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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

The real reason they don't want their thermometers sold on amazon is because they are merely official US distributors of the Thermapen which is made by a British company, ETI.

https://thermometer.co.uk/99-thermapen-thermometers

You can buy them from European distributors in bulk for less than MSRP and sell them for the same price as thermoworks on amazon and still make a profit. The only reason they were going for $179 previously is because thermoworks was buying the thermometers from sellers and reporting them as counterfeit. Thus making it difficult for sellers to sell them which keeps supply low.

They have fraudulently filed copyright removals and counterfeit accusations on amazon multiple times for Thermapen listings that don't use the "thermoworks" name.

You can see that thermoworks does not own the Thermapen trademark.

https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:hv...

Edit: apparently, you can't link to a trademark search directly, so you would need to go to the basic search and enter"Thermapen".

https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=engli...

View on HN

They discuss the relationship between the companies on their website https://blog.thermoworks.com/thermometer/thermoworks-eti-ltd...

Interesting to see this and contrast it with all the HN posters leaping to the conclusion that the unsubstantiated accusation of fraud from the GP poster is true and upvoting it. If one follows the link from the accuser, all it shows is that the trademark for "Thermapen" is registered to ETI, which is explained by the blog post on Thermoworks web site. Zero evidence of wrongdoing has been presented.

The evidence is right there in their own blog post.

They are a distributor of the ETI Thermapen and nothing more except 'good friends' with the owners of ETI and that they have contributed design ideas to some versions of the Thermapen. Just as any distributor does. Note how they try to make it sound like they have some sort of ownership of the product, but the only thing they have ownership of is the Thermoworks name and a contract with ETI to be the sole US distributor.

What in their blog post makes you think they have the right to claim copyright infringement for someone selling a Thermapen they bought directly from ETI?

If they’re the sole US distributor doesn’t that mean they’re the only ones allowed to sell them in the US?

So if I buy one, I'm not allowed to sell it after I'm done with it? That's irregular, to say the least.

Do we all agree, dear reader, there's a distinction between distributor and you selling your used kitchen tools?

If you, dear reader, had a sole distributor agreement with an OEM would you do what you could to protect your reputation and the brand?

Genuine question: what is the distinction between a consumer and a distributor in the context of rights of selling an item that they own?

Which law prohibits the distributor from selling thermometers that they own?

How come an agreement between ETI and Thermoworks have any legal power over anybody else?

It doesn't. If you don't have a contract with pricing stipulations, then you have no obligation to sell at MSRP or MAP.

An exclusive distributor agreement usually means within a given territory, only a single party may buy product from the manufacturer or buy at below MSRP (depending on the agreement). This is not enforced by law, but by a contractual agreement.

You can always buy the product at retail, from another country, or directly from the manufacturer (if they will sell to you) and sell the product at retail.

Not on Amazon. They do make actual no-sale agreements with manufacturers (looking at you, Warner Media) to not sell used product and boot anyone who tries. Which, ah, is great right until they're a near monopoly.

But this looks more like the reseller is trying to wreak havoc with lawful competition sans an agreement with Amazon. They may not look kindly on it if they see what's happening. Competition where it's not being intentionally stifled is the business model.

First-sale doctrine says if you buy something, you have the right to resell it. I'm not exactly sure what sole distributor means. I think it means that ETI will try to refuse bulk sales to anyone else in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

First sale is only for consumers right? I mean it wouldn’t apply if you’re doing it multiple times for profit.

Honest question, I really don’t know

First sale doctrine applies to businesses as well.

ah good to know! I found "Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.", I wonder if it's related, or if physical goods were already considered resaleable anyway

One side question: how do you manage the warranty? Presumably as the reseller you will need to handle the legal minimum warranty (how long is that in the US?) by shipping the article yourself back to the UK?

> you will need to handle the legal minimum warranty

With the exception of specific types of products (cars) or situations where consumers are gravely at risk (recalls), there is no mandatory warranty in the US. Your only requirement as a reseller is to pass on any warranty from the manufacturer, and allow customers to read a written warranty before making a purchase.

Not true. There are implied warranties of merchantability and fitness.

It’s one of the reasons why Amazon takes such pains to make the questionable assertion that they are at arms length for every transaction. Fraudulent or grey market stuff often fails the fitness test.

The same crap used to happen with fake cameras and electronics in Manhattan. The stores would “go out of business” and reopen the next day under a new guise to avoid legal consequences. Now you just create a new merchant on Amazon.

Not if it's a fake Rolex. Trademarks provide a lot of wiggle room for firms to make a legal nightmare if they chose.

I think fake Rolexes are illegal in the first place. So illegal to sell and resell.

Yes, I was trying to make the point that the First sale doctrine doesn't magically make all things ok.

As always with the laws, there are exceptions and it is more complicated than one might expect.

https://www.thefashionlaw.com/resource-center/gray-market-go...

I don't know why you're getting down voted as it's a common misconception.

Sole distributorship means your company is the only one in a particular territory that the *manufacturer* will sell to directly - usually in exchange for KPIs around marketing, distribution and maybe service in addition to sales.

Anyone else can buy it in an outside territory - for example from another distributor or even from the manufacturer itself (strange things are known to happen when people's incentives are tied to sales targets) and sell it in your territory. While this is often called "grey channel" or "parallel imports", this is perfectly legal if the importer pays customs duty etc and invariably seems to happen if there is significant price differentiation between territories.

