ThermoPro TP20 UK Review — Tested by Ben

Published 13 August 2026 · Last updated 15 August 2026 · Tested by Ben Austen · Affiliate disclosure

ThermoPro TP20

I bought the ThermoPro TP20 in June for £38.24, and a £14.99 instant-read from the same brand in the same order, because I’d reached the point where guessing wasn’t good enough. Five cooks later — a thirteen-hour pulled pork, two pork loins, and a Sunday with a chicken and four duck legs going at once — I’d buy both again tomorrow.

Five cooks, not fifty. That’s a small number for a barbecue and a fair one for a thermometer: accuracy, range, battery, build and the things that irritate you all show up inside a handful of cooks, and none of them need a season to appear.

The short version

The TP20 is a wired, dual-probe, wireless-receiver thermometer that costs about forty pounds and does the job a hundred-and-ninety-pound probe does. It got me through a thirteen-hour pulled pork without lifting the lid once, and it has told me the truth every time I’ve cross-checked it by hand. Verdict: 8/10.

Two things stop it being a nine. On a long cook you have to route the wires out of a ceramic kamado somehow, and every option has a cost — I still haven’t found a clean answer to getting the probes back out at ten o’clock at night with a full ash bucket underneath. And two channels sounds like plenty until you’re cooking two things at once, at which point you’ve got nothing left to watch the fire with.

What I’d say to anyone hovering: buy it with the instant-read, not instead of one. Fifty-three quid for the pair, and they do different jobs.

Key takeaways

• The pair — TP20 plus the TP19HB instant-read — cost me £53.23 together, less than a single fashionable wireless probe. A serious cook needs both.
• Ignore the pork presets. The lowest one is 71°C, which is 8°C above the 63°C my own pork loin recipe pulls at, and 8°C above what the USDA itself has recommended since 2011.
• Two probes force a choice on every cook: the pit plus one piece of meat, or two pieces of meat and no eyes on the fire.
• It’s wired, which on a kamado means a routing decision, and on a long cook an extraction problem I haven’t solved.
• The receiver has been faultless anywhere in the house. Nothing has failed, frayed or let water in.
• Don’t bother if you’re cooking sausages. Do bother the moment you go low-and-slow.

The TP20 at a glance

Probes	Two, wired, stainless with braided leads
Claimed range	500ft / ~150m
What I paid	£38.24, Amazon, 8 June 2026
Current price	£40.49 (11 Aug 2026); list price £52.99
Bought with	ThermoPro TP19HB instant-read, £14.99 — £53.23 the pair
Register	Tested — five cooks, June to August 2026
Verdict	8/10

Who this is for, and who this isn’t

Buy this if you’re going low-and-slow. A hand probe tells you what the meat’s doing while you’re standing over it — the leave-in tells you from the kitchen, thirteen hours into a shoulder. A packer brisket, a pork shoulder, a belly, big beef ribs — those are expensive cuts, temperature is most of what you’ve got to go on, and I’d rather know exactly where they are than find out when I slice it.

Don’t bother if your barbecue is mostly sausages, burgers and chicken thighs on a Friday. Those cooks are short, forgiving, and you can hand-check them in five seconds with a cheap instant-read. Spending forty pounds to monitor a sausage is a waste of forty pounds.

What I’ve cooked on it

The TP20 arrived on 10 June, and four days later it went into a pulled pork that ran thirteen hours on the BGE Large. One probe in the shoulder, the other in the pit. That second channel is how I know the Egg sat at 115°C dome and the vents barely moved all day, rather than just believing it had. The shoulder came off at 93°C with the probe sliding in like warm butter, at ten o’clock at night, and I was glad not to have spent the evening lifting the lid to check.

Since then it’s mostly been pork loin — two cooks, both boneless, both at 140°C dome with a probe in the thickest part of the muscle waiting for 63°C. A loin has a narrow window between underdone and dry, so it’s the cut where two or three degrees of thermometer error costs you dinner. Both times I cross-checked with the instant-read at the pull, and both times the TP20 agreed with it.

Then a Sunday in August with a chicken on the vertical roaster, four duck legs sitting in a foil boat of hot oil underneath it, and baked potatoes round the edge of the grate. The chicken ran on a leave-in the whole way and came off at 72–73°C in the breast. The second probe started in a duck leg, gave me a reading I didn’t believe, and ended up in the biggest potato instead — which left nothing watching the pit on the one day the charcoal was the last of a bag and slow to come up.

