Cooper-Atkins 24HP-01-1 Stainless Steel Bi-Metal Oven Thermometer, 100 to 600 Degrees F Temperature Range

Perfect, all kinds of shipping issues and return procedures resulted in a loss. Lost in transit, never arrived, and then suddenly arrived. Ended without what I was shopping for.

It is so important to have a correctly calibrated oven. The only thing is, there is no way to calibrate mine. When I moved into my new house, I quickly realized that my oven wasn't cooking at the right temp. I do a lot of baking so this was very obvious. Turns out, the oven runs hot by 25°F. One thing that I know about electric stoves is that they do not hold a steady heat throughout the baking cycle. (It can vary as much as 50°) For example, you preheat your oven to 350°F. Once it has reached temperature, you go ahead and place the baking tray in, set the timer and walk away. As the oven slightly cools during the cycle, it can get as low as 300°F before the heating element will turn back on. This can have a HUGE impact on what you are cooking or baking. What also has a huge impact is the aforementioned scenario combined with: Say you need to set your oven to 425°F, but it's really only heating to 375°. This means prior to using the thermometer, the oven will drop all the way down to 325°F before heating up again. This is a far cry from the desired temperature of 425°. I only use the thermometer to set my oven. I have to put mine on 325°F if I want to bake something at 350° - AND IT"S A BRAND NEW OVEN! This is why it's so critical for you have the oven properly set on your target temperature. I can't imagine not using one of these no matter the age of your oven. Disclaimer: This product was a PERSONAL PURCHASE for myself at the normal retail price. I am reviewing it solely because I want to share my experience with other potential customers. I have received no compensation for my review nor do I have any relationship with the seller or manufacturer of this product.

I ordered 2 of these to use on my smoker and charcoal grills. They are reasonably accurate and useful for quick reads, both are generally reading about 5 F cooler than my Maverick ET733 probes at 225 F and about 7-8 F cool at 325 F. At 550 F they read about 10-15 degrees cool, not the most accurate, but not bad. This is consistent across multiple cooks. My BBQ thermometers attached to the lids by comparison are off by 30 degrees (too high) at the lower temps and as much as 70 degrees at 550 F vs the Maverick probe at the grate level. They are a bit slower to obtain an accurate reading than a digital probe, I usually have to wait a minute or two for the needle to max out once the temperature in my grill has stabilized, sometimes maybe 2 minutes. The reverse is true as you lift a lid and the temperature drops, not a big deal. I've only owned for several weeks now so I can't comment on long-term reliability, but I've dropped them each a few times and the seem physically durable. For the price, these are great for quick reference for cooks where you don't care if it's it 220 F or 232 F, as long as it's not 300 F or 170 F. I like using them when I'm doing 2-zone cooking or cooking in my smoker on 2 or 3 levels. Some reviewers seem concerned about them being built in China. As long as they perform, I don't care. I've given 4 stars for 2 reasons - accuracy could be a little tighter at higher temps, but also there's 2 drawbacks. First, the numbers are a bit tough to read at some angles, especially if you need to bend down low. Second, compared to other dial thermometers I've used, these seem to require cleaning a lot more in order to be able to read. That said, if I get 2 years out of these, I'd be fine buying 2 more again.

My european oven has a lot of settings and none of them are clear on what temperature the inside should be. After purchsing this thermometer, I did my own oven calibration and meticiously charted my oven settings. The result is that my oven is about 50 degrees off on some settings, but rock solid on other settings. I always had a feeling it was off, but I never knew for certain. Now I know; I'm so happy with this thermomenter! Now that I know the real temperature in my oven, vs the temperature it says it is, a lot of guesswork has been removed from my cooking. I hang the thermomenter from the top hook at there's no issues with that. It responds quickly to both increasing and lowering the temperature, and I have no issues reading the dial through the oven glass.

The thermometer is accurate, affordable, and fairly durable. I really enjoyed that the thermometer can hang from either a width or depth running bar, or stand flat on it's base. This should make it adaptable for a variety of oven surfaces. The only problem is that it is difficult to read the numbers along the gauge. The thick black text is obscured by how sunken it is from the thick bezel. Given that most of the numbers you want to read are along the top (300-450) are the most common oven settings it makes it hard to read if your oven is below eye level since the angle of the protruding bezel blocks sight of the numbers. And if it's hanging from the oven rack it can even make it harder to read. Overall this won't be an issue if you just need to test your oven temperature. I know that my oven is about 15 degrees lower than it's setting and no longer have to look at the thermometer every time to get a temperature. But if I needed to regularly check the internal temp I would buy a different thermometer.

I bought two of these because the spec said its accuracy is ±25°F and I wanted to get readings from two side-by-side gauges to observe potential variance in testing the pre-heating of my new oven (a Whirlpool GGG390LXS). Sure enough, one of these thermometers read about 20°F greater than the other. An important finding of this test was that although the final temperature of my oven for this test (350°F) was reached fairly accurately, it seemed at first that my oven pre-heat was very slow, that is, it took about five minutes longer to reach the 350°F than when the oven controls said full temperature was reached. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the oven was correct and the gauges are simply slow to respond to temperature changes. So I repeated the test using a thermocouple on an electronic multi-meter. It turns out that the oven was very accurate and in fact cycles above and below the set temperature by about 15°F. I.e., the 350°F temp is "held" actually by heating up to 365°F, then the gas goes off, it cools to 335°F, then the gas burner goes back on, and repeats this up and down. Thus, since the Cooper Oven thermometer has a much slower response time than an electronic thermocouple, you get the average temperature. And you would normally want this to be the case. I wrote up the above test results in case someone else, like me, was testing the time it takes to pre-heat the oven. Because of the slow response time of this type of gauge, don't use it for that purpose. However, it does a good job as intended in monitoring the relatively steady state temperature in the oven. For an instant measurement, you need to use a thermocouple. As a final note, on the initial preheat, the temperature (as read by the thermocouple) actually shot up to 390°F and then proceeded to the cycling of 350°F ±15°F as described above. I believe this is by design because when this oven's control panel says preheat is completed and put in the food, it knows you will be opening the oven momentarily to put in the food and the temperature will drop while the oven is open. This initial overshoot helps compensate for that loss.

My wife was having a little trouble baking her breads in high altitude since we moved. We decided to get this little gadget to compare temperatures by hanging it in the ovens. Low and behold, the oven would beep that it reached temperature at 400 degrees, but this thermometer read 325 degrees. My wife waited a while longer and the oven beeped again at 400 degrees this time matching this little gizmo. My wife baked her bread and it was absolutely delicious. Thanks for a great quality product.

Purchased two of these. Put them in the oven at the same time. When I set the oven temp to 350, they both read exactly 350. When I raised it the oven to 375, they also had an identical reading of 375. So now I know my oven is accurate and so are these thermometers. Or, possibly, all three are share an identical inaccuracy, I guess. I'm going to go with an assumption of accuracy. It is difficult to read the small digits through the oven window. That is partly due to the lack of window clarity in general, but even when I open the door the digits toward the top are in shadow and hard to read. And I am trying to read the larger Fahrenheit digits, not the smaller sized centigrade numbers. For that I dinged the rating one star. Also, even though the thermometer has a flat base so it can stand up, I found that it is very easily tilted over if it is a an oven rack when I am putting anything on or off the rack. Of course it will also hang from a rack, but when I do that it is hanging too low to see without opening the door. Still, an easily read thermometer that does not tilt over is not much use if it is not accurate, so I am happy with the purchase of these very accurate thermometers.