The way to combat grey channel is to price right across territories in a way that it's not worth anyone's while to do parallel imports.

It also generally means you have no warranty from the manufacturer, as they generally write the agreement to be non-transferable.

As a consumer you may have some rights even with gray market, but it's not like a US court is going to be able to force a UK company to honor a warranty they never offered in the first place because they never sold directly into this market.

> it's not like a US court is going to be able to force a UK company to honor a warranty they never offered in the first place because they never sold directly into this market

And if there is an official distributor, they suddenly need to start investigating where every customer got their widget from, because they can't afford to provide warranties on items they didn't get the original markup on

In this case though Thermoworks has their own branding on Thermapens sold through official channels. If someone were to copy that branding I believe it would be a legitimate counterfeiting situation.

Going back to Amazon, this brings up another issue: Amazon’s resellers sometimes claim (or try to imply) that gray market imports are domestic versions of the products being sold. I sometimes see gray market cameras being presented as domestic; I only know they’re gray market because of the price, and because the seller is a known gray market reseller.

This isn’t an Amazon issue, per se. I remember shopping for SLR’s from the back pages of Popular Photography in the 1980’s - all of the best deals were gray market imports.

Even large retailers like Costco do this sometimes.

Not necessarily true. If there are patent and/or trademark licenses involved, the sole distributor may the the only one legally allowed to sell in the territory.

Not true. There’s a principle called “first sale doctrine” that basically says that IP rights are exhausted in the first sale of an item. So, as long as they are buying legally made copies of the product, then the company has no legal recourse. You can’t stop someone from buying something in country A and then importing it into country B and reselling it.

In the US most famously decided in the Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. decision. Publishers often charge significantly different prices across different countries for their owm books and this basically prevented them from blocking parallel imports.

> "They are a distributor of the ETI Thermapen and nothing more except 'good friends' with the owners of ETI and that they have contributed design ideas to some versions of the Thermapen."

The text of the blog post also says "Today ThermoWorks also operates its own product design studio in Utah where innovative professional thermometers and timers are created for both companies." so Thermoworks is more than a distributor. jjeaff's representation of the blog post is clearly incorrect and should only increase suspicion of the original accusation of fraud.

I'll translate the corporate speak for you: We have no ownership in the Thermapen, which is our flagship product. But there are some other insignificant products that we have some ownership of which we won't name because no one has heard of them. We just wanted to muddy the water a bit and make it sound like we own the Thermapen and aren't just a retailer.

And yet, I like to see a commenter making one claim and the comments rebuking it, instead of the comment being downvoted into oblivion or outright removed. Seeing the process in action. It also helps that HN doesn't hide comment threads by default, so every comment and its responses are out in the open.

That doesn’t explain why you can’t buy them on Amazon.co.I’m

> The only reason they were going for $179 previously is because thermoworks was buying the thermometers from sellers and reporting them as counterfeit. Thus making it difficult for sellers to sell them which keeps supply low.

That’s a pretty severe accusation to throw around - have any proof to back it up?

It happened to me. The name of the purchaser came up in a Google search as an employee of Thermoworks.

So let me get this straight, you were selling thermapens on amazon, and therefore have a dog in the fight?

If you exclude everyone who has a dog in the fight, then who is left to give their evidence?

You don't have to exclude everyone who has a dog in the fight, but it's a bit rich to open up their post with "what thermoworks doesn't tell you is..." but then leave out their own involvement in the market.

Only a bit rich if you believe that he is actually selling counterfeits.

There are a bunch for sale on amazon.co.uk

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01MQN9MLL/ref=psdcmw_31871...

Only seller available is ETI. How is this evidence?

Amazon does allow companies to register their brand and prohibit others from selling it on amazon. Or maybe ETI is pulling the same stunt and claiming resellers are selling counterfeits when they are actually just reselling the same product.

This sounds great in theory and we know how it works in practice.

Amazon head 2M counterfeit items to destroy in 2020 only. What do you think how many counterfeit items were sold on Amazon in the last 10 years?

They joust found 10 billion items. Nothing to see here, the policy that you are referring to is working perfectly. These numbers are a tiny fraction. Right?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/amazon-seized-an...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-ceded-control-of-its...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-blocked-10-bil...

Why should ETI allow others to sell their product on Amazon? It's better both for them and customers, unless you believe it's somehow inflating price (which doesn't seem to be the case?). I don't see how this is any different from direct-to-consumer brands that own the exclusive sales channel to their customers (regardless of whether the sale takes place in a marketplace).

Weird, when I checked there were none - all listed and ‘unavailable’

I'm a professional cook (I do professional BBQ competitions and own a food truck) and I own at least 5 Thermapens and several other Thermoworks products.

For me the Thermapen is worth every penny to me. It's fast, accurate, and reliable. I know that if I pick it up it is going to work and that alone is worth a premium. I've also had good experiences with their customer service - they will replace or repair them with little or no hassle.

Yes they are expensive but my oldest Thermapen is at least 10 years old. If you keep an eye out it's not hard to get them 25% off or more.

Excuse my complete ignorance but how does measuring the temperature of food help you with cooking? When I do a BBQ, I've only ever judged by colour and appearance. Usually the challenge is not to burn the outside while the inside is undercooked.

In every modern recipe for cooking almost any type of meat, there is an internal temperature listed at which the meat can officially be considered "safely" done. Restaurants, etc., have to follow such guidelines per government food safety standards.

