we're gonna slide it in hold on to that handle make sure it's centered make sure it stays fairly centered just make sure you get that whole image in there to be pressed press that down and hit the enter button we'll let that heat for 150 seconds okay that one is done so we're gonna go ahead and pull that one out again handle totally cool so you can use the handle and i'm gonna set that off over to the back with my mat so then this one is the off brand from amazon so we'll slide this one in it's getting caught on a little piece of tape when it's sliding in so you want to be aware of that you want to make sure you tape these ones really well because they um they do tend to get caught a little bit on the edge while you're sliding it in so i'm just going to make sure all this is down for some reason it's still getting caught a little bit there's not a lot of leeway for this so if it's getting kind of hung up it's you're going to find out so again making sure the whole image is into the press and press hit the enter and let it start counting okay this one is done so we'll go ahead and release and hit enter and we'll set this one off to the side to cool as well the infusible ink mugs that we did with the amazon press are cool so again i'll flip them over so you guys can see there's the qriket one and the amazon so let's reveal qriket first since we pressed that one first go ahead and peel the tape i honestly think the worst part of like sublimation is the tape peeling some people love it i think it's awful so i'm gonna go ahead and get this tape all peeled and then we can reveal it [Music] okay i've got all the tape off so i'm gonna go ahead and pop this off so i got most of the tape off all right so i will say there is some weird stuff at the bottom but that is definitely user issue not the press issue at least i don't think um this is because it's the handle is lifting the edge but it doesn't look bad the color is good it looks a bit more colorful than it did um than i think it would have so there's that one and then let's check out the amazon cup for color [Music] all right guys tape off so i'm gonna pop this off so we do again have this rim at the bottom it's the same as the cricut one a little less bright but again i can't be certain that that wasn't more so a me thing and less so a press thing but what will be the true test is what it looks like on the sublimation because that'll tell us for sure about pressure down here in this lower rim um i want to say it may be a press thing but we'll find out but the color on both looks really good i don't see any discoloration like i did when i did the first press on as a qriket one except for where the ink wasn't fully down okay so now it's time to reveal the sublimation prints so amazon cup and cricut and again we pressed qriket first so i'm just gonna peel cricut first okay tape's peeled so let's go ahead and reveal the design wow so i think it was an infusible ink thing because the bottom of this mug looks fine like there's not ghosting on the bottom so i do think that this was more of an infusible ink issue with that press so i would say don't use infusible ink or test it out and see um like what the heat settings are because i just used the ceramic mug heat setting because i wanted to keep everything like very the same so because the cricut pressed the sublimation at the same setting that it pressed the um infusible ink i wanted to press this one the same way [Music] okay we've got it peeled let's go ahead and take a look wow very bright very very nice these honestly look pretty much the same like i don't see any real difference color wise i don't see any real difference in the way they pressed again this one is the amazon mug and this one here is the cricut mug i see really no color difference nothing like that i do have a spot on this one right by where the handle was that wasn't fully taken but again it was pushed up a little bit by the handle so i should have done a better job taping that but again it's a learning curve but i think the colors look the same so i would say that sublimation definitely the way to go especially if you have the amazon press i'm going to get everything out i'm going to label the ones that i did with the amazon press i'm going to put little a's on the bottom of them that way we can tell the difference between the amazon ones and the cricut ones and then we're going to give you guys a whole overview now that we've pressed all eight mugs i am ready to give you guys my thoughts my reviews pros and cons on both of these presses so these four cups here were done with the cricut mug press i put a little c on the bottom so i knew for sure which ones were which and then these four cups were pressed with the one from amazon which is the better sub brand i have everything linked below for you guys the cups i used everything so that you guys can see exactly what materials i used i did two with infusible ink with each press and then two with sublimation with each press i did the same pattern with both and the same color with the infusible ink as well that way everything was very the same so it was a little easier to compare my printer that i use for sublimation is an epson 4700 and i just used some i believe it's zyart zai something ink i'll link it below that way you get an idea of what i used for sublimation and then i just used printer's jack paper to print on so if you want to check any of that stuff out that's all linked for you guys too just want you guys to know i definitely want to be completely transparent and share with you everything that was used that way you guys can do your own digging and look at what i used now there are a few pros and cons for both of these items i don't think one is better over the other necessarily i think it's just going to be what you want to do with it and what works best for you now let's start with the amazon press the amazon press is