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Yeah, it's important to know that the Control Freak has a medium-sized induction coil and is medium wattage. The Control Freak actually has one of the larger "medium"-sized coils that I've seen in the market, but it's not meant for big pans (>26cm according to the spec) or for applications which require high wattages. No matter how efficient they make the unit, it's impossible for the unit to deliver more than the wattage being pulled from the wall. If Breville would ship a 3600W Control Freak XL with a large coil, I'd be first in line to buy one. I just checked mine. When the unit is powered on but the temperature is not set, I can hear a little fan noise if I put my ear right up against the unit. If I set a temperature I can hear the far whir up a little more--but I have to be pretty close to notice it. I don't hear any coil whine, and I'm pretty sensitive to and at least slightly annoyed by that sort of thing, but if there is some then the low fan noise may be louder or more prominent to me. When you say idle, do you mean "turned on but with no pan on the unit"? Your hearing might be even more sensitive than mine, in which case congratulations and commiserations at the same time. The unit doesn't have to deliver huge amounts of current to a pan immediately upon first detection, but it does need to deliver some, so I presume that it has some FETs powered up and coils cyclically activated and some of that circuitry could make a little noise. That might be something which Breville could tune in an updated version or even in firmware. If it bothers you, I'd be sure to drop them a line and give them your feedback. Please note that I have 1800W US units, so technically we're comparing two different apples here. Has anyone with a 2400W EU/ANZ unit noticeable experienced coil whine when no pan is on the unit or when the unit is in stopped mode (with or without a pan on it)?

Are you using the EU/AU version of the Control Freak (2400W) or the US (1800W) version? Are you using the "probe oil" mode when frying and deep frying? The Control Freak is a medium-wattage, medium-size induction coil. Medium wattage and medium-size coils are plenty for a lot of applications, but some pots are physically too large and some applications require too much wattage for the unit. I have a 3800W Vollrath induction burner for times when I need to do serious frying in oil. I haven't used it for that yet because I don't fry very often, but that's one of the reason I got a "big" induction burner to complement my Control Freaks.

I know some people who use portable battery-inverter units (Anker, Goal Zero, Jacker, etc.) to power cooking appliances. I haven't tried that, but that's probably the way I'd go if I were cooking out "in the wild." Just make sure that your equipment will start up if there's no ground line present (for portable inverters which don't have a ground line), and that it'll handle 1800W of sustained output. One big pro of the Control Freak is that it's truly commercial quality. Most residential gear isn't designed to run constantly in the kitchen. And I'm not sure if Breville has figured out a way to downsize the build quality to right-size the price for residential users without both skimping so much that people are disappointed and also hurting sales of their commercial units. I would love to see a large-format cooktop with several Control Freak elements built into it (especially if one of those elements had a larger coil and higher wattage). I'm guessing that the price point on that would be north of 5000 USD (and more than a Thermador Freedom) and would have a very limited residential market. But I would love to see/have one. And if Breville could figure out how to combine the temperature sensors with the pervasive mini-coil design of the Thermador Freedom cooktops, I'd certainly save up to buy one. I suspect we'll see quite a bit of competition ("innovation") in this arena, but not for another several years in the U.S. due to the Breville patent.

Well you've convinced me to pull this one off my list of cooktops to investigate, at least in its current iteration. An accurate measurement of the current temperature is something I use all the time on the Control Freak, and accuracy within a degree or two is pretty darn useful as well. src: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cafe-5-7-cu-ft-slide-in-electric-induction-true-convection-range-with-steam-cleaning-and-in-oven-camera-customizable-stainless-steel/6360807.p?skuId=6360807 BTW, here's the photo from the reviewer on Best Buy's website who says that GE's cooktop temperature sensor isn't sealed well, and that it's a design issue rather than a faulty unit. It looks like this is more of a spring-loaded temperature probe than the kind of clean integrated solution I'm used to with the Control Freaks. I also noticed that the temperature sensor is on a small-to-medium coil, not on the larger coil. I am not sure if it's useful for 24-28cm pans (~9-11") pans, or more useful for 14-20cm (~6"-8") pans. Maybe one of these otherwise-capable companies could do a deal with Breville and bring their tech (still under patent in the U.S. market for probably another decade) to a range unit. Or maybe other markets will see innovative large-format cooktops first, and then they can import them to us after we've salivated over them for a few years. I hate to analyze appliances based on the reviews and photos of others and based on manuals which don't deep-dive into the kind of details that matter to me. One of the GE stoves has gotten pretty great reviews otherwise, so perhaps this is just an unfortunate chink in otherwise good armor, a feature that shipped too early.

Any word on when these will be available for purchase online?

This video says that the front-left burner on the GE CAFE induction range is accurate within 1 degree. Very interesting. Now how do I find somewhere to test one out...

