If you take your barbecue and cooking seriously, there’s a good chance you’ve already come across MEATER. The company has built a reputation for making meat thermometers that are considerably smarter than the traditional probe you poke into a steak, and the Pro XL takes that idea and turns everything up a notch. With four wireless probes, built-in Wi-Fi and a rather smart charging hub, it’s designed for people who like to cook a lot of meat at once.
And we mean a lot. The biggest advantage of the Pro XL is, unsurprisingly, those four probes. We can monitor four different pieces of meat simultaneously, each with its own temperature reading and cooking settings. That’s particularly useful when cooking for a group, where everyone wants their steak slightly different, or when you’re juggling a roast, chicken and a couple of other dishes on the barbecue. Each probe contains multiple sensors, allowing the system to monitor both the internal temperature of the meat and the surrounding cooking temperature.
The probes themselves are nicely designed, too. They’re relatively slim, completely wireless and dishwasher safe, while being capable of handling ambient temperatures up to a hefty 550°C. That makes the Pro XL suitable for everything from roasting and smoking to grilling and high-temperature searing. It’s a reassuring level of versatility, although we’d still recommend paying attention to the temperature limits rather than assuming the probes are indestructible.
Then there’s the clever bit. Connect the Pro XL to the MEATER app and we get guided cooking, temperature monitoring, alerts and estimated cooking and resting times. Built-in Wi-Fi means we can also keep an eye on things without having to stay glued to the barbecue. The charging hub has its own OLED display, so we can even check temperatures without reaching for our phone. Better still, the system can operate without a smartphone, which is a welcome touch when we simply want to cook rather than spend the afternoon fiddling with an app.
Battery life is impressive as well. MEATER says a 30-minute charge provides more than 24 hours of cooking, so forgetting to charge the probes the night before isn’t necessarily the disaster it might be with some rivals. USB-C charging for the hub also feels like the right choice for a modern product.
The obvious downside is the price. At £329 in the UK, the Pro XL is a significant investment for what is, fundamentally, a thermometer. If we’re only occasionally cooking a steak or Sunday roast, it’s difficult to justify spending this much when a much cheaper thermometer will tell us whether the meat is cooked.
For keen barbecue enthusiasts, however, the argument is much stronger. The combination of four probes, excellent temperature monitoring, Wi-Fi connectivity and genuinely useful software makes the Pro XL more than just a fancy gadget. It takes away some of the guesswork and, more importantly, lets us concentrate on cooking rather than repeatedly opening the oven or barbecue to check what’s happening.
Ultimately, the MEATER Pro XL is probably overkill for casual cooks, but that’s rather the point. For serious home cooks, barbecue fans and anyone who regularly feeds a crowd, it’s an exceptionally capable bit of kit. It’s expensive, certainly, but the combination of clever technology, excellent build quality and genuine practicality makes it considerably easier to recommend if you’ll actually make use of all four probes.
£329
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