MeatStick vs Meater

Meater Block

A quick and honest review of my experience with the two leading bluetooth wireless BBQ meat thermometers

This year I decided to test out the MeatStick and the Meater, arguably the two most popular wireless and wire-free meat thermometers on the market. I was getting tired of wired probes and while I love my Thermapen, I wanted to see if there was a good and reliable product that would allow me to monitor temperatures inside my cookers without opening the lid and with no wires to mess with.

Enter the Meater and the MeatStick.

For my comparison I bought the Meater Block and MeatStick X. They’re both essentially different versions of the same idea. You have bluetooth enabled probes that you manage from an app. There are plenty of how-to and detailed reviews our there if you want to go deep (which I recommend). In this post I am simply sharing my personal experience with each of these and which one edges out the other.

The Meater Block works…but mine has an issue

First I tried the Meater Block. Setting it up and syncing to the app etc. was no problem. After watching a YouTube video I was able to get it up and running quite easily and monitored the progress through the app.

I had no issues with connections or anything, but there is one thing that I have found with my Meater after two uses. The probe temperature reading runs under the actual temp — at least compared to my Thermapen, which I trust more for accuracy as I have calibrated it and been using Thermapens for years.

The issue is that the reading on the probe inside the meat is roughly 5 - 10 degrees fahrenhait under the actual temp. This will cause you to overcook your meat if you are not aware of this.

On the first cook I caught this because it seemed to be taking too long for the meat to get to where I expected it to be. I pulled out my Thermapen to double check (yes, in the same spot and so on) and I was right. Luckily I pulled the steak right there and nothing was lost.

On my second cook with the Meater, I found the exact same issue on my beef tenderloin. So now if I use the Meater again, it will be as more of a guide that I am getting close to target range and then I’ll pull out the Thermapen to get an accurate reading.

But at least the Meater is usable. That is not the case with my MeatStick X.

MeatStick X

No MeatStick X review because it wouldn’t allow me to use it

Based on what I’d read, I was expecting the MeatStick X to answer all of my problems and work like a charm. Unfortunately, for me it is a brick so I’ll never know.

Here’s my experience with the MeatStick X.

It’s pretty much a similar set-up to the Meater. I got the MeatStick, put batteries in the charger and charged it up. I synced it via the app and all was good. It sat in its charger for a month before I finally decided to try it.

According to the manuals, when the MeatStick is in the charger it will continue to be fully charged. But, in real life, that’s was not the case for me...or so it seems.

I had a beef tenderloin ready to go and a large group of hungry guests. I pulled out my fancy new MeatStick X and was about to get to programming in the app when I got a pop-up saying it needed a firmware update. There was no option to skip this (annoying, since I had updated the firmware when I first fired it up a month ago). I was being forced to do the update before I could proceed. No way around it.. So with hungry guests waiting, I said okay to the firmware update.

Then I get an error saying the app can’t update the firmware because my MeatStick isn’t charged. Really? Isn’t a month in the charger long enough?

I restarted the charger several times (all lights working and green/red flash, so the month-old batteries were still fine as you would expect), but I continued to be caught in the super frustrating endless loop up “update your firmware” followed by “you can’t update it until you charge your probe.”

There was no way out of this mess and the MeatStick officially became an unusable brick.

Luckily, my Meater at least works, so I quickly ran to get it and even though I know the Meater isn’t 100% accurate, it is consistent in how it undershoots temperatures, so I can use it as a guide.

Would I Recommend the Meater or MeatStick?

Based on my personal experience with both of these probes, I’m not sure I would recommend either one. However, if push comes to shove, at least the Meater does work, while the MeatStick X that I purchased couldn’t even get out of the starting gate. This problem is not universal because there are plenty of happy MeatStick customers out there, but for me and my personal experience, the frustrating cycle of being unable to pass go on the MeatStick app made this thermometer an expensive mistake.

So I would avoid the MeatStick and go with a Meater based on my personal experience with both of these devices.

Final Thoughts

There’s still room in the space of wireless/wire-free Bluetooth cooking probes for someone to come along and take a true leadership position.

From the issues with MeatStick and it’s persistent demands to continually track your personal whereabouts (no matter if you’re using the probe or not), to Meater’s tendency to undershoot temperatures, I am still awaiting the next generation of these probes for someone to really make them easy to use and accurate as well.

If nothing else, both Meater and MeatStick show that the future is promising for future iterations of wireless bluetooth barbecue temperature probes.