Best WiFi Meat Thermometers [Tested & Reviewed] (2025)

☆ = Half star | *No fan controller capabilities

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ThermoWorks is a name that makes us jump up and take notice. We've named them as the best digital instant-read thermometer. They also took first place in our wireless Bluetooth thermometer testing; so we walked in with very high hopes for their Wi-Fi thermometer, the Signals.

The Signals supports four thermistor probes with a temperature range of -58°‒572°. It includes three food thermometer probes and one ambient probe with grill clip. In your first signal that the company put ease of use first, they’ve got color-coded rings for each end of each probe, so you can see at a glance which one is which. As you might expect from Thermoworks, the probes are very accurate, advertising ±1.8° in the usual cooking range. Our testing says that’s conservative — we found them within 0.7° on all our comparisons to the calibrated reference thermometer.

Recent update: Signals secures its top spot for wireless grilling with a new version of the ThermoWorks App and Cloud software.

Setup is simple, especially with Bluetooth. The app is solid, giving you a full view of everything you see on the base unit, plus the ability to label your probes. The first four letters of those labels push back to the base unit, making it even more versatile.

With the new version of the app, you can assign colors to each channel to match the ring on the probe itself, making the graphs more readable. Setting alarms is easy, and all alarms go to both your phone and the base station. You can view temperature graphs in the app too, and save an unlimited number in their new cloud system, or download your data as a .csv file for local storage. The app and cloud software now include a notes section so you can better log your cooks. We never had too many complaints about the app, but the latest update wiped two of them away.

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It feels rock-solid, and sits up conveniently on a flat surface with its nice grippy base. It’s rated as IP66, which means water resistant “against powerful jets”—not 100% waterproof, so don't go swimming with it. Our testing showed that it kept working fine when we ran it under the tap (which we do not recommend).

The battery is rated for 16 hours (we got 18) and recharges via USB-C. On the questionable side, it takes 12 hours to fully charge the battery, which seems excessive.

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Though the basic set comes with three. Two are food probes; the other is an ambient probe with included grill clip. The two probes are 100K thermistors for fast response on a temperature range of 0°‒572°. The Fireboard also supports 10K thermistors for low-temperature applications (-58°‒248°) or RTD PT-100 probes for wide temperature ranges (-58°‒716°) at a slower response time.

Each channel can have its probe type configured in the app if you’re doing something that requires multiple probe types. Fireboard claims the included probes provide accurate temperature readings within 0.7°, and our testing against a calibrated thermometer shows they’re even better.

A big improvement over the tiny display on the original Fireboard. It has multiple view modes, allowing you to see one channel’s current temperature, a graph of one channel’s temperature over the cook time, all six current temperature readings, or a hybrid view with one graph and six readouts.

There aren’t any alerts here: for that you need to go to the phone app. That phone app is the number one reason to get the Fireboard 2. It syncs as easy as pressing “Add Fireboard” in the app.

The app shows you the readings from all grill thermometers, with the easy option to label each channel and set alerts for high or low temperatures. Those alerts can come in as push notifications in the app, emails, or SMS messages.

You can also view your current cook session as a graph, with the labels helping it make sense. All this data gets saved to the cloud, either directly from the smoker thermometer over Wi-Fi, or via your phone’s data connection on Bluetooth. Bluetooth wireless range is a little above average compared to the others we tested.

One nice feature for those looking to improve their craft is the ability to annotate the graphs.

Notes in context are a great way to remember what worked and what didn’t. If you want a local copy, you can download everything as a .csv file.

The basic version comes in at $189, while the Fireboard 2 Drive adds a fan control port and costs $249.

The basic version can run a fan with theDrive Fan Control Cable (for $79), so if you want to run a fan, the Drive version saves $20, and you don’t have an expensive cable to lose.

The Fireboard 2 Pro has a fan control port, but it swaps out the six 2.5 mm probe inputs for three inputs for Type K thermocouple probes. Most wireless thermometers top out at around 500°F but these Type K probes can operate at extremely high temperatures (2,012°F!), suitable for wireless monitoring of wood stoves or a pizza oven.

The Fireboard 2 Drive (or basic model with a Drive Fan Control Cable, if you already had one from an original Fireboard) can run any 12-Volt fan with a 2.5 mm barrel plug, including theFireboard Drive Blower. Assign the fan control to any channel, then set the target temperature. When your ambient probe temperature drops below that level, the Drive activates the fan proportionally to push the fire back up towards the target internal temperature. The Fireboard 2 also senses the big temperature change of taking the lid off and not instantly max out the fan, which is a nice extra.

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Updated: 8/23/24 (Replaced the Meater Block with the Meater Pro XL)

After looking at the Meater Pro XL (scheduled to release Sept 2024) we removed the Meater Block test review to bring you our full breakdown and comparison of the Meater Pro XL. The Meater Pro XL introduces several long awaited upgrades.

Meater Block (left), Meater Pro XL (right)

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Back of the block on the Meater XL Pro

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Plus an interesting option to shift the fan controller into Keep Warm mode when you reach the target temperature (e.g. when Meat 1 reaches 200°, drop the pit temperature to 205°).

The bad news: just because you can set all of these things on the base station does not mean you should. Anything more advanced than setting the pit temperature is like programming a 1980s VCR. You should definitely use the app.

