ANDAXIN Waterproof Instant-Read Meat Thermometer

What the maker puts in writing

• “[Ultra-Fast and Highly Accurate] - With a precision sensor, this Digital meat thermometer reads temperature in 3 seconds and is accurate within 1 °F. Supporting Celsius and Fahrenheit display from -58°F to 572°F (-50°C to 300°C).”
• “[Waterproof and Durable] - IP65 rated waterproof, the thermometer can be washed under running water without fear! With a strong ABS plastic body, it can withstand accidental drops… And features a magnetic back… or use the hang hole for hooks.”
• “[Lock and Calibration] - …features lock function to lock the temperature on the display, so you can read temp away from the heat; Keep your temperature probe always accurate through calibration function.”
• “[Backlight display] - …backlight LCD display to let you see clearly while cooking in the evening, indoors or outdoors.”
• “[One Year Warranty] - …With CE, RoHS certification, we stand by our products”
• Reference ANDAXIN · Catalog: no weight, no dimensions

More published features than anything else under ten dollars here

Five bullets, and each one carries something the cheaper rival does not.

Against the TempPro TP-02S at $9.99 — a penny less:

this has calibration, a lock, a magnet, an IP65 rating, a backlight and a one-year warranty the TempPro has a 1-second reading instead of three, ±0.9 °F instead of within 1, a 5.3 inch probe measured and published, a probe cover, a 10-minute auto shutoff and a published weight of 23 grams

So two of the cheapest items on this shelf, both at $9.99, split the job in half, and the choice is honest: speed and reach, or checkability and a warranty.

On the warranty in particular, this is rare company. Three of the fourteen items sold on Amazon.com publish a term:

LONICERA, $12.99 — 18 months, plus a 60-day money-back guarantee: the longest on the shelf this, $9.99 — one year, with CE and RoHS Taylor, $24.24 — one year limited

Eleven publish none, including the ThermoMonster at $16.99 and the Etekcity at $18.99.

And CE and RoHS are not warranty terms but they are not nothing. CE is a declaration of conformity with EU product directives; RoHS restricts lead, mercury, cadmium and three other substances in electronics. No other item on this shelf names a certification, except the ThermoMonster, which cites NIST for its accuracy figure.

Calibration, which is the feature nine items here omit

“Keep your temperature probe always accurate through calibration function.”

Five of the fourteen items sold on Amazon.com publish one: this, both ONFIKY units at $9.97 and $9.98, the TempPro TP03H at $9.98, and the Alpha Grillers at $14.97, which adds that it “comes pre-calibrated… and recalibrating feature if needed”.

The nine without it include every item above $12.99 — both Taylor units, the ThermoMonster, the Etekcity, the KitchenAid, the LONICERA and the TempTrack.

Why it matters more than the accuracy figure. ±1 °F is a specification when new. A thermometer drifts with age, with shock, and above all with a bent or corroded tip. A drifted reading is worse than no reading, because you trust it.

The check is free. Crushed ice, topped with water, stirred. A stirred ice bath holds 32 °F / 0 °C as long as ice remains. A thermometer reading 35 °F there is three degrees high everywhere — which is the difference between a chicken that is safe and a chicken that is dry.

With calibration you zero it out. Without it you write the error on a note and do the arithmetic for the rest of the tool’s life.

The second check, for the other end: boiling water is 212 °F at sea level, falling about 1 °F per 500 feet of altitude.

One thing to understand about what calibration cannot fix. A probe with a bent tip or a cracked seal is not out of calibration, it is broken — the reading will be unstable rather than consistently off, and no offset corrects that. The ice test tells you which you have: a steady wrong number is drift; a wandering one is damage.

IP65: rinse, not submerge

The code, since no page on this shelf explains it. First digit solids, second digit water. 6 for solids is dust-tight. 5 for water is low-pressure jets from any direction.

The bullet is accurate about precisely that: “can be washed under running water without fear”.

The five answers on this shelf:

IP67 — both ONFIKY units at $9.97 and $9.98 and the Alpha Grillers at $14.97: dust-tight and thirty minutes under a meter of water, the only three here that survive a washing-up bowl IP65 — this IPX6 — the TempPro TP03H at $9.98 and the LONICERA at $12.99, where the X means dust is not rated at all A claim with no code — the ThermoMonster at $16.99 (“100% waterproof”) and the Taylor Compact at $18.99 (“withstands splashes & quick rinses”) Nothing — the TempPro TP-02S and TP03A, the KitchenAid, both leave-in units and the Etekcity

Which you need turns on one habit: whether the thermometer goes in the sink with the washing up. If it does, IP67 is the only safe answer, and the cheapest here is $9.97. If you rinse and dry it, IP65 is enough.