I dug up a little more information on that GE cooktop (and its CAFE counterpart)--the one which appears to have a contact temperature sensor. It looks like the unit is a slide-in 30 inch range (oven and cooktop combo). Here is the GE version, with a touchscreen: https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Smart-Slide-In-Front-Control-Induction-Fingerprint-Resistant-Range-with-In-Oven-Camera-PHS93XYPFS Here is the (GE) CAFE version, with knobs for basic operation and capacitive buttons for advanced operations and for operating the stove: https://www.cafeappliances.com/appliance/Cafe-30-Smart-Slide-In-Front-Control-Induction-and-Convection-Range-with-In-Oven-Camera-CHS90XP2MS1 Here are the manuls: https://products-salsify.geappliances.com/image/upload/s--arNbW4SJ--/1126fd97a45e8b5019752efdd551b52bf1cc1d22.pdf https://products-salsify.geappliances.com/image/upload/s--EMiiVzJi--/ee8b4d87498af4ee3253ef14c8b59573b97a2a11.pdf Here are a few things I noticed in the manuals: The front left burner has a temperature sensor. When in precision cooking mode, one sets the target temperature for the burner. It looks like the oven may only show the target temperature for the pan, rather than the current temperature of the pan. It does have a preheating indication. In precision cooking mode, the cooktop wants to know if the pan is stainless steel or cast iron or "other". Hestan Cue pans can be used with any of the four burners, with a temperature sensor in the pan. Only one burner can be used in "precision" mode at the same time. They tend to talk about temperature in 5, 10 or usually 25 degree increments, Fahrenheit. So the temperature accuracy and precision is probably not in the same neighborhood as the Control Freak. It looks like this might effectively be a budget version of the Control Freak concept. It's interesting, for sure. I think that "precision cooking" in the traditional sense might be a bit of a stretch of the term, but precision is a general concept so it's not necessarily inaccurate.

Interesting, thanks for the post. This looks like the cooktop that GE has been showing off for about two years (and seemed to be shipping as part of the "CAFE" line). I haven't been able to find any information on the cooktop in the U.S. Is it an international-only model? Is it induction-based, or does it have traditional heating coils underneath the surface? It's curious that some videos show pan temperature control via the pan and others (like the one before) seem to indicate that they've put a single thermocouple-based, spring-loaded sensor on one hob. I'm hoping to track down a product spec sheet and user manual, somewhere. I'd love to see a build-in unit with four burners, all using technology and spring-loaded sensors similar to the Control Freak, and varying in coil diameters (one or two big ones, and the rest medium-sized).

I believe that the GE Profile cooktop has a regular induction burner (no temperature sensor), but that it has Bluetooth and Hestan Cue pan compatibility. In other words, it would use the built-in temperature sensors in the Hestan Cue pans to report the pan temperature. If you love the Hestan Cue pans, that might be a good match. The main built-in cooktop I've seen with a pan temperature sensor is this one from Miele. It has an IR (non-contact) sensor on one hob. I'm not sure how one calibrates it, how well it works with pans that don't have clean bottoms, or how easy it is to clean. But it has me intrigued https://www.miele.com/brand/en/tempcontrol-28475.htm

Pretty graphs are indeed a pain. Thanks for taking the time to test that out, graphs or no graphs. We should probably use the same thermocouples, the same pans and the same environmental conditions to measure. But for this test, I think we're okay having distinct environments. I placed a 28cm Falk Copper Coeur frying pan at room temperature (~22C) on an 1800W Control Freak (US version). I turned the temperature up to 150C, to match the Paragon's setting. As a stress test (i.e. to induce initial overshoot), I used the high-wattage (fast) ramping setting. I applied a Pro-Surface Thermapen (0.4C accuracy, type K thermocouple) to approximately the center of the pan. The temperature rose quickly and overshot by 10C or so (largely due to the ramping speed, the copper pan composition and the fact that the induction coil is a ring a few inches from the center of the pan). The Control Freak regulated its temperature down and then back up, using a feedback loop to determine how to maintain a 150C temperature (+/- roughly 1C) with my pan and configuration. The temperature initially stabilized to 150C +/- 4C while it was working through its feedback loop (and it seemed to be working extra hard to figure things out, possibly exacerbated by the surface Thermapen). The Control Freak then settled the pan center into a controlled temperature at 150C +/-1 C. My Thermapen (with spec accuracy of 0.4C) measured 150C or 151C for more than a minute. This was an interesting "minor stress test". A few notes: 1. The Control Freak has a medium-sized coil and is spec'd for pans "up to 26 cm". This pan is a frying pan, so its base is close to 26cm but it is indeed a "28cm" pan so it's technically oversized. I usually use pans in the 14cm to 24cm range. 2. With highly-conductive pans (like the Falk Copper Coeur and the Demeyere Atlantis), I generally use a slower ramp speed to warm up the pan with minimal overshoot. So it was interesting to see the machine figure out how to ramp temperature quickly and then adjust to the power+temperature feedback loop. 3. The Control Freak's display shows its contact temperature reading at the center of the pan. That temperature reading was always within 1-3C of my Thermapen's reading and generally within 1C. It is measuring the bottom of the pan and the Thermapen is measuring the top, so that's an interesting observation. BTW, I hardly ever cook food at temperatures over 100C on the Control Freaks. 60C (for warming), 70-80C (for most cooking) and 95-100C (for steaming and some cooking) are where I usually use it. I know it's designed for temperatures up to 230C or so--and there are presumably some good "quicker cooking" applications for that--but given that the chemistry in most foods changes in the 40-100C range (i.e. "cooks") I usually cook with precise temperatures and don't go above 100C. When I boil water, I usually do so with a setpoint just a few degrees above 100C--but of course the water cools itself at 100C until it gets superheated. Also, I did measure the pan temperature at the edge of the pan out of curiosity. This is more of a note on the pan than on the Control Freak (since the pan is both oversized and also because it's a pan optimized for a narrow gradient of temperature rather than a tight temperature across the whole bottom). With the pan stabilized at 150C at the center (and the machine set at 150C), I measured around 138C at the edge of the pan.