The duck showed me something I hadn’t hit before. A probe in a small leg sitting in hot oil reads the oil, not the meat — mine alarmed at 90°C about fifteen minutes in, which is impossible for a duck leg on a cook that long. The tip had either gone through the muscle or was sitting in the fat around it. Next time I’ll seat the probe before the legs go into the boat, because you can’t do it blind through foil once the cook is running. The duck went to 94°C in the end and the potatoes to 96°C, both checked by hand.

I left it off one cook on purpose. The pork belly burnt ends in June ran about eleven hours and I hand-probed at the end of each phase instead. A wireless probe would have given me peace of mind during the two or three hours the cubes were out of my sight, but it wouldn’t have changed the cook.

Pros and cons

What’s good

• Fifty-three pounds bought both the leave-in and the instant-read. A single fashionable wireless probe costs more than that on its own.
• It has agreed with the instant-read every time I’ve cross-checked at the pull, across five cooks.
• The receiver works anywhere in the house, which is the entire point of buying one.
• Two channels let me watch the pit and the meat at the same time on a single-protein cook, and the pit reading is how I know the fire is actually holding rather than assuming it is.
• Nothing has failed, frayed or let water in since June.

What’s not

• Getting the probes back out of a ceramic kamado at the end of a thirteen-hour cook is a real faff. I ran mine up through the ash vent, which avoids the gasket but leaves you fishing them out past a full ash bucket — next time I’ll try the top vent instead.
• Routing the wires means choosing between running them over the felt gasket or up through the ash vent, and neither option is clean.
• Two channels runs out faster than you’d expect. Cook more than two things and something goes unwatched.
• You can’t seat a probe blind in a small cut once the cook is running.
• The pork presets sit eight degrees above what the USDA itself now recommends, so I don’t use them.

Setup and first impressions

Setting it up took no time and involved no decisions. The batteries were in the box as advertised, the receiver and transmitter found each other with no fiddling, and four days later it was running a thirteen-hour pulled pork. In the hand it feels medium rather than premium, which is what thirty-eight pounds buys and I’ve no complaint about it. Nothing about the first cook surprised me, good or bad.

Accuracy, and how I’ve checked it

I’ve done the two checks you can do at home: both probes in a slurry of ice and water, and both probes in a pan at a rolling boil. They read true, and they still do after five cooks. Do that on any thermometer before you trust it with expensive meat.

Past that, every cook has been a cross-check. The leave-in gets the meat to the pull and the instant-read confirms it before anything comes off the grid, and across five cooks the two have never disagreed by enough to change what I did.

That matters most on the loin. Mine comes off at 63°C, and the gap between underdone and dry is narrow enough that a probe reading two or three degrees light would ruin it. Both loin cooks landed where I expected, and the instant-read agreed at the pull.

The one time the TP20 gave me a number I didn’t believe, it wasn’t wrong. A probe in a duck leg sitting in hot oil alarmed at 90°C fifteen minutes into a cook that should have taken an hour. It was reading accurately — it just wasn’t reading the meat. That’s my mistake rather than the thermometer’s, but a leave-in will confidently report the temperature of whatever its tip is touching, and it won’t tell you when that isn’t the thing you meant to measure.

Living with the wires

The TP20 is wired, and on a ceramic kamado that’s most of the story of living with it. The leads have to get from the meat to the transmitter outside the dome, and there are two ways to do it: over the felt gasket with the lid closed on them, or up through the bottom ash vent and out underneath.

On the pulled pork I used the ash vent, specifically to keep the wires off the gasket. It worked, and then it created the problem I still haven’t solved. At ten o’clock at night, thirteen hours in, the probes have to come back out through a vent with a full ash bucket sitting in the way, and the plug end is plastic I don’t want to drag through ash. Next time I’ll try the top vent instead — it avoids the gasket the same way and comes out from above with nothing in the way.

Today I was in a rush and ran them over the gasket instead. I’d assumed that would damage it over time. Looking at it afterwards it’s fine — no wear I can see and no smoke leaking along the seal. That’s one cook rather than twenty, so I’m not going to tell you it’s harmless. It isn’t the instant disaster I half expected either.

The receiver has been faultless. I haven’t tried it from down the road, but anywhere in the house — upstairs, kitchen, back of the house with the doors shut — it holds the signal and keeps reading. That’s the part that earns the money, because the whole reason for buying one is not standing next to the barbecue.