Not a professional, but I find meat thermometers even more useful because I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what every type of meat looks and feels like when cooked, especially with different marinades and seasonings changing the appearance. I also hate overcooked meat. With a thermometer I can try a new technique and always pull the meat off at the right time. I'm also more comfortable letting the outside get crispy if I know I'm not overcooking the inside.

Everything I cook is temperature + feel. For example on pork once it hits 200-205 (depending on what temp I'm cooking at, the higher the cook temp the higher the finish temp) the thermapen becomes an expensive toothpick to feel for tenderness. Color is used as a element when I might move on to the next step but not at all for when it is done - for example I wrap pork once it hits 160 + has the color I want.

It has to be a repeatable processes, especially if you are doing it commercially and you need to train other people. Temperature is a measurable thing vs look or feel which is subjective.

For some things accuracy is extra important, one or two degrees won't make or break a pork but but can greatly impact something like steak.

Large chunks of meat are best done by temp. A brisket, for example, can look the same if the internal temp is at 150 vs 210. One is pretty much inedible. Same for large chunks of pork. You want to cook these to where they are tender, but not dry. For brisket, that is normally around 203-210 when measured at the largest part of the flat. You would just be completely guessing without a good thermometer.

I mean, if you know what you are doing because you have made for instance BBQ many times before, especially even on the same equipment, it's not exactly "completely guessing".

People did make good BBQ for many years before digital thermometers existed, and without using meat thermometers! I suspect professional experts barbequing all day probably still don't use thermometers. They are have the same heat source many times, and know how it cooks and know how to judge the size of meat, because they've done it hundreds of times.

But yeah, for those of us who are less expert, a meat thermometer can get us much better results.

Sure, if you have the same heat source, in an environment with the same atmospheric conditions, working on a piece of meat similar to what you've cooked many times before, you likely don't much need a thermometer, not that it'll hurt.

But a thermometer let's you transfer those skills much more easily to environments with varying conditions, It's especially common for professional cooks to be expected to cook in varying conditions.

You can go by feel and sometimes appearance (and pretty much have to for some things like pork ribs), but the size and shape of large chunks of meat vary quite a bit, so does the weather, heat source, etc...

If you're a restaurant that is constantly smoking meat, you probably don't need a thermometer, but you probably have one. If you're an ordinary person, I would recommend a decent one at least. I have a thermapen. I don't regret buying it. If my fire dies and I don't feel like chopping more wood, or if I just put the brisket in the oven to finish overnight after it gets smoke, I can still know exactly when it's ready. I don't have to repeat the exact same process every time for a good result.

The difference between amateur and professional grillers is that professionals use instant-read thermometers for everything. One, because the difference between a rare and medium-rare steak is only about 5F internal temperature, which is too small to eyeball. Two, because if you’re not checking internal and hold temps, then it’s way too easy to poison your guests.

I use a thermometer that looks like a thermapen knockoff and costs about $15. I’ve used it regularly (but not professionally) for four years and I’ve seen it give the exact same readings, swiftly, as one more expensive thermometer of the same kind, a cheaper one, and a body thermometer to measure fever. What makes the Thermapen worth every penny? I haven’t had this break, but if it does I will probably order one of the same, which will arrive in a day or two without needing to (a) contact support or (b) send something in the mail. What am I missing? As a professional, what would you be missing if you used a cheaper model?

I think it is mostly an issue with quality control. I've had horrible luck with thermapen knockoffs. Temps all over the place, battery compartment loose, miscalibrated out of the box. If you found one that works, awesome! But I'd venture to guess that most people weren't that lucky.

Ok so the thing that Thermoworks markets as a "Thermapen Mk4" -- how much does that cost shipped to the US from a European vendor selling ETI products?

I think I paid $60 for one on Thermoworks's web site during what they said was a sale, and I generally don't regret it vs. the crummy experiences I've had with cheaper food thermometers.

I bought a thermoworks dot and it has been a revelation for grilling.

https://thermometer.co.uk/thermapen-thermometers/1145-therma...

So that we compare like for like, I’m assuming you paid $60 pretax. £55 is $77.65 at present, which seems in line with paying $60 on sale.

I thought you were joking about the price. But nope it’s actually a $100+ thermometer.

Like I get paying that much for lab or industrial use if it’s highly accurate/precise. But for cooking…nobody will taste the difference between 0.1 degrees. And I’m not even sure it’s that accurate. It looks like a 10$ thermometer and I doubt it’s much better than one for cooking.

The thermapen pro-grade unit also detects temperature much faster than most other units. Many cooks (myself included) use a food thermometer every day, and it's totally worth paying more for a durable, accurate, and fast unit. My current one is over 5 years old, and shows no sign of wearing out.

Assuming you're actually asking, the appeal of the Thermapen for chefs is how fast it is - $10 thermometers are as (or more) accurate, but they'll take several seconds to stabilize on showing a certain temperature. Thermapens are crazy fast. That's very useful when your hand is near/in a hot oven or hovering over a hot stove.

The $20 knock-off I picked up on Amazon for a Christmas rib roast reads quite accurately based on a calibrated scientific thermometer I compared it to and stabilizes to a reading in about 1-3 seconds. I didn't realize it was a Thermapen knock off, just searched for a meat thermometer for a Christmas rib roast I wanted to turn out perfect (and it did).