And this page pairs the rating with the thing that actually kills thermometers. “strong ABS plastic body, it can withstand accidental drops or other impact accidents.” A thermometer lives on a countertop next to a hot pan, and the common death is a fall onto tile — which is why the Alpha Grillers sells a box and the TempPro TP-02S sells a probe cover.

No weight and no dimensions are published here, which is the one place the page is thinner than its rivals: at least seven of the sixteen items on this shelf have a catalog weight, from 23 g to 113 g.

Three seconds, and the two features that buy the time back

The speeds published on this shelf:

0.5 s — ThermoMonster $16.99, the only thermocouple here 1 s — all three TempPro instant-reads, from $9.98 1–2 s — both ONFIKY units, the LONICERA, the Alpha Grillers 3 s — this under 6 s — the KitchenAid at $11.99, a “Digital thermistor” under half a second — the Etekcity, which measures surfaces rather than interiors

What costs you is not the reading. It is the hand. A reading taken over a lit grill or through an open oven door is taken with your forearm in radiant heat, and three seconds of that is noticeably longer than one.

It matters more when you take several. A roast should be read in two or three places, because a joint is not uniform and the thin end finishes first. Three readings at three seconds is nine seconds with the door open, and an oven loses heat fast.

The lock is the compensation and it is the right one. “lock the temperature on the display, so you can read temp away from the heat.” Insert, wait, lock, withdraw, read standing up — which makes the three seconds the only time your hand is near the heat, not the reading time plus the squinting time.

Five items on this shelf publish a lock: this, the LONICERA, the Taylor Compact, the ThermoMonster, and the leave-in Taylor and TempTrack by their nature.

And the magnet does the other half. Eight of the fourteen items sold on Amazon.com have one, and it decides whether the thermometer is on the grill hood or in a drawer — which is the difference between using it and guessing.

A backlight, which nine items here publish and five do not

“backlight LCD display to let you see clearly while cooking in the evening, indoors or outdoors”

It is the single most repeated feature on this shelf, and the reason is the use case: a barbecue is read at dusk, in the dark, with one hand full.

Two items go further than a backlight. The KitchenAid at $11.99 has an “Oversized, pivoting backlit display” readable “from any angle” — the display itself tilts. The ThermoMonster at $16.99 has an “auto flip large LCD screen… perfect for both left and right hand users”, and it is the only page on this shelf to mention handedness at all.

Which is a real problem nobody else addresses. A thermometer held in the left hand shows its display upside down, and on a pen-style unit with a fixed screen you read it backwards or turn the tool round in the heat.

What is not published here is the display size. “Large” and “oversized” are the shelf’s vocabulary — the KitchenAid, the LONICERA, both ONFIKY units, the Alpha Grillers (“Large instant thermometer dial”), the ThermoMonster and both TempPro folding models all use one or the other, and no item on this shelf gives a figure in inches or millimeters.

What is not published

No probe length. Only four of the fourteen items sold on Amazon.com publish one — 6.5 in (TempTrack), 5.3 in (TempPro TP-02S), 5 in (LONICERA), 4 in (ThermoMonster). Reach is what keeps your hand out of a deep pot, and on a page that sells “deep fry” in its title it is the figure to want.

No weight and no dimensions, as above.

No auto shutoff. Two items publish a ten-minute one — the TempPro TP-02S at $9.99 and the Taylor Compact at $18.99 — and three use motion-sensing sleep and wake: both ONFIKY units, which claim “4000+ Hour Battery Life”, and the ThermoMonster.

No battery type. Only the TempPro TP03A at $9.99 makes it a selling point — “1 AAA battery instead of a button cell… lasts twice as long” — and it is a fair point: a CR2032 is shorter-lived and harder to find than a AAA.

No sensor type. Only two pages on this shelf name theirs, and they are the two extremes of speed: the KitchenAid’s “Digital thermistor” at under six seconds, and the ThermoMonster’s “professional thermocouple” at half a second. One word explains a twelvefold difference, and twelve of the fourteen items sold on Amazon.com omit it.

No warning about leaving it in the food, which the KitchenAid alone publishes: “Digital thermometers are not meant to be left in food during cooking. The plastic and electronic components could be damaged with excessive heat.” That applies to this thermometer exactly as much, and it is the line that separates the eleven instant-reads on this shelf from the two leave-in units.

No country of manufacture, which no item on this shelf publishes.

Availability

Read on the day this page was built: $9 at the American Amazon shop.

Read from Keepa on the day this page was last revised; stock and price both move without notice.