Customer Reviews

Thermofocus BV-1500 "5 in 1" Family Fever Thermometer

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I have the original model and this one. I am a school nurse and am using both of these in my office and just love the ease and quick accurate readings I get using them. The instructions say to use it on the forhead and that the forehead needs to be dry or it will reflect the laser light. In darkness you just hold down the laser light button until it is one circle on the forehead (dry) and let go and get the temp. Use the memory button to get your reading once you are in a lit room. It reads low when kids have not eaten breakfast or have drank something cold. It can be used on the carotid artery in the neck area also. I have a backup B&D digital mouth thermometer to get a second reading if I have any questions. This might be needed once or twice a day max. Love this as there is no spit to be touching and my severe disable kids are not bothered with it. I have used this for 6 hours a day for the last 10 months and all I had to do was change the battery. Love love love this product. KMRN

This product arrives in packaging with a manual and an instructional CD-ROM. I would advise the company to forget the expense of the CD-ROM and just stick with the manual. A simple flash video on their website could illustrate use of the device.

Essentially one takes temperature by holding down a button and bringing the thermometer towards the surface to read. When the two projected red dots converge, the button is released and an infrared reading is obtained and stored in memory as well.

The converged dot ends up being only about 1.5 cm in diameter at the correct reading distance - under an inch and it is not hard to find an area to read. The correct reading distance is about 2 inches away.

The manual recommends the central forehead, but I have gotten temperatures matching true core temp a little better by measuring a little to the side in the temporal area, possibly due to better temporal artery perfusion.

Note that alternate reading sites are recommended for those with heavy sweat on the forehead or makeup. Also, immediately after heavy physical activity, readings may be less reliable.

The genius of a noncontact thermometer is that there is no part that contacts a sick child or patient, and thus reduced risk of spread via the thermometer. Also, there are no little plastic covers to have to re-buy (and hope that they still make them), unlike the ear thermometers and many of the digital oral thermometers. Finally, no contact means that it can be performed on sleeping children and the degree of cooperation necessary is less.

A great product for cold and flu season. It replaces an ear thermometer for us that was not always fun to use in fussy children and we always regretted waking them at night to use the ear thermometer. Moderately expensive, but as a home-use consumer (and as a physician) I recommend this.

I was given this infrared thermometer as a tester equipment for my school health office. I service the medically fragile students and this has been a very nice, accurate, fast temp taking thermometer. It reads in less than 3 seconds and is quite accurate if used properly. Just read the directions. I like that it never touches a student's body/mouth therefore no spread of germs between patients. I may buy one for my home use. KMRN

It is nice to have a noninvasive thermometer but this one has definately not been accurate for us. It usually read a degree or so low on everyone in our family and it's hard to use on a wiggly baby that's awake. You have to be perfectly still and have a large enough flat surface on you forhead which is a challenge in a newborn whose face is small. You also have to store it in the room you're going to use it in because a change in the surrounding air temp messes it up. Overall pretty tricky to use but we've had better luck with it than the ear themometer.

When my son was 1 day old in the hospital the nurse came in that night and said that she had to take his temperature. He was sleeping in the cart thing that they put newborns in and my wife was asleep in the hospital bed. The nurse took this grey device and pointed it at his head. A little red light went on then off. She checked the display and said that his temperature was normal and left the room. This was my first encounter with a thermofoucus non contact infared thermometer.

After seeing this thing in action I had to have one! I hated puting the thermometer under my sons arm, it would wake him up and he would squirm around often producing inaccurate results. So I did alot of research on thermofocus and the differant models that they make. I really wanted the grey 0800 model that the nurse had primarily for the backlit lcd display. I looked and looked and I only could find the 0800 model in the UK. They wanted 98 british pounds! If you do the conversion rate and with really expensive shipping it comes out to around $175 USD. No way was I going to spend that much for the backlit lcd and cooler looking grey paint job.

So I started looking at the 0700 and 01500 series. There are 2 models in the 01500, the 01500/A3 and the 01500/H1N1. The H1N1 is hard to find and is for hospital, airport and industrial use. The 1500/A3 is the one that I got. It has three blue buttons. The base model 0700 only has 2 blue buttons. The main differance is that you can manually calibrate the 01500/A3 while the 0700 only has the auto calibrate.

Like other reviewers said if you are using the auto calibrate it make take up to 30 minutes to get used to the room temperature. The 01500/A3 has the auto feature too, but if you dont want to wait you can MANUALLY calibrate in about 3-5 seconds! Read the directions people! If you are moving from room to room this is the best way to calibrate.