The old digital thermometers did the awhile but I think some of the new ones are pretty fast (and accurate).

I'm a medium experienced home chef, and I have a Thermapen, and really like it. It's a better thermometer than the $10 one, or even a $30 one. The accuracy doesn't matter very much, but the reading speed does matter, and Thermapen reads extremely quickly.

There are too many chefs that swear by them to so easily dismiss the value. The often quoted feature is more speed than precision. Like everything a big chunk is going to be marketing and paying for a little extra quality control on top of slightly higher tier components.

Couldn't it also be a perfect example of the bandwagon fallacy?

No. I’m not making absolute statements but casting doubt on one persons claims that a product is probably bad they have no experience with vs. a large number of professionals who use it as a tool every day including several organizations conducting comparative equipment tests.

Professionals are prone to confirmation bias.

Stanley, Black and Decker, Dewalt, Irwin, and Porter Cable are all tool brands made by the same company in the exact same factories. People have ran extensive "scientific" tests on job sites and on YouTube on the battery life between them. Everyone has a favorite that lasts the longest or is best under load. Aside from the metal contacts and plastic housing to make the batteries unique to each brand - they all contain batteries from the exact same two suppliers.

Serious question:

Do professionals use those brands? I'm sure passionate amateurs will use those brands (I have a drill from that list) - but pros?

I ask because I know a professional mechanic and I asked his favorite wrench brand, and he went off about various brands I didn't recognize.

Also, regarding your list, have you accounted for variability in quality within a product run?

I suspect consistency of product is part of the reason thermapen have their reputation and other brands mostly don't. You can often get cheap products that are good, but there might be a lot more variability.

Binning is a related topic.

I have worked in a position where I repaired all of these brands, and can say that at least in the last two decades Stanley Black and Decker Inc. has been very strategic with product positioning and continued support for all of their brands. DeWalt is supposed to be their professional (or probably prosumer) line that's built to last, or at least to be repaired. Black & Decker, which had been a higher-end brand before the 90s, is now pretty much all "happy homeowner" tools built out of less durable plastic and often without replacement parts available. Porter-Cable seems to fall in the middle, a bit closer to B&D.

There's a certain 20V compact leaf blower that I've seen branded as a DeWalt, Ryobi, and Milwaukee. I'm not sure about the motor or controller but the plastic casing is almost identical aside from the color and battery connector. It's also interesting to note that the B&D and the Porter-Cable 20V batteries are identical except for a plastic tab that prevents interoperability.

Same four* suppliers actually, just about every rechargeable embedded battery is made by Panasonic, Sanyo, LG, or Samsung.

Most common type/size is the 18650, used in everything from drills, powerbanks, to Teslas. Second most common type is the 21700.

A "scientific" test isn't even necessary, just tear down the battery pack, see what cell they put in there, and read the spec sheet. The big 4 battery makers will sell you a whole range of batteries in that size with varying mAh/Amp.

Googling teardowns, I found a Black & Decker 1.5A MAX Lithium simply uses a bunch of Sanyo UR18650W2 (1500mAh rated at 18A) cells, while a teardown of a Dewalt pack shows they used the more expensive LG HB4s (1500mAh rated at 30A).

There literally no reason they can't use the better cells in the Black & Decker, other than they're building it to a cheaper price point. The fact that they're built in the same factory is besides the point.

It's not about accuracy, it's about speed of reading, and simply not breaking. Yes, the price is ridiculous, but anecdotally, I've bought six other thermometers, including a couple expensive ones, and they were all awful on one or both counts. But maybe I'm just bad at research.

The new model thermapen has features I want but I won't upgrade as long as my existing one keeps working. It's been many years so far and there's no sign of it degrading at all.

Yep. I had an older thermometer (now tossed) that would tick up in 2-3 degree C increments. It'd take 30 seconds or so to reach the ballpark of cooked meat from room temperature. That's a lot of oven heat lost unless I close the door and leave it in. Which I did, so it melted, hence the "now tossed". I got a cheaper probe one which seems much better.

First, there is a difference between precision and accuracy. I’ve had cheap thermometers that are 10-20 degrees off. That does make a difference. Second, for the thermapen it’s really about very fast readings and durability more than accuracy or precision. It’s very valid to feel that it’s not worth the cost, but it is untrue that the difference isn’t noticeable.

a thermometer thats 10-20 degrees off is likely just broken.

Not necessarily. I have used cheap food thermometers that took upwards of 60 seconds to settle on a temperature. If you weren’t aware of this flaw you could easily read the temperature after 10-15 seconds when it seems to be settling down and end up way off from the real temperature.

I always have this conundrum when cooking a steak on a hot pan: Is the thermometer still settling down or is the internal temperature actually just rising quickly?

That's exactly why I got a Thermapen. I don't need to ask that question anymore.

more likely out of calibration

Digital thermometers are mostly a perfected technology by now. There's less than $10 worth of parts in these regardless of how much they are selling them for. You can buy a $5 multimeter with a type K thermocouple probe and it will have the same accuracy as any other, since it's intrinsic to the material itself. Hence the propaganda campaigns by companies who stand the most to lose from it.

...and downvoted for speaking the truth. Yes, it's all marketing BS, a tiny "bead" type thermocouple probe has next to no thermal mass and reads as instantly as you'll ever need for cooking purposes. Go buy a cheap one yourself if you don't believe me.

