My wife gave me a Meater wireless thermometer for Father’s Day which I used along side my maverick for comparison (and peace of mind.)
The Meater is a very neat concept. It is a single probe that monitors both food temp and ambient temp. It can connect to your smart phone/tablet via Bluetooth, WiFi (Meater Link)or though a cloud server (Meater Cloud). For the cloud service you either need their base, Meater Block, or 2 smart devices. Meater Link allows you to monitor cooks with any wireless device on the same WiFi network. Meater Cloud allows you to monitor cooks from anywhere you have smart device internet connection.
After about 10 mins of setting up an iPad and my phone to connect to the probe and setting min/max cooking temp alarms as well as a food temp alert, I was ready to put it to use. In general the ambient temp was about 18 degrees less than my maverick. This appears to be due to a “cool bubble” of air that surrounds any cooking surface due to circulation and evaporation. They eventually were near identical temps as the cook progressed. The main issue I encountered was maintaining Bluetooth connection to my “bridge” device. It consistently lost connection but would reconnect eventually. It think that is largely because my Kamado cooker is insulated steel construction and blocks the Bluetooth signal. It seemed to be more prevalent when smoke was heavier. I’m not sure it would be as prevalent in a stick burner because it has more openings and seems. Placing the bridge device immediately next to the cooker would also fix it, but didn’t want to leave an iPad outside all night.
I wasn’t blown away by the performance, but not totally disappointed either.
Results were great either way, good crust on the brisket, perfect texture and full mouths and bellies spoke for themselves.
The Meater is a very neat concept. It is a single probe that monitors both food temp and ambient temp. It can connect to your smart phone/tablet via Bluetooth, WiFi (Meater Link)or though a cloud server (Meater Cloud). For the cloud service you either need their base, Meater Block, or 2 smart devices. Meater Link allows you to monitor cooks with any wireless device on the same WiFi network. Meater Cloud allows you to monitor cooks from anywhere you have smart device internet connection.
After about 10 mins of setting up an iPad and my phone to connect to the probe and setting min/max cooking temp alarms as well as a food temp alert, I was ready to put it to use. In general the ambient temp was about 18 degrees less than my maverick. This appears to be due to a “cool bubble” of air that surrounds any cooking surface due to circulation and evaporation. They eventually were near identical temps as the cook progressed. The main issue I encountered was maintaining Bluetooth connection to my “bridge” device. It consistently lost connection but would reconnect eventually. It think that is largely because my Kamado cooker is insulated steel construction and blocks the Bluetooth signal. It seemed to be more prevalent when smoke was heavier. I’m not sure it would be as prevalent in a stick burner because it has more openings and seems. Placing the bridge device immediately next to the cooker would also fix it, but didn’t want to leave an iPad outside all night.
I wasn’t blown away by the performance, but not totally disappointed either.
Results were great either way, good crust on the brisket, perfect texture and full mouths and bellies spoke for themselves.
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