Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer The Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer is useful with or without a smartphone, but it doesn't quite measure up to the competition.

Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer

  • Pros

    Can be controlled without a smartphone. Helpful preset temperature options. Attractive app.

  • Cons

    No smartphone notifications. Confusing controls. Only comes with one temperature probe.

  • Bottom Line


Grilling is supposed to be a fun, relaxing activity, but there's nothing relaxing about standing around a hot flame obsessively checking for temperature while your friends are all sitting down drinking beer. Thankfully, digital home devices like connected thermometers allow you to monitor temperature from afar, so you can rest assured that nothing will overcook if you step away from the action. The $59.99 Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer is a useful option, because you can access most of its features without needing to connect a smartphone. But once you do connect a mobile device, it isn't quite as useful as the Editors' Choice iDevices Kitchen Thermometer.

Unlike the sleek, modern Kitchen Thermometer, the Grill-Right looks like the product of a bygone era. It's a small black box with an amber LCD and calculator-style digits that brings early-90s Sharper Image catalogs to mind. It measures 3.54 by 3.54 by 1.2 inches (HWD) and has a fold-out, adjustable kickstand on the back. That's useful, but it's missing the magnetization you get with the Kitchen Thermometer. On the plus side, the 3.25-inch display features large text and digits that are easy to see.

The Grill-Right is powered by two AA batteries (included), and lasts up to 40 hours, which falls short of the 200-hour Kitchen Thermometer. The battery port is located beneath the kickstand on the back, where you'll also find switches to turn the backlight on or off, and toggle the temperature between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

The right side of the device is home to two covered ports for probe inserts. Although you can use two probes, the Grill-Right only ships with one. Additional probes cost $19.99, which would effectively make this the same price as the Kitchen Thermometer, which comes with two probes out of the box. The included 7-inch probe plugs in using a 2.5mm connector, and is attached to a 3.5-foot heat-resistant cord.

Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer inline

There are four small touch buttons beneath the display, and they can get confusing. For instance, it isn't even clear how you turn the device on. It usually worked when pressing the Start button, but other times I had to press the Set button on the left (which is also used to enter mode setup, confirm settings, and power off the device). Sometimes it wouldn't turn on at all no matter which button I pressed. And because there's no haptic feedback, you can't really tell if a button press has registered until something happens. It took me a number of tries to turn Bluetooth on; you have to hold down the – and + buttons at the same time until a Bluetooth icon appears onscreen.

On the plus side, the large display and controls mean that you can use most of the thermometer's features—primarily its temperature presets, which I'll get to in the next section—without needing to connect a smartphone. If you can figure out the controls, this makes the Grill-Right more useful than the Kitchen Thermometer when connectivity isn't involved.

Compatibility and App
The Grill-Right is compatible with Bluetooth 4.0 mobile devices running iOS 5 or later, as well as Android 4.3 and above. I had no trouble pairing it with an iPhone 5s running iOS 8.1.1.

After placing the device in pairing mode (as described above), it automatically paired with my phone upon opening the app. The first thing I noticed is that the app is a good deal more attractive than the one from iDevices. It's a lot brighter, with a clean, minimalist look that makes it easy to understand and navigate.

The home screen allows you to switch between prongs at the top, and shows you the current temperature being measured. You can tap Edit in the top left corner to select your desired temperature, and a wheel icon in the top right corner brings up the Settings menu, which allows you to unpair the thermometer, switch temperature units, and modify any of the preset doneness temperature ratings. At the bottom of the screen you can switch to other pages, including History, Recipes, and Camera. History is a log of previous temperature readings (which seems superfluous, but I suppose could be useful if you happen to remember a day that you cooked something exactly right). Recipes is just a portal to Allrecipes, and Camera is a barely functional feature that allows you take too-closely-cropped photos of your food with a cooking temperature graphic automatically overlaid.

Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer inline 2

To set a temperature alarm, you just need to tap Edit from the home screen. Then you can plug in whatever temperature you want, or you can select from a list that includes preset temperature settings for beef, chicken, fish, hamburger, lamb, pork, turkey, and veal (you can also set a timer from here). I love this feature, though unfortunately, the only option for burgers and fish is well done. And I'm not crazy about the fact that you can't see the actual temperature you're cooking to unless you look at what the preset is in the Settings menu.

After selecting a temperature, you can simply stick the probe into your dish and place your dish in the oven or on the grill. The thermometer has a range of up to 150 feet from your mobile device, but unlike the Kitchen Thermometer, it does not send you a notification when something is done. Instead, there's a color-coded progress bar that wraps around the temperature reading in the app. This means that you'll still need to be constantly monitoring your phone, which almost defeats the purpose of the wireless connection, since either way, you're still going to be tethered to a display. The unit itself sounds a pretty loud alarm when you've reached your desired temperature, and the backlight color changes, which helps, but the lack of notifications is definitely disappointing.

Accuracy and Conclusions
The Grill-Right can measure temperatures from 32 to 572°F, which should be fine for just about anything, although the Kitchen Thermometer can also measure temperatures as low as -22°F. Neither thermometer measures temperatures to the nearest tenth of a degree, like the ThermoWorks Thermapen.

I got the same temperature readings for hot and cold dishes using the Grill-Right as I did with the Kitchen Thermometer, the Thermapen, and a traditional cooking thermometer. The Thermapen is by far the fastest of the bunch, with an accurate reading in just a couple of seconds, while the Grill-Right was noticeably slow—taking about as much time as a traditional thermometer.

The Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer is a fine option if you're looking for something that doesn't always need to be connected, but in that case, you can pick up a traditional dual-probe monitor for less. And while the Grill-Right has a more attractive app, the Kitchen Thermometer from iDevices remains our Editors' Choice for its more attractive design, longer battery life, and mostly, for its smartphone notifications—which is one of the main reasons to get a connected thermometer in the first place.

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