Got the new unit last night, and for now, have just played with it a little bit.
Right out of the box, the build quality is fantastic. I feel like I can throw it down the stairs and not have to worry about it.
Interface wise, you HAVE to have it hooked up to something bluetooth to use it. You can't set temperatures for alarms or anything else without it. It essentially has an on/off button, a button for the light, and a charging port. I suppose it will tell you temperatures on each probe without a BT connection, but if that's all you want, there are a myriad of different options.
Plugging in the probes, they also have an amazing build quality. While waiting for this thing, I looked through the full line that ThermoWorks offers, and was super impressed. They sell probes for medical and scientific applications that are accurate to .006 degrees or better. They sell probes to take the internal temperature of insects. They know what they're doing with these things, and it shows. Turning the device on at first in the house, with the probes sitting on the table, one was reading 71.3, the other was also 71.3. Taking the device outside and setting the probes on top of the cover of the #2 with black cover on, readings were 103.2 and 102.9. That's accurate enough for me. My last smoke with the Maverick, I was getting a difference of up to 60 degrees between probes.
The interface/software - This is where things could be better. The app is very simple, but does have some nice temperature graphing built in. You adjust all of the settings from the app as far as high/low temp alarms, and can save these as different profiles. For instance, you can have a chicken profile, a brisket profile, a pork butt profile, a salmon profile, etc. Makes it very handy as you don't have to set high/low points every time you change what you're cooking, you can just load the profile and be good to go.
Bluetooth. UGH. This is the downfall. My smoker is on my side porch outside of my kitchen. With the door closed, I can get about 15' to the couch before it loses signal. I am thinking that the probes are long enough though, that I can bring the device inside, which should increase my range inside the house significantly. I've also been researching bluetooth repeaters.
Another cool feature is that if your PC has Bluetooth capability, you can download an application from Thermoworks that is much more full featured than the mobile app.
Pros:
Accuracy Accuracy Accuracy.
Build Quality is amazing.
Cons:
Expensive (probes are separate, and $50 each, on top of the $199 purchase price)
Bluetooth isn't a good way to do this. I'm going to look for other solutions through either a high powered BlueTooth Repeater or something else.
That's it for now, I'll report back after the first smoke!