heavier at 15 pounds and it has a lot more metal in it so that is definitely a pro a pro for me because it does feel like it is better constructed um this is a much larger machine as well so depending on the space that could be a con because it is pretty big and you do need a bit of space around it to work and storing it's going to be kind of a pain because this handle is really kind of in the way no matter which way you put it it makes it extra tall or it makes it much wider so that's something to think about is what kind of space you have to store it in another con for this machine is that it gets hot on the outside of this metal pressing point and if you nick that with your hand it is very very warm so that can be a little bit dangerous but i've seen a couple other people who have this say oh you know it gets hot i need to use gloves to hold it down when i'm removing the heat this one does not this plate in front does not get hot the sides here don't get hot they get a little bit warm but they don't get so warm that it would damage your hand it's no warmer than just touching like something warm out of the dryer it's not even hot so you can easily touch this machine like i said the only part that gets hot is this plate right here i touched everything else and nothing else was hot but it does have a lot of radiant heat so my room got really really warm really really fast so that's something to think about as well the radiant heat on this is very strong a pro for this machine is that you can buy other plate sizes for it so this is for the 11 or 12 ounce mug size but you can get a bunch of other mug size plates for it because this plate is removable however you have to remove the plate if you want to do a different size and they're kind of expensive so that's something to think about as well whether you're just going to do one size mug or not because if you're only going to stick with one size this would be great it's less expensive so that's definitely a pro price wise now another thing that i like about it is that this one has like a pressing foam inside and this doesn't move this is attached to the pressing um item so you guys can see how it's got the little red inside do you see the red inside that's your foam that kind of keeps it from pressing it's really nice it's thick and it works really really well the other kind of con for this is that you need to make sure that you adjust your pressure before you turn the press on because you don't want to put your cup in here when it's warm you want to adjust your pressure when the machine is off and i will say that adjusting the pressure was a little bit nerve-racking the first couple of times because you really need to squeeze it down and you feel like you're going to break the cup don't worry as long as you're careful you won't but it is a little bit intimidating so that's another thing this press is definitely a little more intimidating the settings on it are great because you can set this to different times and temperatures and pressures all sorts of things which is a fantastic thing if you're using different products i didn't set that i said that i set this to what it said to use for sublimation to use the infusible ink because i wanted to keep everything very consistent between the two presses so since we couldn't change anything on this and i had to press the sublimation at whatever this decided it was i pressed this with the infusible ink with the same time and temperature that it suggested for sublimation just so that we could really get the idea of what it would do now i will say that if you're going to use infusible ink with this you'll want to up that time and temp because it didn't do so great as you guys will see i'm going to show you guys up closes of the mugs so don't worry we're going to go over some pros and cons showing you guys the mugs as well but these are just machine pros and cons and then i'll talk about why i liked it better for which mugs so this machine like i said less expensive but it is bigger has more metal it's a decent machine i like it it's good if you're going to do maybe one or two sizes of mugs but it could get expensive if you want to add a lot of different plates now over to the cricut machine this one my con for this one is the price i think a lot of people know that 200 seems like a lot for a machine especially machine that really technically only does one thing another con to me with this is that it does feel kind of cheap it's all plastic and it's not very heavy which is also a pro because it's not heavy but it just doesn't feel like it's sturdy that it's meant to last but again i've only had it for a day i'm sure it's nice but it just doesn't feel like as sturdy and heavy as the amazon a pro to this though is that it does take a bunch of different size mugs and i've seen people testing other cups in this and they do seem to work and that's something that i will do in the future but i wanted to just do the one standard size for this because otherwise this video would be insane another thing that i like about this machine is that it's pretty foolproof especially if you're doing infusible ink you literally press a button and let it go you don't have to think about time temp pressure all of those things it does that for you so if you are a crafter who doesn't like to get all complicated this is a great machine for that now a con was that i didn't like how when the infusible ink or the sublimation gassed off it stained the inside of the machine and i'm such a stickler for a clean nice looking machine that it really really bothers me and i'm going to try to clean it off but i don't think it's going to come off i'm not a fan of that and it did make my machine a little bit messy it also ended up melting some of my infusible ink transfer sheet which left a little brown spot and a little plastic behind on the inside here and that was kind of a turn off to me i