Agreed. Hence the shock on people paying the markup. It’s not like this comes with some costly certification. There’s likely 1000s of products that offer the exact same capabilities at a 1/10 the price.

If you can find the cheapest ones that are just as durable, accurate, and fast you can replace the market leader amongst pros and serious hobbyists. That's worth a lot of money.

Get the right influencer/review site on your side and it's all downhill from there.

ETA: the thermapen isn't the Wirecutter recommendation. They recommend the entry level, $35 thermoworks option. So that's the price point to compete with and the $100 thermapen is the quality mark to hit.

The thermoworks dot option is also manufactured and sold by ETI in the UK. Thermoworks just slapped a different name in it.

It sounds like you're just making a seemingly reasonable assumption about something you don't know a lot about. There actually are not a lot of different kinds of good quality fast-reading thermometers out there.

Did you not read the other replies? Many people's experience is that the difference is in the speed of reading, not the accuracy. This is borne out by buying many cheaper thermometers.

Regardless, I don't think the self-righteousness is called for. "Downvoted for speaking the truth"? We're talking about thermometers.

No doubt there are cheap ones that are utter crap; what I'm saying is that a fast settling and accurate thermometer is not some ultra-difficult thing that only a single company can make for a ridiculous price.

Yet no one else makes them.

Can you recommend a competing thermometer of similar quality, speed, and accuracy?

Is "speed of reading" a function of the probe, or the silicon?

You speak as if $100 is a lot of money when it's not.

Well it's true that you may be able to get something of equal quality for less, paying $100 for a high quality thermometer then I can always return and have replaced for years on end isn't that bad of a deal.

I have alwaysp been bothered by this. There's the strange masculine trait of pointing out how cheap you got something or how much something costs as if it Is a significant amount of money when it's not.

We get it! You're cheap and you would rather buy a mountain of disposable crap than spend money on something handmade to last! You're so cool and thrifty!

Wow, this is out of touch. Even without the weird implication that everybody makes 150k, the implication that "if you can afford it, it's not overpriced" is ridiculous.

I was saying the lifetime warranty and time saved paying $40 more for a product that I don't have to research as heavily is worth i.

Honestly, I was using speech to text while having a drink so my comment came off as kinda stupid.

>"as if it matters when I'm making 150k+/yr"

Who gives a fuck how much you make. There are many people making way less and not because they are in any way inferior.

>"You're so cool and thrifty!"

I do not even want to say in public what I think about this.

> There's the strange masculine trait of pointing out how cheap you got something or how much something costs as if it Is a significant amount of money when it's not.

On the other hand, there's a group of people who have fallen for the classic car salesman logic of "I'm actually SAVING money by spending more!" As if there's this epidemic of devices constantly failing, and they're the smartest people in the world for having come up with this novel idea about "spending more on quality." But being able to signal on social media about the nice things you have is an added bonus, so maybe there's something to it.

So all things are of the same quality and the only reason someone would purchase a more expensive item is to signal their wealth on social media?

>fallen for the classic car salesman logic of "I'm actually SAVING money by spending more!"

The vast majority of people admit they are spending more to get more - not to save money.

>As if there's this epidemic of devices constantly failing

As far as I've experienced: There is. Maybe not "epidemic", and maybe not "constantly", but you appear to be using exaggeration for effect.

>they're the smartest people in the world for having come up with this novel idea about "spending more on quality."

What's with the hostility toward these people you're envisioning? I've never seen this group of people who think spending more to get a higher quality product is genius and novel.

I don't understand the downvotes. I have an $18 Amazon food thermometer which has read with identical speed and accuracy as my Thermapen for years. And I like it better because the Thermapen is a pain to switch between F and C whereas it's simply a face button on the cheap one.

https://www.amazon.com/Saferell-Thermometer-Backlight-Calibr...

Probably because you never need to switch between F and C

Switching between F and C should be difficult. This is something you set once and pretty much never change. If it’s easily changed, it’s easily changed by accident.

If I’m ever cooking a recipe that is written in imperial units, I will convert them all to metric prior to starting. (This includes turning nearly all measures into grams—including and especially cups and spoons.)

Why should it be difficult? You might not change it, but other folks do.

My scale is easily changed. I pick it up, turn it over, and push a button. However, it is pretty difficult to change it by accident, and honestly, I just check the display before I weigh just to make sure.

And honestly, do you think that folks are sitting down with pen and paper if they need to convert? Nope. Google will do this work for you.

I'll also mention that it isn't worth it to weigh everything in the home kitchen. Small amounts - the ones you are using spoons for - are too light for the average kitchen scale, and the sensitive scales are expensive (and also have associations with dealing drugs, which turns some people off).

I have a 0.1g precision scale from AWS which ran me about $25 dollars, and it has been indispensable both for the small ingredients and also for weighing stuff like frozen berries, where the gaps can make it hard to determine how much you actually have.

AWS or Amazon?

"American Weigh Scales" is the manufacturer. It has nothing to do with Amazon Web Services.

I have very cheap 0.1g precision scales and reasonably cheap 0.01g precision scales.

Tablespoons (for example) are often equating to 10-25g which even the cheapest, nastiest 1g precision kitchen scales can handle with greater precision and repeatability than using an actual tablespoon

It’s only when measuring half teaspoon stuff where I’ll either just use a teaspoon or pull out precision scales—it all depends how important it is to be accurate with an ingredient.

