The Best Meat Thermometers to Prevent Over- or Undercooking Anything Ever Again

If you’re doing any kind of large-scale roasting or grilling of meat, you’ve probably paid a hefty price for your protein, so the last thing you want to do is to rely on guesswork or a nebulous range of cook times in a recipe (that don’t factor in your oven’s quirks, your grill’s cold spots, or their temperature faults) to determine when it’s done. If ever there’s a moment for precision, it’s now.

Enter the instant-read thermometer—a cook’s versatile best friend for roasts, steaks, poultry, and so much more. The best digital meat thermometer can be used to pinpoint the doneness of a turkey, pull your salmon off the grill before it gets tough, help you with deep-frying at the desired temperature for a crisp and golden result, avoid burned caramel, even test your baked goods for doneness.

We tested seven instant-read cooking thermometers to find the one that will ensure consistent results every day, whether you’re preparing for Thanksgiving or just a normal big Sunday dinner. Read the top picks below. For the details of the testing method, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Amazon’s two-day summer sale is upon us and today and tomorrow (July 16–17) you can find great deals on all kinds of cooking gear, including digital meat thermometers. Our all-time favorite instant-read thermometers are made by Thermoworks and they're not available on Amazon, but many of our editors happily use instant-read thermometers from the more budget-friendly ThermoPro at home and plenty of models from that brand are on sale right now. Epi's budget pick (the Kizen) is discounted today too along with other digital meat thermometers our editors have tested and approved.

• ThermoPro TP19H Digital Meat Thermometer ($25 → $17)
• ThermoPro Twin TempSpike 500FT Truly Wireless Meat Thermometer ($180 → $140)
• ThermoPro Lightning 1-Second Instant Read Meat Thermometer ($80 → $50 with clipped coupon)
• ThermoPro TP19H Digital Meat Thermometer ($25 → $17)
• Kizen Instant Read Meat Thermometer ($17 → $13)
• MEATER Plus Wireless Smart Meat Thermometer ($100 → $70) Read more
• Taylor Dual Temp Infrared Theracouple Thermometer ($98 → $63) → Read more
• Javelin PRO Duo Ultra Fast Professional Digital Instant Read Meat Thermometer ($58 → $50)

Head this way for more Prime Day deals on kitchen gear.

The Best Instant-Read Thermometer Overall: ThermoWorks Thermapen One

The Thermapen One is the updated design of our previous winner, the Thermapen MK4. The design is largely the same, with the same auxiliary features we appreciate about the older model but with superior performance and accuracy. According to Thermoworks, the Thermapen One is faster and more accurate than its predecessor, promising accurate readings within a single second. When we put it to the test, we found that the claims held up nicely.

Often when you’re testing food for doneness, you’re doing it on a hot stove or with an open oven door. That’s when the “instant read” part of a thermometer becomes important—the quicker it works, the less likely you are to get burned and the less time your oven spends losing heat. When we placed this model’s stainless-steel probe in a pot of boiling water, its display read 212º F in a single second. When we stuck the thermometer into a bowl of ice water, it read 32° F in just under 2 seconds.

This food thermometer has smart features you won’t even realize you needed until you try it. First, it’s ridiculously simple to use: Turn it on and off by unfolding and refolding the long probe. If you happen to accidentally leave it unfolded, it goes into sleep mode to save battery life. It’s preset to do this after 30 seconds, but you can manually change it to anywhere between 10 seconds and 3 minutes. All you have to do to wake it back up is move it. The thermometer can sense low light and automatically turns on the backlit display. (You can also activate the display light by touching the window.) The rotating display shifts as you turn the thermometer, which is handy for lefty cooks, testing in multiple spots, and for reading the thermometer when you have to insert it into a hard-to-reach item on the grill. Don’t like sleep mode and/or the display moving around? You can disable these features with a button inside the battery compartment (where you also can switch from degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius or vice versa). The Thermapen uses a AAA battery, which is easy to find and replace. It is also water-resistant and can read a temperature range of -58.0 to 572.0° F. This thermometer is an investment at $105—but its ease of use, accuracy, speed, and incomparable extra features mean it’s well worth the money.

The Best Meat Thermometer on a Budget: Kizen Instant Read Meat Thermometer

This is a lot of thermometer for the price. The Kizen lacks many of the fancy features of the Thermapen, but it’s an inexpensive option and it works. It accurately read 212º F in boiling water in 4 seconds.

Out of the box the Kizen requires a little bit more getting-to-know-you time—it doesn’t have quite the intuitive design of the Thermapen. Similar to the Thermapen it starts when you unfold the probe and turns off when you fold it back. It shuts off automatically after 10 minutes if you put it down unfolded. But while the Thermapen offers both automatic and manual backlighting, the Kizen has a button to activate it (so there’s no tapping it with a knuckle if you have greasy hands, as is possible with the Thermapen). The Kizen's display doesn’t rotate, and you have to touch one of the buttons to turn it back on if it turns off automatically, whereas the Thermapen comes back to life automatically when moved and shuts off quicker, saving battery life.

