ThermoPro TP-04 Large LCD Digital Grilling Oven, Cooking, Meat Thermometer Built in Cooking Clock Timer with Stainless Steel Step-Down Probe

Because I'm an avid BBQer and love to slow cook roasts, ribs, and fowl on the grille, the seller sent me this bluetooth temperature gauge in exchange for an honest review. It's a nice product and I like it very much, but there are a few things you should know before you buy.

Pros:
Works as advertised.
Easy to set up.
Good instruction manual.
User Friendly.
Sufficiently accurate.
Well made.
Nice design.
Easy to read.
Loud "Beep."
"Smart" cooking feature (meaning you can choose rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well or well-done for different types of meats, instead of picking a specific temperature. It's a quick-set guide, and it's helpful.)

Cons:
Sender and receiver are not heat resistant or waterproof.
Probe cannot be immersed in water. (This isn't really a big deal. You wipe off the probe with a soapy washcloth or paper towl and then rinse repeatedly with a wet paper towel until soap residue is gone.)
Probe wire to sender should not be be "pinched" or "bent" by grille cover.

I've included some unedited video.

Here's how I tested it. I bought a small pork sirloin roast (boneless) and seasoned it with garlic, onion flake, and black pepper. Then I put my grille on high and seared the meat. I turned the grille on low, took out the roast and basted it in Hoison sauce, then I placed it on a rack in a shallow drip pan. I inserted the probe -- and here's the tricky part -- I had to spin the probe so it angled upwards, then I had to carefully snake the sending wire outside of the grille so it wasn't touching any part of the grille cover. I plugged it in and it immediately measured a temperature of about 60 degrees F. The identical reading showed up on the receiving unit, and continued to do so throughout the cooking process, until it hit the temperature of 165 degrees F., which is what I had set it for, and beeped loudly.

For years I've been slow-roasting meats or smoking them without a meat thermometer. I don't really need one, but it sure is nice when you're cooking a big roast to not have to check it every thirty minutes or every hour. I would not hesitate cooking a big turkey on a grille with this device.

The ThermoPro Bluetooth Meat Thermometer won't make you a better cook, but it will make you a more attentive host when you have guests. As long as you know how to keep your grille temperature at 200-225 degrees (always use a drip pan, and, if needed, a water pan) and you'll be good as a baked Yukon Gold. Set up the grille, start cooking with the thermometer in place, carry the receiver around on your belt or stand it up where you can check on it once in awhile. It's that easy. Honestly, it has some really smart features, like the different colors the display flashes when it reaches different temperatures.

An added note: I contacted the company and asked if this product can be used in the oven and they said "yes." But the fact is, the same cautionary conditions apply. You have to keep the sending unit out of the heat, and the wire for the probe can't be "pinched" or "bent" by any part of the oven the oven door, which means to me that the door has to remain open. Catch my drift here? How can you bake or roast something in the oven if you have to keep the oven door open?

Anyway, I like this product, and I can't wait to use it to BBQ a whole turkey.

Kitchen thermometers have never been a part of my basic cooking tools, I have always gotten by. But a device like this gives a lot more control over a kitchen situation, and I found it to be in a price range that would make it hard to resist, just through testing it out (for which it was provided to me in exchange for this review) I learned a great deal more about how it can let me be as busy as I want in the kitchen and still not forget about something in the oven.

The temperature memory allows you to pre-set your desired temp, when reached the alarm sounds. You can scroll through them with the up/hr down/min buttons - there are 6 built-in default temps, each illustrated with a little icon of the animal you are preparing, in case you lost your FDA chart. Some overlap, but, whatever.

Choices are - 185° (chicken) 170° (pork and well-done beef) 160° (a ham, I am guessing, and beef medium) 145° (rare or fish). The mfr has included their own chart which gives different names to the icons, but the whole scheme is probably OK for most uses, and certainly better than the kind I have been using- an analog dial probe.

Should you desire to enter a custom temp, just select one of the presets and dial it in with the up/down button. The range starts at 32° with the upper end at 482°, which is also listed as the max end for probe safety reasons.

So if you are into candy making or (like me) dialing in a deep-fryer temp, you won't be left out. The alarm only works in the uphill direction, so if you want to use it for ice cream or testing HVAC stuff, sorry. This is undoubtedly why it is sold as a "Food Thermometer".

During the test with my fryer, I just guessed the upper end and discovered one thing that might not be annoying to many- when the temp hits the setpoint and the alarm sounds, there is no way to quickly silence the alarm- you must either turn the unit off with the power switch on the back, pull the probe and wait, or in my case, dial the temp setting up further until it's off. I find this a bit inconvenient, but I would have to say my needs and testing methods usually exceed those of your average user. Not a deal-breaker, but it's a nice point to know. It also tracked the unit's temperature with enough accuracy to judge the cooking temp of the oil to monitor it or re-calibrate the controls. (The cycling shown in the video as the alarm sounds is unedtited.)

Testing accuracy, both 32° and 212° registered and held within a 2 degree range, which is better than one of my more elaborately calibrated but much older general purpose digital thermometers. I noticed ambient temps were often off by about 4-6 degrees, but since it was designed for accuracy at the higher end, I don't see this as an issue uncommon in lower end thermocouples.

Not only is it a useful cooking thermometer, it also functions as a countdown timer which may be used in conjunction with the temp settings. It's pretty basic, but also not the main event here. It can be set to up to 24 hours, but only up- no backing out. Same with minutes, of course up to 60.

Powered by a single AAA cell which is always a convenience, although mine was DOA.

It's a nice little unit, not exactly overbuilt but looks like it will sustain some moderately rough kitchen duty. A pair of magnets on the back is only too logical when placing the thermometer, but they are really weak and will barely let the unit hang onto a smooth steel oven door, although it seemed a lot better on a textured surface like my refrigerator. And making more challenging, the cable adds a little more weight and helps it destabilize. Easy enough to fix, but still..

It also has a small fold-out plastic stand, but I found the nature of the probe cable makes it take a little bit of a balancing act to get set up just right. A piece of non-skid material along the bottom edge might help it stay in position better.

The meter-long braided SS probe has a mini-plug connection and while a little stiff at first, still holding shape from being folded in the box, appears to be shaping up to be more flexible. But unless the probe is buried inches deep in a thick roast, a little care should be given to have it all balanced and safely positioned. The probe itself is bent at about a 20° angle, which I first thought was shipping damage, but a check of the item photo shows me all is well. This angle probably improves the placement of the tip, but I discovered it also tends to bake more firmly in place. Which in itself is not a bad thing, but it makes removal a two-hand task.

A backlight would have been useful, but I found the lack of a way to quickly silence the alarm while on the fly quite annoying.

It's not that hard for an experienced cook to get things done just by smell or feel, or in some cases just instinct, but when trying something new, or for the inexperienced, or for those wanting to adhere to strict safety rules, at this price point you can't beat the ThermPro.