Is density not a concern?

Yes, which is precisely why I eschew cups and spoons for grams. There are standard conversions for most common ingredients, I’ll tend to use those for ingredients with the potential for high variation in density, like plain flour.

Obviously, the main concern is with repeatability in baking. But for me the biggest benefit is being able to pour all ingredients directly into your bowl (sitting on scales) without dirtying up a pile of measuring cups and spoons.

To provide the correlate to @simondotau’s answer: in cooking, density hardly ever matters. All recipes should actually be solely in units of weight, never in units of volume. Professional chefs, and especially professional bakers, work solely in weights.

Liquid measures by volume are mostly ok, since liquids vary hardly at all in density (for a given liquid).

Solid measures by volume are a joke. It’s easy to be off by 10% or more, depending on how fluffy or packed down your ingredient is. When you’re baking a loaf of bread, this is the difference between a soggy mass and a dry pile of crumbs.

It's a tool designed for professionals. Professionals operate with standards, so in a professional kitchen in America, you will never, ever need or want to read a temperature in Celsius. In the rest of the world, nobody will ever use Fahrenheit.

Having a button that changes it with a single press is actually an impediment to working quickly, and only introduces uncertainty and anxiety about the tool. Measuring temperature isn't like measuring weight - seconds matter. A moment of confusion could be enough to ruin a process, and a failure to notice the change in settings could create a dangerous situation. Nobody wants a button to see the wrong number.

Think of it like compile-time config. It's there, you can change it if you want, and everyone will have a preference, but if you need to change it often, you're not the target market.

In the rare consumer case in which you may be using foreign measurements you can change it once at the beginning of the recipe.

I think if you could need to change it occasionally, you could easily be in situations where you change it frequently.

Shadow kitchens that make recipes for multiple different restaurants could have measurements in both.

To not have the button at all would make sense(compile time config), but if there are situations where you need to change it, those can come up as frequently as every time you use it

No.

Every commercial kitchen complies with and is inspected for compliance with food handling regulations.

Any recipe in commercial use is written specifically for the kitchen in which it is made. One might even consider them a complete vertical unit: if the recipe is designed as a chain or franchise standard, the kitchen standard is designed in tandem to match.

You will not find a commercial kitchen in America using Celsius for anything.

If you don't want professional tools don't buy them.

This idea that because a commercial kitchen doesn't mix F and C and thus nobody else should ever have to is ridiculous and is a form of gatekeeping. I download recipes and measurements are sometimes F, sometimes C. Sometimes ounces, sometimes grams. Sometimes cups, sometimes mls.

It shouldn't be difficult, but it should be foolproof. Someone not paying attention could mistakenly get a Fahrenheit reading expecting Celsius, and serve undercooked food to others.

Cups and spoons are volume measures; you can't trivially convert them to grammes.

I can't use recipes that use cups and spoons. I don't own measuring spoons or measuring cups, and drinking cups and spoons from the cutlery drawer don't cut the mustard.

In addition to a thermapen, I have an instant-read infra-red thermometer. I use this to check the temperature of my pizza oven, before launching a pizza - I launch at 450C, which is way too hot for any contact thermometer.

> Switching between F and C should be difficult. This is something you set once and pretty much never change.

No, because my own experience says otherwise. And this idea of accidental changing is hogwash, again because I've used this for years. Experience is worth a thousand opinions.

> is a pain to switch between F and C

Why would you ever switch it to F?

Feigned confusion aside, I love the absolute simplicity of the Thermapen. It does one thing, and does it good. Absolutely zero distractions, compared to the one you linked. You open it up, it switches on. You stick it into things, it tells you the temperature at the tip. What's not to love?

> What's not to love?

The extra 80-90$, presumably...

Because not all things are written with Celcius temperatures. It is easier to push a button than to look up the conversion.

My Thermapen is fine, so is my one with the F/C button. Because I happen to need both and so this supposed distraction is a big benefit. Super simple is nice, except when it's too simple for a given user. Reminds me of how Apple stuck by their guns with single button mice for years but two button mice with scrollers won out because the one button was too simple.

I hope you are kidding. I have had Flukes that sell for twice the price and aren't as practically good and useful for cooking as is the Mk4 Thermapen. It is unmatched.

There is a nonzero percentage of people reading this that know that Fluke is a brand of scientific/industrial test and measuremnet gear. https://www.fluke.com/

I bought my wife a Thermapen for Christmas and it’s revolutionized her cooking (and mine). She’s using it for everything except toast and boiling water. Chicken, steaks, roasts, fish, fudge, cakes, casseroles, anything where complete cooking can be determined by internal temperature. The margin between perfect and overcooked fish can be slim, and she likes steak as rare as possible. This thing lets her nail it every time with no fiddling around.

Yes, we have cheaper thermometers. The difference is night and day. More than anything, it’s the speed with which it settles, but the unit is also calibrated, which gives us confidence. (I spent some time looking for a cheap alternative, but didn't find anything with consistently great reviews. I decided it was worth the extra money to buy less hassle, and I went with Thermoworks. No regrets!)

If she likes her steaks as rare as possible you should look into buying here a sous vide setup. You can get the whole steak to whatever doneness you want and then just quickly sear the outside. It gives me consistently good results.

I’ve been finding that reverse searing does a pretty good job without the sound vide

Even as someone who has a sous vide set up, and uses it a lot, I prefer the results of reverse searing for decent quality steaks.