One important note: it only works on 2.4 GHz wireless. Most routers do both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, but if you’re in a crowded area, 2.4 GHz wireless might be dicey. You can punch in your password on the front panel, one character at a time, or start up the Flame Boss’s internal wireless, log into it with your phone, enter your password there, then switch Wi-Fi modes back to regular. If this all sounds complicated, well, it is.

Get it going and it works, but it’s not as easy as the Bluetooth models. The internal Wi-Fi means you can take it on the road and use it in Direct mode (minus the cloud stuff), but setup is still a little rough.

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They’ve got two sizes of fan and dozens of mounting kits for different grills and smokers. You punch in your grill model, and their system comes up with a custom package to fit your situation.

Installing one of these package is as painless as possible, not to mention the significantly reduced probability of wrecking your grill.

There’s a big LED ring on the outside. It’s blue when the pit temperature is low, red in cooking range, pulsing on the edges when the fan runs, and flashing red when the pit temperature is too high.

This is the critical piece of information, and you can see it from across the street. Get close, and there’s an LCD display that can show any or all of the temperature channels, with the color-coded crossbar of the Q indicating what channel you’re seeing.

You can set the pit temperature and alarms for each channel on the device, but a clock radio has better controls. How did they get the display so good, and the controls so bad?

Before moving on to the app, I’ll note that the UltraQ comes with a really nice mounting bracket. It makes the display easy to see and offers multiple mounting options for easy positioning.

You get the usual array of digital thermometer data plus easy settings for alarms and pit temperature. If you’ve got Wi-Fi setup, your data syncs automatically to the cloud for easy social sharing using sharemycook.com.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to assign names to the probes, so the graphs don’t make as much sense as they should.

Their two fans (the Pit Viper and Pit Bull) do their job well, and have a damper for adjusting the overall airflow or shutting it off altogether at the end of your cook.

One very nice feature BBQ Guru has designed is Ramp Mode, which feathers down the pit temperature as your food temperature moves towards the alarm thermometer setpoint. This gets you a fine level of control over the end of your cook and protection against overcooking. UltraQ has lid detection too, so you don’t have to sweat checking on your food.

I especially appreciate the dishwasher-safe probes and the excellent mount. The base unit is water resistant, but not waterproof, and it doesn’t love the sun.

You need external power for this one, so plan to smoke near an outlet or spring for an external battery pack.

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I downloaded the app, set up an account, and fired up the base station. It connected immediately, then asked for my Wi-Fi password in the app. I see in the manual that there’s a whole procedure for dealing with problems on wireless connection, but it went extremely smooth for me.

One oddity is that the app asks for more permissions than most. Digging a little deeper, it looks like this app runs a larger system of home automation devices and asks for everything that any of them needs. Another important note: the Inkbird can only connect to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi with WPA/WPA2-PSK encryption.

The screen shows the current temperature on all four probes. Press the button once to turn on a backlight temporarily for easy temperature readings. There’s a battery gauge, but be warned: it’s pretty rudimentary. At below 20% battery, it says LOW, above it shows as Full.

There is no way to set any alerts on the base station — everything is in the app. An alarm does sound on the base station when a timer or temperature alert goes off, but it’s pretty quiet. With the unit outside, I could barely hear it over relatively quiet music, even with the door open. You can mute the base station alarm in the app.

I tested the probes for accuracy against the Thermoworks Calibrated Reference Thermometer by suspending both probes in the boiling water with the High-Tech Science Gantry. The verdict: great! The Inkbird reads within 1° of the reference value, maybe a little bit better. The probes register accurate readings pretty quickly too — not instant-read, but faster than some other wireless meat thermometers we've tested.

Utility

There’s an outside layer of the app for running multiple devices and making them talk to each other. I don’t have any other products, so I can’t speak to the quality of the automation side.

Jumping into the BBQ portion of the app shows a pretty standard view of all four stainless steel probes with current temperature, temperature alerts, and timers. You also get the real battery status on the base unit. The settings menu offers the opportunity to calibrate each individual probe, adjust the backlight delay on the base unit, mute the base unit, and change localization settings.

Alarms & Timers

Each of the four probes can run a countdown timer with individually selectable sounds. One interesting feature I haven’t seen on other devices is a box to set a message on each timer. This way, when the timer goes off, you can tell your future self what to do with that information (flip the meat, check the potatoes, etc). The timer goes off on both the base unit and the app.

Each probe can also have temperature alerts. There is a wide variety of presets for different meats and grilling situations. You can start with a preset and adjust it, or create your own. Meat presets have only a maximum temperature alert, while chamber presets have maximum and minimum temperature alerts. The temperature alerts come through the app at a reasonable volume and include a message that explains what alert is going off.

Visualization

Here’s where things fall down a little for the Inkbird. You can view a graph of any individual probe or all four together. Each day is a new session, and you can’t change that. This is less than useful for overnight cooks, or for if you test out the device before starting to cook.

The view is a real problem. It jumps around automatically to the current time (or midnight if you’re looking at the past), so you can’t set it down without it changing on you. The view is locked to portrait mode, so the temperature range on the graph is gigantic compared to the time range. You can’t zoom either, so you’re stuck with a temperature range from -100°‒900° and a time range of 75 minutes. That’s the opposite of good. All the data is crammed into a tiny vertical range, and you’ve got to scroll to see it.

You can export the data from any one probe as a CSV file, but you have to do each probe individually. You can also export a picture of the bad graph of all four probes, but it’s no better than taking a screenshot.

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