Nothing has failed. No fraying at the strain relief, no water in the plugs.

The presets, and why I ignore them

The TP20 has a preset list and I’ve never once used it. The table it’s built from is headed “USDA doneness temperature range”. Its lowest setting for pork is 71°C. USDA moved whole-cut pork to 63°C plus a three-minute rest on 24 May 2011, down from the 71°C it had recommended before that — so the preset is calibrated to a standard the body it names stopped recommending fifteen years ago.

The modern number is already in the unit, which is the odd part. The custom “Program” setting sits at 63°C out of the box, exactly where USDA now puts pork. The current guidance is in the device; it just isn’t in the pork preset.

I pull whole-cut pork at 63°C, and my pork loin recipe says the same. That’s lower than most people will tell you and I’ve never had a problem with it. A loin taken to 71°C is a dry loin, and there is nothing you can do at the pull to get that back.

UK guidance takes a different route to the same place. The FSA’s line on whole cuts of pork is 70°C held for two minutes; USDA’s is 63°C with a three-minute rest. Both work on time at temperature — hold meat lower for longer and you get where a hotter, shorter hold gets you. The preset on this unit follows neither: it’s the old American number with no rest attached to it.

Where I’m completely conventional is poultry. The chicken preset is 74°C, which matches USDA exactly, and I pull chicken at 73–75°C — breast at the lower end, thigh at the higher. Mince the same. The lower temperatures I cook to are for whole muscle, which is where the standards themselves draw the line, and I wouldn’t take a chicken or a batch of burgers down there.

So the presets aren’t wrong so much as stale, and stale in one direction only. Set your own targets instead. On this unit that means using Program rather than the meat list, which takes about ten seconds and is the difference between a loin you want to eat and one you don’t.

Comparison with the alternatives

The TP20 is the only one of these I’ve owned. I read a fair number of reviews before I spent the money and I haven’t cooked on any of the others, so what follows is the reasoning that took me to a forty-pound wired unit rather than a verdict on kit I’ve never had on a fire. Prices are what they were in August 2026.

vs the MEATER Pro Duo

	ThermoPro TP20	MEATER Pro Duo
Price	£40.49	£189.00
Meat channels	Two	Two
Probes	Wired to a transmitter	Fully wireless
Reading it indoors	Handheld receiver, its own radio	Phone app over home WiFi, MEATER Cloud account
Wires through the dome	Yes	None
Claimed range	500ft / ~150m to the receiver	Whole-home, via WiFi extension

The Pro Duo is the unit I looked at and turned down, and it fixes the thing that annoys me most about mine. No leads means nothing over the gasket and nothing to fish out of an ash vent at ten o’clock at night. That’s a real advantage and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

Two things stopped me. The first was the money — the best part of five times the price, at a point where I didn’t yet know whether a leave-in would change how I cook. Put plainly, I wanted to find out whether I’d use it before I spent a hundred and ninety pounds finding out. The second is how the reading reaches you. MEATER’s own description of whole-home coverage runs the probe over Bluetooth to your router and out through a cloud account; the TP20’s receiver talks to the transmitter directly and works upstairs with the doors shut and the broadband off. For a thermometer whose entire job is telling me a number while I’m not in the garden, I’d rather that didn’t pass through my WiFi and somebody else’s server.

I’d also read enough owner reviews of fully-wireless probes to be cautious about them, and since I haven’t used one I’m not going to tell you what does or doesn’t go wrong.

Would I switch? No. Five cooks in, the wired-ness costs me about two minutes of faff at the end of a long cook, and £148 is a lot to pay for those two minutes.

vs the ThermoWorks RFX

	ThermoPro TP20	ThermoWorks RFX Starter Kit
Price	£40.49	£192.00 (Thermapen UK, VAT included)
In the box	Two meat probes, transmitter, receiver	One meat probe, one ambient air probe, gateway, charging block
Probes	Wired	Fully wireless
Radio	Transmitter to handheld receiver	Sub-GHz probe-to-gateway, claimed 1,500ft
Reading it indoors	Handheld receiver	Phone app, WiFi or Bluetooth to the gateway

This is the one that actually gets at my complaint. ThermoWorks put a sub-GHz radio between the probe and the gateway rather than Bluetooth, which is the sensible engineering answer to a signal that has to leave a sealed ceramic box — it’s the reason it’s the kamado pick in my wireless thermometer guide. If I ever get properly beaten by wire routing, this is where I’d go rather than to a phone-first unit.

