Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I BBQ several times a week and have learned the importance of reliable equipment, especially when friends are over. I bought the Maverick RediFork Pro because it has lots of cool features such as a backlit LCD display and "headlight" for nighttime grilling. Unfortunately, my results with the Maverick were disastrous. After a couple of embarrassing cook-outs and expensive "mis-steaks", I decided to perform some controlled tests on it and similar forks from CDN, BarbequePro, and TruCook. In addition to the forks, I also tested a simple single-probe digital thermometer, the Taylor #806 Weekend Warrior. Using hot water, a control thermometer, a stopwatch, and fresh batteries in each unit, I tested for speed and accuracy. My results: the Maverick RediFork Pro was the slowest, most inaccurate, most expensive, and most confusing to use of all units tested. The Maverick took an agonizingly-long 110-120 seconds before its display settled on a temperature. Worse yet, it read under the actual temperature by 25-35 degrees; the reason my steaks were overcooked. Just to make sure I did not have a defective unit, I bought another Maverick RediFork Pro but the test results were identical. For many reasons, an accurate digital thermometer reading (i.e. +/- 2 degrees) shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Therefore, the Maverick RediFork Pro is deemed completely unacceptable in my testing. The other forks were not much better and the dirt-simple Taylor 806 was the only product to take an accurate reading in under 10 seconds. Conclusion: Keep it simple with a digital probe; avoid gimmick-laden digital BBQ forks.