I have a sous vide set up as well, and while I find that it works great for chicken and duck, I agree with you that sous vide does something weird to steak. It's something about the texture. I know Kenji has written a few articles about how meat changes over different sous vide cooking durations, but I also wonder if the length of time changes the way fat renders somehow. I don't think it's been well studied. Searching the internet reveals I'm not the only person who has noticed this, but some people do not notice it, so there's not really a consensus on what's going on.

sous vide. Means "under vacuum". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous_vide

Edit: I read a bit more on this, and was mistaken. Here is my original explanation: Basically a vacuum pump to lower boiling temperature; this puts a ceiling on achievable temperature for water-rich foods.

Actually, nowadays it looks like it's just slow cooking vacuum-sealed food in a temperature-controlled water bath.

Wouldn't "as rare as possible" mean getting the steak to room temperature and then just searing? I always assumed the sous vide was more useful for those who liked their steaks more cooked.

Pretty much. A bleu steak is around 30 degrees internal temperature and really doesn't gain much from sous vide. Sous vide really only comes it its own for internal temperatures above 41-42 deg c. The advantage (compared to just searing/grilling) is that you can hold the steak at that point for longer, giving the protein more time to denature.

> likes steak as rare as possible

For pan searing, a quick and accurate thermometer doesn't actually make this much easier. I also have a Thermapen, but pan searing to a certain level of doneness is still a bit of an art because the final interior temperature after resting can be quite a bit different than the pull temperature due to residual heat at the edges of the meat. Even trying to get a consistent interior temperature using the same pan temperature (using a Control Freak induction cooktop) is difficult because the shape, thickness, and moisture content of meat can vary significantly. There's a few new gadgets that attempt to resolve this (e.g., this predictive thermometer with 8 sensors https://combustion.inc), but honestly having a lot of cooking experience is probably the best way to get a feel for when to remove the meat from the pan under rapid cooking conditions.

Of course, sous vide and reverse sear are completely different and while you can indeed get a precise temperature, those methods have their own trade-offs (namely, it's difficult to get as thick of a crust).

She has her methods. Mostly grilling. I don't interfere. :-)

She loathes sous vide.

The nice thing about the Thermapen is that it reads so fast that it's easy to explore the temperature gradients in the food. It's a learning process, right? In my own cooking, I'm correlating the measurements with technique and results, and when I finally cook something well I can reliably repeat it.

(Full disclosure. I have the surface temperature version of the Thermapen and a 4-channel recording thermometer, and I've profiled the oven, the griddle, etc. :-) We now focus on improving other aspects of cooking, confident that temperature is handled.)

> it reads so fast that it's easy to explore the temperature gradients in the food.

I was amazed when I discovered this. If you have a thick steak on a pan, knowing what the temperature gradient looks like inside is very valuable, compared to just knowing the temperature in the middle. Just slide your thermapen out slowly, and you can get a good reading on the gradient.

In candy making, the difference of a few degrees is the difference between a sticky unpleasant hard candies, hard brittle ones and caramel.

I've used shitty thermometers trying to make candy. It sucks. If you want it to come out consistent, you need a good thermometer. One that lasts longer than a few months is always nice too. I dunno if a $150+ one is reasonable. But a quality thermometer helps for sure.

What you spend on a thermometer, you save on cooking pans.

It's really about the speed here. I have one that takes ~6 seconds to stabilize, which is by no means bad but is still a noticeable pause.

The Thermapen is rated at 3 seconds, which I imagine feels much better when you quickly want to get the temperature of a steak or something while preparing other components at the same time.

You're not paying for the accuracy so much as the speed and reliability. The packaging matters a lot. A $10 knife and a $100 knife are fundamentally both just chunks of metal, but they definitely don't perform the same way. It's much, much better than a $10 thermometer.

There's a $30 Thermapen (the Thermopop), for what it's worth; it reads in 3 seconds, versus low hundred milliseconds.

I've tried just about every sub-$50 thermometer money can buy, and I had a bad time with all of them. They're either laughably inaccurate (to the point of being effectively useless) or crap out suddenly or sustain minimal battery life or have some other fatal usability flaw. And I haven't found one that can tolerate any amount of moisture, so cleaning is always a risk.

So I bought a thermapen. I knew about them because I used to work in kitchens, and it's pretty much exclusively what we used there. After my experience with other thermometers, I can appreciate why.

It's expensive, but it's super reliable, pleasant to use, and lets me focus on other concerns as I'm cooking. Compared to my experience with other cheap thermometers which, last Thanksgiving, went something like "fuck, it died on me again, let me dig out my backup... fucking hell, that one's dead too"

It's super reliable until you get water in the hinge. I lost mine that way.

I'll probably get another one when the cheap ones that I'm using annoy me one too many times.

could you fill it w silicone?

If you used to work in kitchens then you know that you should only buy digital thermometers that support calibration. Follow the manufacturers instructions on proper cleaning and don't submerge them.

I have at least 3 floating around that ran me $12ish dollars each on Amazon and use them daily.

It’s not the accuracy (although that’s obviously table stakes). It’s the quality & reliability.

There are a ton of cooking thermometers on Amazon. A majority of them are awful. Either they’re woefully inaccurate, or they fail after only a few months of use. You only have to read the reviews (when they’re not completely gamed by the sellers) to see this.

