Despite daily usage with metal table forks, butter knives, and spoons, there’s only minimal scratching on the surfaces of the X-Seal & Go set, primarily on the nylon base of the bowls. At worst, though, we have to shine the bowl under direct light to notice any of the scratches, and they didn’t really harm overall usability. Usage & Features

The cups are easy enough to drink from. Their odd shape, courtesy of the accordion-style expansion, makes them a bit wider and more conical than a typical cup. The only potential issue with the shape is when we’re using them for viscous sauces, as the fluid tends to catch around the ridges. This requires us to scoop them out with more effort compared to, say, a smooth bowl. It’s an understandable tradeoff with the accordion-like expansion, but one that’s still worth pointing out. The bowls resemble frisbees while they are compressed. The pattern on their lids resembles wheel spokes or hubcaps. Meanwhile, the patterns on the cups’ lids are more minimal but serve the same purpose. They’re for gripping the lid while unscrewing them. Just how effective the grooves and patterns are as grips, we’ll get into later. Sea to Summit X-Seal & Go Set | We like to think of these as fond memories of the meals we had. If you’ve ever tried taking soup from one place to another, chances are you’re familiar with the gnawing feeling of Murphy’s law. For the uninitiated, it’s specifically stated as: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Even if it’s not soup, it only takes one bad jostle to turn the inside of a bag into a complete mess no one’s going to want to deal with. Sea to Summit X-Seal & Go Set | Compelling, but can they seal the deal? Sea to Summit X-Seal & Go Food Set | The shallow threading alleviates most of the trouble with unscrewing the lid. There are a total of four sizes available: small and medium for the cups, large and extra-large for the bowls. There’s a bunch of colors to choose from for each size, though if bought as a set, there may be slight variations on the available combos. For our testing, we have a small cup (orange) with a large bowl (lime), and we also have a medium cup (red) paired with an extra-large bowl (royal blue). Regardless, the colors don’t really affect the usability nor how easy they are to clean—it’s just a matter of personal preference.

Materials & Aesthetic

As mentioned earlier, we’re keen on the solid base of the bowl because it helped us really dig into our meals. For food that requires vigorous cutting, a solid platform is a must so you can fork and slice it down. Sea to Summit even thoughtfully put small tabs at the base of the bowl to keep it from tipping over. Combined with the well-designed expansion of the silicone body, we have little to worry about when using the set, allowing us to focus on our food. One quality of life feature we dig with the X-Seal & Go set is the volume markings inside. It’s a small feature but a very handy one to have for cooking on the go when there are no measuring cups available. Measurements are provided in both metric and fluid ounces, so there’s no need to fumble around with multiple conversions either. Sea to Summit X-Seal & Go Set | There’s never a measuring cup around when you need one. Thankfully, it’s built-in here. Once they’re all separated, it’s just a matter of unscrewing the lids and pushing the base to expand them. While the smaller cups’ lids are fairly easy to unscrew, the wider bowls sometimes take a bit more effort. The near edgeless design of the lids almost forces us to rely on the molded center for grip. However, we found that gripping nearer to the edges sometimes made unscrewing easier. Fortunately, the shallow threading of all the lids means that only a quarter-turn is needed to remove them.