didn't love that now i will say it does work really well i think it's easy to use the little plastic flap feels pretty sturdy um i don't know that i love it but i do think it feels fairly sturdy the qriket monk press also doesn't come with any really written out directions that's always kind of been a complaint with qriket as we don't get a lot of directions and that's okay you can usually find them on their website but they don't still just give you a lot and i think it's kind of nice to be able to look at a quick sheet and for something like this where there's not a lot of directions needed a little direction sheet would have been extra helpful the fact that it's only one button is great it's easy to use so that's definitely a pro for me so these are the two cups we did with the qriket mug press with the infusible ink i think they came out really really nice this one is a little bit discolored over here on this side right here this is where it melted the transfer tape that's attached to the um infusible ink but i think the color is pretty nice it's almost a little bit too dark though in what i think it should be and it's a little discolored down here at the bottom it's a little darker than it is at the top but all things considered it came out really really nice but that is what the cricut mug press was made for it was infusible ink this is the amazon mug with the cricut infusible ink and this one came out really really really nice the color is great it came out really good it's only got a little bit of a light spot right here where the mug was a little too close like the transfer is too close to the um handle but otherwise this one i think came out great so if you're looking for infusible ink you could use an off-brand amazon mug and it works perfectly or you can use the cricut brand and i think it works fine as well these two mugs are the sublimation mugs that we did with our cricut mug press i will say i'm not happy with the way the amazon one came out it's got a lot of blurriness and ghosting on it but this was i believe more so my fault than the press's fault because the top is fine but the bottom is where i've got some issues and i think i just didn't tape it down really well but one thing i will say is that i feel like the cricut brand mug press presses for too long and too hot possibly for sublimation because they're not as clear as i think the ones from the amazon press but honestly you're not really going to notice unless you held them up together because it's still really clear it's still really nice the color is great i think it came out good i think if you're gonna do sublimation and only sublimation the qriket mug press may not really be the one for you because i do think it presses too hot for too long for a sublimation but if you want to do multiple cup sizes the qriket mug press could still work these two mugs were done with the amazon press the better sub press with infusible ink and i will say that the results are not fantastic so this one is the off-brand mug and this one is the cricut brand mug you can see along the bottom of both mugs we have a lot of fading it looks cool but that's not what we want and the colors aren't as bright we also have a lot of fading here along that edge because it wasn't quite in the press right but i do think it works but i will say that you need to up your heat and your time when doing these mugs with the amazon press that's something to keep in mind i did them both at the same time as i did the sublimation just to keep everything very similar and i just think that this probably if you're going to be using infusible ink you'll want to play around with it a little bit more or if confusable ink is your thing the qriket mug press is probably the way to go for you these are the mugs that were done with sublimation with the amazon press and the colors came out really nice they're very very clear they both look very very similar the amazon mug is just a slight bit brighter than the cricut mug so that's something keep in mind but i will say that this is a much clearer image and a much brighter image than i got with the cricut mug press again i think the qriket mug press possibly presses just a little too long and too hot i want to thank my friend for that one because i wouldn't have thought of that but you can see that it came out really really colorful on both mugs this one is the amazon mug and this one is our cricut mug so i think they both worked really well i do have a little bit of a lighter shade here because again it wasn't pressed on the mug fully when i put it in so again this is user error and you're going to get user error no matter what you do but i think that this one if you are strictly sublimation and only want to do sublimation and you're not doing a ton of different sizes the amazon press for less money would be the way to go i hope you guys enjoyed this review and demonstration with the better sub mug press and the cricut mud press again each have their own place and i'm really pleased with both of them check out the links down below for where to get everything that i used in this video i hope you all have a fantastic day and get a chance to make your own fun crafts have a great day and happy crafting you

Channel: Corinne Blackstone

Views: 81,168

Rating: 4.8998108 out of 5

Keywords: maker, Auntie Tay, troytube, melody lane, cricut, explore, air, craft, tutorial, how to, vinyl, scrapbook, card, stock, diy, home, decor, decorate, jennifer, slice, attach, gift, present, kens kreations, lia griffith, Jennifer maker, cricut mug press, how to use the cricut mug press, cricut mug press review, honest review of the cricut mug press, mug press, how to make sublimation mugs, how to use infusible ink on mugs, how to use cricut mugs, sublimation, sublimation mugs, bettersub heat press

Id: HYxBIi2_fks

Length: 50min 38sec (3038 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021