So you can either a) buy cheap thermometers one after the other until you happen to hit on one that works or b) buy a quality product first time that professional chefs rave about.

Sure, you might get lucky with option a), but after two or three duds, option b) starts to look increasingly sane.

Thermopens just work. They do one thing & have been honed to do that one thing incredibly well. When you buy one, you know exactly what you’re getting & you know that the company will stand behind their product. WHat you’re buying is a combination of certainty & quality. Why shouldn’t they charge a premium for that?

It's like the Sam Vines theory of Economic Injustice: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Econom...

Pay for quality. It's cheaper in the long run.

The market adjusts. People pay for "quality" in an environment of information asymmetry - cheap stuff will be polished and given a high price tag. Products can do a better imitation of quality than people can discern it.

Even the value of "brand" is diminishing: decent corps are bought and gutted all the time.

Thermapen is an excellent thermometer. It's fast, nice ux, robust, and just works. The $10~ dollar thermometers I've used are too fragile, grossly inaccurate or annoying.

I suppose there's room in the market for a cheaper thermometer with the same features/performance as thermapen but it's probably not worth it to the manufacturers and re-sellers that could actually pull it off. The markup for the thermapen is not particularly shocking or worrisome. More importantly, the consumer is not getting "ripped off" at that price if it's a solid product that lasts for years and years.

I'm not sure what to think of their Amazon antics. They're aggressively keeping Amazon from selling thermapens so they can keep the price at a premium in the American market? It's not like I cam blame them. They just want to make a buck and not bend over for Amazon. Competitors, including Amazon Basics, are free to sell a product and eat Thermapen's lunch, but they don't. I expect because it's not worth it.

> You can buy them from European distributors in bulk for less than MSRP and sell them for the same price as thermoworks on amazon and still make a profit

This sounds like the kind of business plan that breaks down once you consider returns and warranties. I see 3 possibilities, either

(1) you make it clear to your buyers that they are not buying from thermoworks US, and that they must notcontact them for support and that you will meet the guarantees that Thermoworks promise (two years according to their website?), and therefore you will have to ship items back and forth across the atlantic (or just send free replacements), eating into your profits.

(2) you don't make this clear, in which case Thermoworks US will receive "fraudulent" warranty claims (ie legitimate issues, but from people who did not buy from thermoworks). Maybe as the sole distributor in the US, thermoworks weren't even checking where people bought their thermometers from

(3) you don't give the same warranty as Thermoworks, in which case is this crystal clear to the consumer?

It is a well made product, returns and defects were minimal (less than 1%) when I was selling them. I simply replaced any returns and would occasionally repair them myself or send them back when I had a box full of defective ones. Most defective returns were actually just a bad battery or misconfigured unit.

When I sold them, my listing made no mention of Thermoworks. So I felt no obligation to spend time clarifying that the products could not be returned to Thermoworks for warranty servicing. Just like Walmart doesn't make it clear to buyers that they cannot return their product to Target. But I did actually match the warranty length that Thermoworks offers. Though I don't think I ever got a warranty claim outside of the 30 days or so that Amazon allows customers to return an item.

Do you have anything, that supports this claim?

The search says it expired.. but nevertheless this is pretty bold.

USPTO search results aren't directly linkable, unfortunately. You can see it through the "Basic Word Mark Search" at https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=engli...

Just because Thermoworks isn’t the original manufacturer of Thermapens doesn’t make their claims any less valid. They are presumably authorized to use the Thermapen trademark in the US, and are right to be angry at Amazon for allowing counterfeit products to be sold using that trademark.

genuine products being sold by an unauthorized retailer is not the same thing as counterfeit

Amazon was serving ads for their trademark “at up to 50% off” when in reality only the knock-off brands were that cheap and the authentic versions sold by unauthorized resellers were going for 200% MSRP. That seems like an appropriate thing for them to be upset about from the trademark alone.

Sure, they can be upset at Amazon for misusing their brand name is product results, but that has been done for so long, i doubt there is any legal path to stop it from happening. Amazon is well within their right to show similar products when you search for a brand name.

As for the high prices, tough luck. I'm America, when you buy something, you have the right to sell it at whatever price you want, for the most part.

> when you buy something, you have the right to sell it at whatever price you want

As a consumer to other consumers, yes, but not as a business. Otherwise we wouldn't have things like MAP (minimum advertised price), which is enforceable by manufacturers. First-sale doctrine only covers so much.

MAP is only enforceable if you have a contract or agreement with your supplier.

Any business can buy any product off the shelf and resell it for whatever price they want.

… and even then MAP isn’t enforceable, seeing as how it is basically price fixing, which is illegal.

MAP agreements typically don’t say anything about the selling price, they more typically govern marketing funds provided by the manufacturer. So, for example, Logitech might give my computer store $1,000 to feature their new mouse in my weekly newspaper circular, but only as long as I stick to MAP guidelines. If I don’t, they’ll rescind the advertising credit.

Wow! Hackernews always delivers the real goods!

Not really. OP later confirmed:

> jjeaff 2 hours ago [–]

> It happened to me. The name of the purchaser came up in a Google search as an employee of Thermoworks. reply

A disclaimer in his initial post would have been far more appropriate.

Not so much savvy consumer as much as it he is disgruntled former competitor.

not only that, but they seem to be ignoring any questions related to warranties..

I didn't ignore any questions related to warranties. I always offered full replacement if there were any issues.

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