Thursday, January 5, 2017

Product review: Maverick ET-733 Long Range Wireless Dual Probe Meat Thermometer

I have been using Maverick thermometer for a week, including cooking the Thanksgivings feast.  The highlights for me were its accuracy and the fact that the receiver worked well at a long distance. I could would how my turkey was progressing in a room 40 feet away from the oven.

Despite key great features it is not perfect.  In this review I will highlight its strengths and weaknesses.

The first thing I did is to measure the accuracy of the thermometer.  My video shows this test.  Checking accuracy of the thermometer is very easy because we know the temperature at which the water boils at sea level is 212°F degrees.  The video shows the reading of both the transmitter and the receiver.  The thermometer final reading is 214, which is 2 degrees higher than boiling water.  This test shows that the thermometer is accurate within 2 degrees, which is acceptable. It shows this measurement consistently during several tests.



I like that the thermometer comes with two units: the transmitter which has the probes attached, and the receiver a unit which you can place where it is convenient so you can see and hear what is going with the temperature of the probe.  It will communicate with the transmitter up to 300 feet away.

The package includes a clip stand which attaches to the back of the unit, so it is easy to see.

The sensors are heat resistant for up to 716°F and come with wires that are 3 feet long. Enough to put the transmitted on top of the oven when the probes piece the meat. 

The transmitter unit is water tight, to open the battery compartment you need a small screw driver.  The receiver unit is not water tight, so the battery compartment has just a sliding cover.  The unit comes with batteries, but they were carbon batteries that we decided not to use and used our own alkaline batteries.

On the negative side, the initial sync function did not work smoothly.  The documentation says it should have happened automatically, but it did not. It took multiple manual attempts until it finally worked.  This is the steps:
1) Turn off both units. Then turn on the receiver by holding the on button for 2 seconds.
2) The turn on the transmitter by holding the on button for 2 seconds.
3) Then hit the sync button on the back of the transmitter for 2 seconds until the receiver shows the same temperature.  This function did not work when I had only one probe inserted. When I inserted both probes it worked.  Initially I was only planning to use one probe, but with two probes I was able to get the temperature from two different parts of the turkey.

"Taste" button controls the wellness of the meat.  For turkey there are no options, the only available temperature is 170°F.  I expected the thermometer to beep when it reached 170°F, but it did not.  The temperature just went past 170°F. I would have preferred an alarm to let me know that it is time to stop cooking.

I also wanted to use the temperature probe to measure the temperature of scallops which was I was defrosting.  The probe was not able to measure the temperature when it was below freezing. It displayed "LLL". It did work properly when it reached the 32°F.

Overall, pretty good, I wish it would beep when the goal temperature was reached and this is why I rate it good (4 stars) rather than great (5 stars).


You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

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