The thermo- part is good: bought two and they are precise, and agree (+/- 5 degrees) with lab thermometers I use at work. As other reviews said, the -meter part definitely suffers in the readability department; the bezel obscures your view of the numbers from any angle except straight on.

I use them in smokers and they get quite a lot of browning on them but they clean up fine. Only complaint there is that they get moisture inside if you soak them overnight, but it goes away quickly enough if you put them back in a hot oven for a few minutes. I suppose there's no expectation that they would be waterproof.

For $4 it certainly does the job.

I thought my oven's thermostat might be broken, so I got this to see what was really going on in there. Turns out my oven just takes a long time to preheat, and isn't really up to temperature when says it is done preheating. Now I can see when it has actually reached the right temperature. Others (Cook's Illustrated and some reviewers here) have tested this and found it to be accurate, which is the most important thing for me. There are two minor downsides. First, it is a little small, so you may have to squint a bit to read the numbers, if you don't have good eyesight. Second, while I can hang it from the rack in my oven, the cutout it hangs from is is too small to sit properly on rungs of the oven rack, so it's just sort of perched there. If anything ever goes wrong with it, I will update this review.

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.

This is pretty much a disaster for any oven that you have to bend over to read. The readings on the dial are completely covered up by the lip of the metal from any top-down angle, making it impossible to clearly see what the temperature is. If you're okay guessing within 50 degrees, it should be fine. But I promise you that if you're baking at 400 when you should be baking at 350, you're going to need to replace the battery in the smoke alarm and keep re-charging your fire extinguishers.

If you don't have an eye-level gas oven, save yourself the trouble and go higher end for an oven thermometer. You'll be thankful you did.

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.