What stops me is what you get for the money. £192 buys one meat probe and one ambient probe, so on a two-protein cook you are back to exactly the problem I have with the TP20 — one meat channel and one on the pit — for getting on for five times the price. Adding a second meat probe puts it further up again. And the readout is the app either way, so it shares the phone dependency I’ve just complained about.

Would I switch? Not yet. It’s the right design and it’s the direction I’d move in, but not while the same money buys four TP20s and my wire problem is an annoyance rather than a cook it has ruined.

vs a four-channel wired unit, like the Inkbird IBBQ-4T

	ThermoPro TP20	Inkbird IBBQ-4T
Price	£40.49	£94.99 (Kamado Kings)
Meat channels	Two	Four
Probes	Wired	Wired
Reading it indoors	Handheld receiver	Phone app over home WiFi
Wires through the dome	Two	Up to four

The two-probe limit is the one thing about the TP20 that has genuinely cost me something. On the August cook there were four things worth watching — a chicken, four duck legs, potatoes and the fire — and two channels to watch them with, which is how the pit ended up unmonitored on the day the charcoal was misbehaving. Four channels for a bit over twice the price is the obvious answer to that, and on a kettle or a pellet grill I think it’s a good one.

On a ceramic kamado it isn’t. Four leads means four times the routing decision I already dislike, four things to get back out through a vent at the end of a long cook, and four leads over a felt gasket if you take the quick option. It also moves the reading to the phone, so I’d be giving up the handheld and adding a home-network dependency to get the channels.

Would I switch? No. The instinct is right and the unit is wrong for how I cook — if I go to four channels it’ll be by getting rid of the wires, not by adding more of them.

vs just buying an instant-read

	ThermoPro TP19HB instant-read	ThermoPro TP20 leave-in
Price	£14.99	£40.49
Tells you	What the meat is now, in a few seconds	What the meat is doing continuously
Needs you standing there	Yes	No
Earns its keep on	Every cook, short or long	Cooks with hours you spend elsewhere

These two don’t compete, which is the point of buying both. The instant-read tells you what the meat is doing while you’re stood over it; the leave-in tells you from the kitchen, thirteen hours into a shoulder. It’s a difference about attendance rather than accuracy — the instant-read isn’t a worse thermometer, it just needs you present to be any use at all.

The August cook is the clearest illustration I’ve got. Both leave-in channels ran all afternoon, and every final call was still made by hand: chicken at 72–73°C, duck at 94°C, potatoes at 96°C. The TP20 told me when to start paying attention and the TP19HB told me when to stop.

Would I switch? No — but if you can genuinely only buy one thing this month, buy the instant-read. Fifteen pounds, it improves every cook you do including the short ones, and nothing else you spend that money on comes close. Then buy the TP20 before your first proper low-and-slow, because that’s the cook where not having one actually hurts.

Where to buy it in the UK

Where to buy

Amazon, which is where I bought mine. If you find it somewhere else in the UK at a comparable price, take it — but Amazon is the route I can actually speak to.

Worth knowing that it isn’t sold by Amazon themselves. It’s a third-party listing with Amazon fulfilment, and the seller on it has changed since I bought mine. Mine came from a Hong Kong seller in June; the same listing today shows a seller trading as ThermoPro UK, with Amazon doing the dispatching, which is a better position for you than it was for me on both returns and warranty. If you’re buying, check who’s selling before you click — on a listing that has already changed hands once, that’s worth ten seconds.

Price and discounting

What I paid	£38.24 — 8 June 2026
Price now	£40.49 — 11 August 2026
Amazon list price	£52.99
Long-run average	£41.40
Lowest it has been	£25.99 — November 2017
Highest it has been	£69.99 — January 2018

The useful thing here isn’t the current price, it’s the shape of the history. This unit has sat within a couple of pounds of forty for years. It carries a £52.99 list price it almost never sells at, so a listing showing “10% off” is the normal price wearing a discount badge, and there’s no sale worth waiting for — a good day gets you a pound or two, not ten.

Which also means the £38.24 I paid wasn’t a clever bit of timing, and the £40.49 you’d pay today isn’t a price rise worth worrying about. Buy it when you need it.

What about secondhand?

Don’t. Used ones average within twenty pence of new ones, which tells you everything you need to know: you’d take on a thermometer with an unknown history, no warranty and probes of unknown accuracy, and save nothing at all. Probes are the part that wears, they’re the part you can’t inspect in a listing photo, and accuracy is the entire product.