There are some useful features, though: A button on the front allows you to toggle between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Another button allows you to hold the temperature reading and display the minimum and/or maximum recorded temperature (this is a feature we don’t see ourselves using, but it’s there if you want it). There’s a chart thoughtfully printed on the front of the thermometer with the safe internal temps for poultry and ground meats as well as medium, medium-rare, and well-done temperatures for steaks. And it has a magnet so you can stick it handily on a knife block or the refrigerator instead of frantically rummaging through your kitchen drawers when you need it. Like the Thermapen this model comes loaded with a battery and has an extra for later, though it’s a CR2032 3V lithium cell battery, which isn’t as as simple to replace as the Thermapen’s AAA (and you may not have extras of in your junk drawer). Still, if owning the sleekest gadget isn’t important or worth the price tag for you, you’ll be happy with this accurate thermometer.

The benefits of digital instant-read thermometers over analog thermometers

There are a lot of advantages to choosing a digital probe thermometer over a conventional analog thermometer. Digital thermometers provide a faster read with far greater accuracy. That sort of speed and accuracy are important, for example, in making sure that the meat temperature reaches an appropriate level for food safety reasons, and accurate readings from an easy-to-read digital display offer a nice sense of security, especially if you happen to be cooking for a crowd. Nobody wants overcooked or undercooked cuts of meat. At least nobody we’re eating with.

How we tested

In order to ensure the thermometers’ accuracy, we tested their ability to detect temperatures we already knew. We dipped them in boiling water to see if they detected an accurate 212° F, then inserted them into an ice bath to see if they quickly registered 32° F. For more about why an ice bath and boiling water are appropriate ways to test the accuracy of a thermometer, read here.

What we looked for

Was it simple and intuitive out of the box?

All the models came with instructions, which we read, of course. But we also evaluated whether yo could take it out of the box and get started without reading a manual first.

How accurate is it?

This is the most important factor, since a thermometer that’s off by a degree or two (or more) can really make a difference in the quality of your food, depending on what you’re cooking. By using boiling water and an ice bath, we knew what the thermometers should read, so we made sure they did.

How fast is it?

Once you’ve established accuracy, speed is another factor to consider. If you tend to have several things cooking at once that require attention, it’s nice to get a temperature read as fast as possible. Though they’re called “instant-read” thermometers, they do take a few seconds, and some were faster than others. In boiling water the reading times ranged from less than 3 seconds to 8 seconds. The difference for the ice bath was less pronounced, landing between 7 and 10 seconds.

Does it have any additional useful features?

All we really want out of a thermometer is accuracy and simplicity. But we did take into account any extra features the thermometers might have that made them easier or more convenient to use.

Other thermometers we tested

1. The ThermoWorks Thermapen MK4 is an excellent kitchen thermometer; it just so happens that theres a newer, faster model—the Thermapen One—that has improved on its already great design. This one will save you some money, though, as it’s been discounted thanks to the release of the new model.
2. ThermoWorks ThermoPop: This model is far less expensive than its winning cousin at $34 and still offers some good features. It’s fast and accurate (it hit 212º F in the boiling water in 5 seconds); the display changes direction in two ways at the touch of a button; the thermometer turns off automatically after 10 minutes; and it comes in nine colors. It doesn’t fold up, but rather has a sleeve to cover the probe, and you use an on/off button to start and stop. This would have been our choice for best on a budget, but for $8 less, the Kizen offered a fold-up design, automatic on/off upon unfolding, a magnet for easy-to-grab storage, and temperatures for medium rare, medium, and well-done on the display.
3. The Lavatools Javelin Pro duo is impressive. It has a lot of the features we love (the display rotates automatically in two directions; a touchpad or a shake activates backlighting; there’s an autosleep feature; and you can reawaken the thermometer by shaking it). The Javelin Pro also had the largest display of any of the models we tested, making it super easy to read. It’s a good higher-end option that’s less costly than the Thermapen. Still, Thermapen edged out the Javelin thanks to its automatic or manual backlighting and four-direction display rotation.
4. The Taylor Dual Temp Infrared Theracouple Thermometer: Though the probe on this thermometer was fast and accurate, the scan feature—designed to read the surface temperature of items instead of the internal temperature—was off by several degrees. This model is also more complicated than the others we tested. It took several reads of the instructions to understand how to use the buttons and features properly. This seems aimed at a professional kitchen environment rather than the home cook—and at $85 we wanted it to be more intuitive.
5. The Habor Digital Cooking Thermometer took a bit longer to get the temps and was off a bit (it took nearly 8 seconds in boiling water and only reached 211.4º F), and it has an on/off switch you have to remember to flip so you don’t kill the batteries.

The takeaway

Once you start using an instant-read thermometer, you’ll wonder how your cooking process managed without one. It’s a crucial tool for Thanksgiving. After all the trouble you went to roasting that turkey, you want it to be perfect for your guests. Beyond roasting season, an instant-read thermometer takes the guesswork out of baked goods and grilled foods. If you’re someone who cooks often, loves gadgets, and wants the whiz-kid version of everything, it’s worth the splurge to get the Thermapen. It does everything you want it to do, plus things you probably didn’t even realize you wanted. The Kizen is a less-fancy workhorse that will meet your temp-taking needs quite nicely for a decent price.