Teaball Crown, no drip single serving tea maker, cover, and drip guard

I really wanted to like this tea brewer. It looks very unique – like having a crown on your cup! The build quality is good, the color is attractive and bright, and it comes packaged in a very upscale manner that makes it very suitable for gift-giving. Unfortunately, it does not work well for the intended purpose.The goal is much like most tea infusers, in that you put loose tea in a cup that is perforated to allow water to infuse with the tea. The problems with the design of this infuser are threefold:1. The infusion ball (actually more of a disk than a ball) dangles from a silicon cord. It’s very difficult to set the length of the cord so that the infusion disk is at the right height. You can pull the cord from the top to shorten it, but there’s no way to clamp the cord in place once the height is set. So, if you have a small cup, the disk ends up sitting on the bottom of the cup, rather than at the midpoint to allow for good infusion. I ended up using a paper clip to hold the cord at the right length, which was awkward at best.2. The metal perforated disk has holes that are too big for fine-grained teas (such as most decafs). A lot of sediment gets deposited in the cup when using fine leaf teas.3. The disk is too shallow to allow larger tea leaves to unfurl while brewing. The tea is too cramped in the holder to allow for good water-to-tea contact for a proper brew.Other negatives are: it is more cumbersome to load the infusion cup with tea versus more traditional ball style infusers, and the cord holding the infuser disk is pretty thin (unlike the heavy-duty build quality of the top). If the cord breaks, the item is rendered useless.Given these limitations, I can only give it one star for functionality. A infuser ball, or infuser screen will brew much better tea and do it in a far easier manner. I’ll raise my overall rating to two stars given the look and packaging, but can’t recommend this as a tea brewer.[Sample provided for review]

This is a fun teaball that would make a great gift. The tea fits in the bottom of the crown, then the crown sits on the cup keeping the water hot. Afterwards I can put the tea ball (it's really more a tea disk, as it's not round) in the provided drip cup. The material is silicone, the top crown part is heavy so it really is steady on the top of the cup and keeps the tea nice and hot. The holes are larger than my mesh tea ball but works great and the drip cup is generous sized so the ball can sit in it without spilling.The set comes in a very nice box for giving. The color really is this gold color. I am a real fan of this teaball.Product provided for evaluation