Maverick RediChek Remote Wireless Smoker Thermometer

The sinder unit from Maveric stoped sending on the first use. KitchenAid has not answered my E-Mail.... Bill

I purchased this thermometer to complement my Big Green Egg cooker. Ceramic cookers do best if you don't open them up frequently to check temperatures, so this unit is nearly ideal.

Good:
Wireless. You can keep the remote with you during a long cook and keep an eye on both the cooker and the food temperature.
Replaceable Probes. The two probes can be easily replaced if you do manage to fry them.

OK:
Setup. Temperature set points adjust UP only until they wrap around. So if one day you're cooking chicken to 170, and then next beef to 130, resetting the temperature take longer than I'd like. However, it hasn't been a huge issue.

WEAK:
Cooker temperature range. The top end temperature this unit will read is around 450F, which for slow cooking is fine, since target temps are 200-350. Unit cannot be used to gauge temp for high temp cooking. Sigh.

Final Comment:
While not perfect, this unit does a great job for what it was designed for: Slow cooking or smoking. It also does a good job of reporting the outside ambient temperature when you're not cooking.

This remote thermometer has a bunch of design flaws that will leave you scratching your head.

#1: You have to remove the battery cover to turn on the transmitter. The cover is held on by a plasic thumb screw that I doubt will last more than a year or so, after repeated use.

#2: There is no indication when the receiver is out of range. The receiver will display the temp that was last recorded...which could have been hours ago. It would be nice if it beeped, displayed an error, or shut off automatically...displaying the last temp is the worst case scenario.

#3: The temperature probes are too short. They're about 2 feet long, just barely long enough to get outside the smoker or grill and dangle a foot from the ground.

#4: There's not a simple way to re-synch the receiver if it's been out of range for a long period of time. You power up the reciever 1st, followed by powering up the transmitter within 30 or so seconds. This wouldn't be too bad if you didn't have to remove the battery cover from the transmitter to do so.

Folks are complaining about the on/off switch behind the battery door but its there because as an outdoor product, this is part of the weatherproofing.

If you could calibrate the temperature on this unit I would give this 5 stars. It is within 1.5 degrees of this high accuracy unit I have and I wish I culd calibrate to that.

The other cool thing is you can order a seperate food probe for 10.00 and use this unit to monitor two meats at once. I use in kitchen too and it very good there, but the cord length is for smoker use more than kitchen use.

This is a must-have for anyone doing serious BBQ and smoking. I use a Weber Smoky Mountain and this helps me keep the interior temperature perfect without peeking.

The only negatives are that you have to scroll through all of the available temps to set the alarm. Also you have to open the back of the transmitter to turn it on.

Still, it does the job well at a great price.