The rebrand, and what happened to the name

If you go looking for this unit you’ll hit some confusion, so here it is plainly. ThermoPro has become TempPro — the manufacturer’s own site now reads “Trusted as ThermoPro. Now TempPro.” The TP20 has been succeeded by the TP20B, and the model field on the UK listing I bought from now reads “TempSync CORE TP20B”, so the rebrand and the model succession have already landed on the page you’ll be looking at.

You can still buy it, and the TP20 is the one I own — everything above is that unit, not the B. But it does mean the box, the listing title and the model name may not all agree with each other, and it means the older reviews you’ll find of “the ThermoPro TP20” are reviewing this same unit under a name the manufacturer has retired.

One genuine spec difference if you’re buying from outside the UK: these run on different radio frequencies by region, 868MHz for Europe and 915MHz for North America. Buy the European unit.

Bundles vs unit-only — what I’d add

Nothing from the brand, and one thing from the brand. Buy the TP20 and add the TP19HB instant-read for £14.99 in the same order. That’s the £53 setup I keep coming back to, and it’s the only addition I’d make on day one.

Accessories: what you need and what you don’t

The instant-read, and that’s the list. £14.99 for the TP19HB, or any decent instant-read — the brand matters less than owning one. It’s the other half of the job, it improves every cook including the short ones the TP20 has no business on, and at £14.99 it’s the cheapest thing here by a long way.

Don’t buy spare probes yet. They’re the obvious upsell and the obvious worry, because probes are the part that fails on every leave-in thermometer eventually. Mine haven’t. Five cooks in there’s no fraying at the strain relief, no water in the plugs, and both channels still read true against ice and boiling water. Buy a replacement when one actually dies, not in advance on the assumption that it will.

Don’t buy a second TP20 to get four channels. It’s a tempting bit of maths, because two channels is my main complaint about the thing. It’s still a bad idea: two transmitters sitting by the grill, two receivers to keep track of indoors, two sets of batteries, and four leads to route instead of two. If four channels is what you need, buy a four-channel unit — or better, buy wireless probes.

Don’t count on the extended warranty without checking it still stands. ThermoPro’s one-year warranty was extendable to three years on registration. With the brand mid-rebrand to TempPro I wouldn’t assume that path works the way the old listings describe it, so check before you rely on it.

What I’d do differently

Route the wires out of the top vent, not the bottom. I used the ash vent on the pulled pork to keep the leads off the gasket, and it worked right up until the probes had to come back out through it with a full ash bucket in the way. The top vent avoids the gasket the same way and comes out from above with nothing underneath it. That’s the first thing I’ll change on the next long cook.

Seat the probe before the meat goes anywhere I can’t see it. The duck legs taught me that one. Trying to get a probe into a small leg through foil, mid-cook, with hot oil in the boat, is how you end up measuring the oil instead of the meat. Probe first, then assemble.

Think harder about channels before the next big spend. Two was enough until the day it wasn’t, and the day it wasn’t was the day the fire needed watching. I’m not going to pretend two channels is fine — it’s the limitation I’d pay to remove, and when I do it’ll be by getting rid of the wires rather than by adding more of them.

Common questions

Can you still buy the ThermoPro TP20 in the UK?

Yes. It’s on Amazon UK at £40.49 as of 11 August 2026, from a seller trading as ThermoPro UK with Amazon dispatching. It’s a third-party listing rather than an Amazon-direct one, and the seller on it has changed at least once, so check who’s selling before you buy.

What’s the difference between the TP20 and the TP20B?

The TP20B is the successor and the model the brand still sells. The TP20 reviewed here remains on sale in the UK under the old name — confusingly, the model field on the UK listing now reads “TempSync CORE TP20B”, so the names overlap on one page. Buying from outside the UK, the radio differs: 868MHz Europe, 915MHz North America.

Why is ThermoPro now called TempPro?

The company rebranded. Its own site reads “Trusted as ThermoPro. Now TempPro.” The hardware and the model numbers carried over, so a TP20 is a TP20 whichever name is on the listing. It does mean older reviews of “the ThermoPro TP20” are reviewing this same unit under a retired name.

Are the TP20’s preset temperatures safe to follow?

