Bought a MEATER 2 Smart probe in July of last year. Recently it started reading the ambient temp way incorrectly, 600+ degrees in my hand.
I reached out to MEATER support for help and they had me trouble shoot for about an hour, submerging the probe in an ice bath, taking and uploading pictures. After all that they were generous enough to offer me a 60% discount on a new one!
Word of warning with the holidays coming up, these are absolute.trash, they do not make good gifts and the company sucks too.
Dino Rib pics attached, turned out great despite this disappointment.
by SamR2D2
46 Comments
You experience mirrors mine – waste on money and a huge disappointment
I mean, you can always just use a regular probe. What was your expectation here?
With no offense intended, I read this as:
* Owned a product for over a year and for the readers we have no idea to the degree you cared for it
* Called support and they coached you through several options to salvage the product
* When it couldn’t be fixed, they offered you a discount on an upgraded product?
It sounds like they’re going above and beyond their obligations to make the best of a bad situation for you.
Yep. I got one for Christmas last year, but didn’t have the chance to try it out until a couple weeks ago (moved out of an apartment and started BBQ’ing again)
Words cannot express my disappointment when I put the probe into a pork butt and closed my Traeger lid and the charger block less than 1 foot away. Phone app says “no connection – move block closer to probe.” Uh I don’t think it’s safe to put the block INSIDE the cooking environment… essentially a useless product if it can’t maintain a connection through the wall of my Traeger lol…
do the ambient sensors in any of the wireless probes work as intended? they all seem to be faulty for a variety of reasons
Zero standing by the product. Mine will not connect, after trying a bunch of solutions they provided. If it were a $20 or even $50 probe I wouldn’t have been so disappointed but when you spend over $100 and it probably costs them under $20 to produce they should IMO send out a replacement unit and receive goodwill from people talking about how they stand behind their products.
I’ll never buy another product from them.
I agree. Traeger ruined them. Mine faulted out under warranty and they spent almost 8 hours troubleshooting. And whenever they’d finally order a replacement, they’d cancel it without telling me… I’d call in and they’d say.. oh we found more tests or we tested X wrong.
I got one as a gift years ago. A first gen one. I probably wouldn’t re-buy it (I prefer the simplicity of wired probes) but I wouldn’t call it trash. It has worked as expected in ovens, grills, and a smoker. My only complaint is the range is pretty low, so I use a spare phone to control it that I leave nearby. Sorry you’re having issues with yours.
No issues with mine, i keep them within the recommended temperatures, clean them well, and theyve been working for almost 3 yrs now. Win some lose some i guess.
Other than a parasitic drain causing the batteries on the block to die constantly, my probes have been “fine”. Support was horrific to deal with in terms of trouble shooting and providing support. They would copy paste their troubleshooting script to me, I would go through it all, then they would assign the issue to someone else who would go back to square 1 and have me do everything all over again. They repeated this for weeks until I eventually stopped answering them.
/shrug
Mine has been working great for years…only real gripe is that the signal range is really short.
Got mine as a gift last Xmas. It has actually worked pretty well for short cooks, like chicken breast or pork tenderloin in the air fryer. Course those are already pretty consistent and I can kind of cook those on autopilot. For BBQ the temps it measured were soo wildly all over the place I gave up on using it for brisket or pork butt.
Any mass produced product will have some failure rates. You can get meaters for like 50 bucks so it’s not exactly a high quality item. It’s also not highly recommended on this sub.
Upgrade to Thermoworks RFX and live a happy life – that’s what I did. Although the app for meater is better than the RFX app.
You know… I think we all want the wireless probes to work. But every one I’ve had so far has been an absolute shit pile.
If it isn’t the hardware, it’s the software that makes these things unusable.
I’m sure there are success stories, but I suspect that there are more failures that we hear about with these devices.
I’ve moved back to analog (wired) with probes. I just can’t risk it. Especially with big cuts like prime rib or brisket, not worth blow past your targeted temp, especially when you can even fully trust your equipment (that goes double for something as critical as a probe).
I got one for Christmas a couple years back. Never worked. Not even one time. Complete trash product.
