Taylor Large 2.5 Inch Dial Kitchen Cooking Oven Thermometer, Analog

Works well, finally solved my uneven & overcooked baking issues. No more dry muffins or shriveled diced roasted potatoes. I like the option to hang it off a rack or stand up- enabling active monitoring of various zones, no matter what you've got in the oven. I'm thinking of ordering a second to get accurate reads without opening the oven, moving the therm., and losing the heat you're trying to measure. This is a great value for the price, especially since it's enabled me to bump up the quality of my cooking; the family is happy. 😋

Accurate - tested it against other wired-probe thermometers across a range of temperaturesEasy to read.The hook on the top allows it hang from one of the racks and be out of the way 99% of the time

Accurate, well made and easy to use. I didn’t know I needed this until my over thermostat started to fail. Now I will always have one handy and in use. The only things to note is if you use its stand (rather than hanger) it is a bit wobbly. It is also a little hard to read through the oven window. The face does yellow some after repeated use.

Bought this thermometer for a temperamental gas oven at my Mom's place that's well over 50 years old. We didn't even know it was temperamental until we measured it with this thermometer. This is our first Thanksgiving dinner without Dad, who left the planet in March. Back in 2019, we lost our upstairs neighbor to a stroke, too. Our Thanksgiving meals that normal had 5 of us has been dwindled down to 3 through the last few years. It was a bittersweet moment, to have to cook this meal, acknowledging the permanent absence of these two people from our lives. In a way, the thermometer reminds me of a clock. My Mom even thought it was a clock when I first opened the package. Here the clock marks the passage of time, something we'll never get back. But I digress from to the esoteric and return to the review at hand.The thermometer showed a 10-deg fluctuation at a setpoint of 325 F. This was educational, because the last few Thanksgiving dinners I've cooked, I didn't know this.The oven is so old, there isn't a digital display like the newer ovens have. So, having a thermometer is critical to make sure the meal is cooked at the right temperature. Even with the newer ovens, it's still a good idea to have an external thermometer as a secondary check. Temperature sensors start degrading with age. Something that's made 10 years later might not be as good quality as the original thermistor in your oven is still going to work better because it hasn't gone through that denigration.AccuracyI have no way of verifying the accuracy of this thermometer. I'm assuming it's quite accurate as this tech has not changed much over the decades.

After moving to a rental with a range of decidedly inferior quality than I was used to, I noted unsurprisingly that my baked goods took waaaay too long, often came out raw inside even after upping the bake time by 50% or more. That (and the initially disgusting state of my oven, which had never been cleaned apparently before someone ran a self-clean cycle—big no no) made me want to abandon baking altogether, for whatever didn’t fit in my far superior countertop compact toaster oven.But, you know, pandemic and all. My toaster oven is fantastic, but I did buy a compact one, so it limits my options for baking pans. And I really, really want to use up all the crazy pantry supplies I have picked up over time, many of which demand the oven. So, I looked for my old oven thermometer, a Taylor model, and realized I probably left it in my old oven when I moved.A quick web search turned up some options; I went for this one, believing it to be the same as my old one. It’s actually almost twice the diameter, good for aging eyes! It’s also more stable with its little hanging hook than the old one was (I kept knocking the old one over when I’d put in or remove pans, but this one so far has not been in the way—puzzling, since it’s bigger!)... and it is easy to read through the now clean (ish) oven door after seven rounds of scrubbing.What it told me was startling, but fit my suspicions. The oven took forever to come up to the set temp; actually, when it said it was done preheating, it was FIFTY degrees lower than what I had set!!! I mean, we all know ovens vary a little, but... that’s just ridiculous. I kept pushing up the set temp until the thermometer told me we were there.Interestingly, the oven does reach the set temp eventually; it just has to take a lot longer than it’s telling you to do so, resulting in spectacularly uneven heating through the bake.Without this little gem, I wouldn’t have known that. It’s not just the calibration, it’s the preheat cycle that’s messed up. So, basically, to bake with anything like a reasonable degree of certainty, I have to keep preheating for an extra twenty minutes or so—or just heat the oven hotter to start with, then turn it down.This was at the higher end of temps; I was shooting for 400, got 350, and had to go to 450 for the temp to be 400 when the preheat light went off and the oven beeped to say it was ready. But over time, it kept going up (while I was baking!!!), so I had to back down to 425. My dish came out fine, thankfully, but this tells me we’re not making anything fancy in here, for sure.I still have to see how the low temp works; I want to make meringue for pavlova, and I just don’t trust the oven. But I do trust this nifty little thermometer! It’s really making me change the way I use this crummy oven. If it were my appliance, I’d get it serviced or replaced, but since it’s a rental, that’s not going to happen. At least now I can hope for better results than I got for the first few months; as an experienced cook and baker, accuracy matters to me. I haven’t calibrated the dial itself to find out how accurate the thermometer is, but it seems to be correct based on how my baked goods are coming out now, in terms of time and bake quality, relative to before using the oven thermometer.Wish I had bought this thing months ago, when I first suspected oven sabotage. I held out hope of finding my old one, but at this price point, I really shouldn’t have.Buy it if you have any doubts about your oven. Or even if you don’t—it might surprise you. I just know that, when I move next time, I’m taking this thing with me!!!

My old stove would beep when it got to the temp I needed it at, and this told me that it was anything but that temp. Then, while it was cooking, sometimes the temp would drop 50-100 degrees! no wonder things weren't coming out right and were taking A LOT longer to cook than it should. I was making banana bread that should have taken 50-55 minutes to cook according to the recipe, and instead took me about 2.5 hours. because unbeknownst to me, the temp dropped 100 degrees and wouldn't come back up no matter what I did. Needless to say, that loaf of banana bread was not a favorite in the house and lasted longer than it normally would. Now that we have a new stove, I'm sad to say a brand new stove still isn't beeping at the right temp. It will beep at what should be the 350 degree temp I set it too, but according to this its only 275 degrees. So, I'm not sure if its the stove or the thermometer. But this helps me know what to look for.

I know it sounds weird, but I replace oven thermometers every year. They get dirty from splatters to the point where I can’t see the dial anymore. These are not that expensive so replacement is easy.