Another reviewer said that the battery compartment is hard to remove. This is true if you have weak hands or arthritis or some other disability. My wife was struggling to open the compartment just like she struggles to open pickle jars! So I came over with my "man hands" and while it took some considerable force, I got it open. If you are someone with weak or disabled hands just get a small screw driver or butter knife and press down on the plastic button. The box says that it will take up to 10,000 readings with 4 AAA batteries so you shouldnt be replacing the batteries that often anyway.

Overall I really like this device. It is made in Italy rather than the everyday made in China stuff. It still has a plasticy feel and when the attached protective cap is on it looks like a womans personal mas... uhh never mind. Its small lightweight and compact enough to fit in a diaper bag. Like someone else said it would be nice if a case was included. The only thing I would change would be the addition of a backlit lcd like the 0800 model has. It would really be useful while taking temperature in the dark. It does store the last 9 temperatures so I take the thermomter to a differant room and read the display after taking my sons temperature in the dark.

I tried to find this locally but none of the stores carried it or had it in stock. Like other things, Amazon has the best prices online and the free supersaver shipping with no sales tax cant be beat. Dont listen to some of the other reviews as they are either written by people that work for the company (or have stock, one of the reviewers even lists the ticker symbol!) or morons who dont read the directions. When you take it out of the box the first thing it says on the plastic wrapper: "READ THE DIRECTIONS BEFORE USE!" So yes its a little more expensive and technical than other thermometers, but if you refuse to adapt and use new technology, stop complianing and go back to the old rectal thermometers.

The box that it came in was differant than the purple kidzmed box that is on Amazon and the kidzmed site. It is a white termofocus box from technimed. It comes with a 2 year warranty. This is good because there is a law against returning thermometers.

Very happy with this purchase and hope this thing will stay accurate and last for a long time.

i love this thermometer! i love the fact that i don't have to wake my baby up to take his temperature or invade his personal space when he's feeling sick, and that it only takes about 3 seconds to give you a reading. i tried different thermometers; the pacifier, the ear therm., the underarm therm. and they were not for me. the pacifier took too long to give a reading & when your baby is fussy w/ a fever, he really doesn't want to have a pacifier in his mouth, not to mention he doesn't want to stay still for the ear therm. and especially not for the underarm therm. i think i disliked the underarm therm. the most as it would always give me two completely different readings under each arm & the temperature was always way too low. this thermometer is very accurate and really easy to use. the only flaws? i wish that you could get a reading from a little further away, as you have to hold it pretty close to your child's forehead, & i wish it would come with a protective case, as it's a pretty expensive thermometer & it can be damaged pretty easily if dropped. i definitely recommend this for anyone to buy & use, especially for those who have children, as it's a life saver when it comes to getting an accurate and fast reading (very fast).

One of the greatest frustrations as a parent is reading the temperature of a sick and cranky child. So assume that you finally got your cranky and sick child to sleep. The last thing you want to do is wake your child by touching a cold thermometer to their skin. So buy this thermometer! It doesn't touch the skin to do a reading. While this is pretty cool, the coolness doesn't stop here. You can read temperatures from the forehead, naval, or armpit. It also measures the temperature of the baby's bottle, temperature of the bath water, and room temperature.

So from parent speaking to all others out there in Internet-land, "Buy this thermometer! You will not regret it."

This seems like a great idea but it is just not accurate enough to be useful. Also, it is not as easy as it sounds. If you move it from room to room or if the temperature changes (like the air conditioning kicking on) then you have to calibrate it for that room by pointing it at the wall after pressing the right buttons. However, even after calibrating, it was consistently off by a degree or two.

I had high hopes for this thermometer, but upon receiving it, found that it is not accurate. It works great for measuring the house surface temp, but for a body temp it doesn't give an accurate reading. When my 2 week old had a fever of 100.3 F according to our rectal thermometer (confirmed at the pediatrician's office), the Thermofocus measured 98.1. I know that a rectal thermometer is 0.9 degrees higher than an oral thermometer, so I'd expect the Thermofocus to have read 99.4. It's more than a degree off, which is too inaccurate to be useful. I'm trying to return the Thermofocus thermometer, and sticking with the rectal thermometer.

I work in a law enforcement detention facility, and routinely deal with subjects who require medical attention due to illness. This product, when used as per the instructions, gives a wide spectrum of temperature results. It is, at best, good for a ballpark temperature that may be off by as much as five degrees. Not a product I would trust for use with my family -- especially for an infant.