I don’t have issues with mine beyond losing connections because of distance.
Really though, I use it as more of a guideline than a 100% accurate indicator. Trust but verify and all that.
I agree. I also hate the huge hole it puts in the meat.
Typhur has been serving me well
Yes mine is going to sit on the bottom of a box until I eventually throw it away. Gimmicky garbage, waste of $120 that someone got me as a gift
Welcome to the Meater=(bad)—>RFX=(good) community 😂😂😂
I’ve learned probes are going to break sometime during ownership. I’ve gone through like 6 probes regardless of the company…
Babe wake up new meater hate post just dropped.
Mine sucks fucking balls . I’ve had it 2 years and have only been able to connect to it 3 times .
I snagged some ChefIQ ones from Costco about a year and a half ago and haven’t had any major issues. I think one of the two probes the battery is starting to fade as it doesn’t last more than a couple hours – but I use that probe always unless I need the 2nd one. Not excelled – but it has hundreds of hours on it and those probes go through massive heat changes so I don’t expect the internal batteries to last forever.
They are terrible. Not once has the “remove from heat!” been accurate. Either still raw after resting or completely torched.
Look at chefIQ, never had any issues. I was against the whole wireless nonsense because I thought they’d be a major PITA, but this one has never messed up.
I had the founders pack with 4 Meater probes. Garbage since day one. I jumped on the RFX system by Thermoworks and haven’t looked back. The UI isnt as fancy, but these things are bulletproof and I have never lost signal with them.
I’ve had my Meater Block + 2 probes for 4 years now, and dozens if not hundreds of cooks. I even started using it in the standard oven a while back. I’ve have never had a problem.
That isn’t to say they’re faultless, just a mostly meaningless singular anecdote from a happy customer.
I bought one, and the temp probe separated from the base shortly after the warranty expired. I liked the concept of the product dominos led it up and bought another. Guess what happened to the second one. Same thing. It’s a good concept but very low quality IME.
I recently got a single Thermomaven, normal cost is $60 I got it on sale for $20. I’ve used it a few times now and its been excellent. Very accurate , great distance, nice app and dock support. So far, id recommend it. They do make multi probe versions, which are more expensive.
RFX is on sale right now.
I’ve had three Meater probes die on me within 6 months of purchase, two of them got warranty swapped, then those replacements died. They would either stop connecting altogether or read max temp 100% of the time. They were always well cared for, following the documentation. Never used them in an environment hotter than 350F.
Gave up on the brand entirely and just went back to wired probes. I might grab one of the Combustion gen 2 probes for Christmas. We’ll see.
Nothing beats a corded Thermoworks probe, though their RFX system is the only fully wireless I’d try out.
Mine just stopped working and it’s annoying bc they were so expensive
I had one too it was useless junk
Meater absolutely fucking blows and I think we should collectively open a class action to get our damn money back because of false advertising. If you step more than 10ft away from the base it loses signal. That’s assuming youre lucky enough to get the base to connect to the probe….
I can highly recommend the Thermoworks smoke x4. I’ve been running it for three years now and it has been phenomenal.
+1
Yeah man, the product is trash. Ruined too many meals for me and a bout with food poisoning. Switched back to my maverick and haven’t had issues.
Meater was a waste of money. ThermoWorks has been doing well for me
same experience, its terrible
Yep. Thermoworks or bust.
Worked great for 3 months then complete dogshit and the company is dog piss
My Meater stopped communicating and I called their customer service, everything they told me to try I already did (new battery, clean end of probe, etc). Their final suggestion was that I buy a new Meater. I bought a ThermoWorks RFX and have never had any issues.
Sharing because we have seen so many folks try the “other” probes, then switch to RFX – we run our wireless off of Radio Frequency, which means we can blast through thick walls, and you do not lose connection. Could you check them out if you are in the market?
Seems to be hit or miss I personally have nothing but love for mine. I’ve had it roughly four years and it’s never given me a single issue. Temp is usually off by like 1-2 degrees but it’s nothing major to me.
yeah they suck