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107 of 108 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
CSI, June 14, 2006
This review is from: Weber Style 32908 Professional-Grade Barbecue Beeper Digital Thermometer (Lawn & Patio)
All reviews indicating probe failure are consistent with my findings, which is an engineering design flaw in the choice of low-temp material for the wire insulation that eventually carbonizes with high-temp exposure (my opinion). The thermister sensor itself remains functional (assumming it was always inside food; I disassembled one probe to confirm how it failed). The failure will not usually occur immediately, unless exposed to very high temp, such as a grill on sear. As far as I can tell all probes of different manufactures are essentially of the same design (I have several, and they are interchangeable among the units). The main point to take away is that ALL of these will eventually fail after accumulating enough high-temp exposure time. You are essentially cooking the wire insulation until it carbonizes internally and shorts out the sensor. The silly part of this is high-temp wire probes have been around for decades, so this is just plain bad engineering, not rocket science, but so far (based in part on other reviews) I don't know of anyone doing it correctly in the consumer market (you need an industrial probe). The worst environment for these is the grill, which is why I put this review here; you may get only one use.
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114 of 118 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just what I needed., April 26, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Weber Style 32908 Professional-Grade Barbecue Beeper Digital Thermometer (Lawn & Patio)
Ever had a meal go up in smoke because you got pulled away from the grill? This solves the problem. Also, I grill a lot about 3 times a week and that's just in the winter. This saves a lot of those trips out to the grill to probe the food and eliminates the need to open the grill cover and lose all that heat. Just stick it in put it on the grill and forget about it. I really works. 1. Just to test things out I wheeled my grill to the far edge of my property then went down to my basement. I still got a full signal about 80 linear feet away through a brick wall and two thick plaster-lathe interior walls. 2. The monitor warns you when your food is within 5 degrees of your desired doneness so you have time to react.. 3. It really really cooked my steak medium rare. 4 Minor annoyance: It has handy preprogrammed settings for rare, medium rare, medium etc. for beef, veal and lamb. But it assumes you want hamburger, fish and poultry well done. In case you don't want these foods cooked that well you need to find an appropriate temperature setting from one of the other foods. For example If you need to turn a turkey and want to be warned when it raches 145 degrees you'd need to set the monitor for beef and medium rare, which happens to be 145 degrees. Would have been nice if it had the option to directly set the monitor for a specific temperature. Still this thing is absolutely great. Just what I always wished I had.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
When it works it works great, but..., September 12, 2006
This review is from: Weber Style 32908 Professional-Grade Barbecue Beeper Digital Thermometer (Lawn & Patio)
I purchased this product about two years ago and it's great for cooking meats on the grill. No more second guessing whether the chicken is done (or overdone).
But so far I've gone through three sensor wires in that short time period. Each time they failed (reading of 199° immediately after turning it on), I've had to call Weber and request a replacement. I was always accused of closing the lid on the wire, which I never did -- I would always make sure the wire was placed in one of the little notches on the side of our Weber grill. But to their credit, they eventually would agree to send me out a new one.
After the third sensor wire failed just recently, they sternly informed me that "this would be the last time" they would replace it since I've had the product for more than a year. The unit has a one-year warranty, but I guess it doesn't matter that I never got more than a year out of any of the sensors.
If they improved the durability of the sensor wire then they would have a great product on their hands. As it stands now, I'd steer clear of this product.
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