Safe, and out of date for pork. The table cites USDA, but its lowest pork setting is 71°C — what USDA replaced in May 2011 with 63°C plus a three-minute rest. UK FSA guidance is 70°C for two minutes. Follow the preset and you get safe pork, cooked hotter than it needs. I use the unit’s Program mode, which sits at 63°C.

How accurate is the TP20?

Mine has been accurate every time I’ve checked it, across five cooks. I’ve tested both probes in ice water and at a rolling boil and they read true, and I cross-check against an instant-read at every pull without finding a gap big enough to change anything. Do that check before trusting any thermometer.

Do I need an instant-read as well?

Yes, and if you can only buy one, buy the instant-read first. They do different jobs: an instant-read tells you what the meat is doing while you’re standing over it, a leave-in tells you from the kitchen thirteen hours into a shoulder. The difference is attendance, not accuracy. The pair cost me £53.23.

How far does the receiver actually reach?

The claim is 500ft. I haven’t tested it down the road, but it has held anywhere in the house — upstairs, kitchen, back of the house with the doors shut. It runs on its own radio between transmitter and receiver, so it doesn’t need your WiFi or an app to reach you.

Can you use a wired thermometer in a ceramic kamado?

Yes, but you have to decide how the leads leave the dome: over the felt gasket, or up through the bottom ash vent. I’ve done both. The gasket showed no wear after one cook; the ash vent works but makes getting the probes back out awkward. Next time I’ll route them through the top vent.

Is it worth buying secondhand?

No. Used ones sell for within about twenty pence of new on average, so there’s no saving to be had — and you’d be taking on probes of unknown accuracy with no warranty, on a product whose whole job is being accurate.

Sources and how I tested

Five cooks on a Big Green Egg Large between 10 June and 12 August 2026: a thirteen-hour pulled pork, two boneless pork loins, and a Sunday with a whole chicken, four duck legs and baked potatoes. Both probes checked in ice water and at a rolling boil, and cross-checked against a ThermoPro TP19HB instant-read at every pull. One further cook, an eleven-hour batch of pork belly burnt ends, was deliberately run without it.

• USDA, “Cooking Meat? Check the New Recommended Temperatures” — the 24 May 2011 revision of whole-cut pork to 145°F/63°C plus a three-minute rest
• Food Standards Agency guidance on whole cuts of pork — 70°C held for two minutes
• The TP20’s own preset table, photographed from the unit’s manual
• TempPro (formerly ThermoPro) manufacturer site — rebrand, TP20B succession, regional radio frequencies
• Amazon UK listing and UK price history for the TP20 — current price, list price and long-run average, checked 13 August 2026
• MEATER, ThermoWorks and Inkbird manufacturer and UK retailer listings — competitor prices and specifications, checked 13 August 2026

How I got this, and what I’ve spent

I bought the TP20 and the TP19HB myself, in one order on Amazon on 8 June 2026, from a third-party seller. £38.24 for the TP20, £14.99 for the instant-read, £53.23 the pair. Nobody sent me either one, and nobody has seen this review before you have.

The register on this piece is Tested: five cooks between 10 June and 12 August 2026 on a Big Green Egg Large — a thirteen-hour pulled pork, two pork loins, a Sunday with a chicken and four duck legs, and one cook I deliberately ran without it. Five is a small number and I’ve said so; it’s enough for a thermometer and it wouldn’t be enough for a barbecue.

The links here are affiliate links, which means Smoke and Lump may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no cost to you. This piece has earned nothing to date, and it wouldn’t change a word above if it had.

The verdict

8/10. Buy it, buy the instant-read with it, and don’t spend four times as much until you know you need to.

Five cooks in, the TP20 has done the thing I bought it for. It got me through a thirteen-hour pulled pork without lifting the lid, it has agreed with a hand probe every time I’ve checked, and the receiver has never once failed to reach me anywhere in the house. Nothing has broken. At about forty pounds — a price it has held for years — it does the job that units at four and five times the money do.

Two things keep it off a nine, and both are real. The wires have to leave the dome somehow, and getting them back out at the end of a long cook is a job I still haven’t found a clean way to do. And two channels forces a choice on every cook with more than one thing on the grate — I ran out of channels in August on the one day the fire needed watching, and that’s the limitation I’d pay to fix.

Would I buy it again? Yes, both of them, tomorrow. Will I still be using it in two years? Probably not — I can see myself moving to wireless probes eventually, and when I do it’ll be because of the wires rather than because this one let me down. That’s about as good a report as forty pounds of barbecue kit gets.