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See why.The Best Remote-Probe Thermometers
Babysitting food can be a real slog; remote-probe thermometers untether you from the oven or grill and let you monitor food temperature from afar.
When we originally tested remote-probe thermometers in 2019, we didn’t find much to like about Wi-Fi thermometers. A new product has changed our minds. While we still think that the ThermoWorks Smoke 2-Channel Alarm is the best remote-probe thermometer for most cooks, we now also highly recommend the FireBoard 2. With six channels and an easy-to-use smartphone app, this Wi-Fi data logger is a great upgrade for cooks who regularly roast or smoke multiple pieces of food at a time.
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What You Need To Know
We’ve all been there: You’re hungry and eager to eat, but your food is taking forever to come up to the right temperature. You open the oven or grill every few minutes, insert your thermometer, and pray for that magic number to display. Soon enough, your beautiful steak or side of salmon is riddled with holes—and still not done. It’s a double-edged sword: The more you open the oven door or lift the grill lid, the longer your food will take to cook, but you don’t want to miss that elusive perfect temperature.
Our winning clip-on probe thermometer, the ChefAlarm by ThermoWorks, helps with this problem. It features a probe that is connected by a thin wire to a base that sits outside the grill or oven. The probe is inserted into the food you’re cooking and the base displays the temperature readout, allowing you to monitor temperature without opening the oven door or lifting the grill lid. However, this thermometer has a limitation: You can read the temperature only when standing next to the stove or grill. Remote-probe thermometers, which are similar in design and operation to clip-on probe thermometers, get around this restriction by also transmitting their temperature data to portable receivers. This makes them handy for monitoring the progress of foods that cook for longer periods and require no babysitting or hands-on attention, such as barbecue or roasts. You can walk away from the grill, smoker, or oven and go about your day; the receiver lets you know when your food has reached its target temperature.
Before we started testing, we learned that there are two types of remote-probe thermometers: pager-style and smartphone-connected. Pager-style thermometers send their temperature data via radio frequency from the base to a handheld monitor (much like a walkie-talkie or baby monitor). Smartphone-connected thermometers rely on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (which are not the same—more on that later) to transmit temperature data from the base to an app on your phone.
To find the best remote-probe thermometer, we tested a mix of models. Some of the models used Bluetooth, while others used Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Two of the Bluetooth thermometers were “smart-probe” thermometers. Instead of wired probes that plug into bases that sit near the stovetop, oven, or grill, the probe itself transmits the temperature data wirelessly via Bluetooth to your phone—no base required.
We used each to monitor pork butt on a gas grill for 4 hours and whole chickens roasted on a charcoal grill for 1 hour; we also used a later Wi-Fi thermometer to monitor air and food temperatures while making North Carolina Barbecue Pork and Kansas City-Style B...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Setup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 2.5 stars out of 3.
Right out of the box the base paired automatically with the receiver, making it ready to use in seconds. Both base and receiver had bright, clear displays that could be read easily in both bright and dim light; both also have backlights for operating in the dark. The unit maintains a connection for up to 300 feet and alerts you when you go out of range. When you go back into range, it automatically reconnects, and its alarms were loud and easy to set. While we used it primarily for grilling, this thermometer can read up to 572 degrees and transmits temperature data from the probe to the base in 8 seconds, which also makes it useful for candy making and deep frying. It can be made to work with a smartphone by purchasing the Smoke Gateway ($89); however, we found it difficult to set up and the app glitchy.
- Setup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 3 stars out of 3.
A cult favorite among home barbecue aficionados, this Wi-Fi-connected data logger has six channels for either ambient or food probes, making it a great upgrade for cooks who regularly roast or smoke more than one piece of food at a time or for those who want to track the air temperatures in different areas of their smokers, ovens, or grills. It’s pricey but durable and well designed, and as long as the base is in a Wi-Fi zone, you’ll never have to worry about losing connection—we drove miles away from the base and still got readouts. You’ll need to download an app to use it, but the app itself is intuitive and easy to read and use; we loved that we could set multiple alerts for each probe and that we could also use the app to take notes. Best of all, the app graphs the temperatures as they’re registered, giving you a sense of how your food and smoker/grill/oven are progressing. This is especially useful if you’re just learning how to use a smoker, for example, or if you want to track your fridge’s temperature over time. (We just wish we could customize the view so that we could choose to see only certain probes at a time.) The food probe took longer than other models to register the temperature of an ice bath accurately, but once inserted in food, it registered temperature changes every 5 seconds. You can use the base with a power cord or just rely on its chargeable battery; when fully charged, it worked for more than 14 hours and still had plenty of juice left.
Recommended
- Setup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 2 stars out of 3.
Recommended with reservations
- Setup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 2 stars out of 3.
This probe doesn’t have wires. Instead, the probe transmits temperature information directly to your phone via Bluetooth. However, you have to keep the charging base near both the probe and your phone, as it contains the Bluetooth transmitter. Pairing was relatively easy, though instructions were minimal and the device has to be charged for at least 4 hours before you can use it. Because it relies on Bluetooth (not Wi-Fi), we found the connection range was fairly limited—only about 165 feet. It did occasionally unpair with our phone when we went out of range, but it was easy enough to reconnect when we were back in range (though it was not always automatic). Overall we found the wireless design incredibly easy to use, and it’s a good option if you don’t want to deal with replacing wires that get pinched in an oven or come in contact with a heat source and get fried.
Not Recommended
- Setup: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 2 stars out of 3.
- Setup: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 2 stars out of 3.
- Setup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 2 stars out of 3.
- Setup: 1 stars out of 3.
- Accuracy: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Connectivity: 1 stars out of 3.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Miye Bromberg
Miye is a senior editor for ATK Reviews. She covers booze, blades, and gadgets of questionable value.