Please don't let me be the one to keep you from buying a Vollrath unit. They make some nice stuff. It's a different kind of induction cooktop than the Control Freak, with different strengths and weaknesses. I like my Vollrath unit, mostly because it's 3800 watts and boils water incredibly fast--but also because the "pan still heats when it's lifted a little bit off the surface" feature is kind of cool. One thing that I didn't realize I loved about my Control Freak--until I got my Vollrath unit--is the smooth glass top. I frequently rotate pans and slide them a little bit to one side or the other on the Control Freak. The Vollrath unit has more of a grippy top, so I need to lift a pan to move it. I assume that's an intentional design decision, and it may be useful for keeping pans from sliding off on uneven surfaces and perhaps has other benefits as well. Regarding One Top, well, it's a roughly-$100 budget induction cooktop with a small induction coil and a smartphone app. So as long as one goes into it thinking about having an extra burner or is looking for a very budget solution then it could be a good choice. Its temperature control is along the same probe-in-food line of thought as well; I haven't been able to get pan temperature control to be accurate. Regarding Hestan Cue, it feels like a higher-end cooktop than the One Top. It doesn't get much use here because it basically only works with the Hestan Cue pans. Those pans are reasonable middle-budget pans (not cheap, but not high-end), not too dissimilar from some of All-Clad's offerings. My first-world problem is that I have induction-compatible Falk copper pans (and also Demeyere Proline/Atlantis pans, etc.) in the kitchen, so I never find myself reaching for the Hestan Cue pans. I'm still glad that I have one, in case I ever see a Hestan Cue recipe I want to try out. For people learning how to cook, picking up a Hestan Cue cooktop and a Hestan Cue pan (or maybe even two) is not a bad idea. Each of these cooktops has its place, its pros, and its cons. My daily workhorses are the Control Freaks and my water boiling monster is the Vollrath 3800W unit. But the others have their place too, and I'm glad that there are a lot of options out there.

Superheating water sounds like a fun challenge For the experiment, I'm not adding any variables to the equation. Just testing the cooktop's accuracy and precision. I'm heating the pan empty. On the Control Freak, I cook with little to no oil. If I cook with oil, it's usually a very tiny bit that I apply and then mostly wipe off with a paper towel (and only for things like eggs, to prevent sticking). A typical tablespoon of oil has about 100 calories in it, and those calories have a sneaky way of getting in there and adding up over time. On the Control Freak, I actually heat my pans empty 99% of the time. With precision induction cooktops, there's no need to put a thermal load in there to keep the pan from overshooting its temperature by a mile and little to zero risk of damaging the pans in the process.

A $300 cooktop for a few thousand dollars. That's a good collectable to have on hand, at those margins As far as accuracy goes, it would be pretty quick to measure that. Put a 28cm induction-compatible copper pan on the Paragon and one on the Control Freak. Place a probe thermometer on each. Turn them both to 150C and then chart the temperature that they reach on an X-axis of time. As far as precision goes, the same test would apply--but watching the temperature variation over time to see if the same spot on the pan stays within +/-1C of the target temperature after pan temperature is reached. I should note that the Control Freak measures temperature at the center of the pan, but the coil is of course round. So the pan temperature when heating the pan can overshoot a little bit on highly-transmissive pans (because the pan temperature at the center trails the pan temperature at the coil by a couple seconds while the heat dissipates throughout the pan). It's not the perfect solution for temperature control, but it's the best all-around cooktop I've found for accurate precision cooking. I've spent $1000s buying and testing quite a few induction cooktops, and I haven't found anything which comes close to the temperature control capabilities of the Control Freak. I'd love to find some alternatives (both more affordable, meeting similar specs and usability--and also ones with larger coils and more wattage).

That's one unit I don't have. I believe it's discontinued? I think it's pretty similar to the Vollrath unit, but perhaps with a smaller less powerful coil and some of the controls moved to the smartphone? I appreciate your passion for affordable quality induction cooktops. Some of us cook differently (i.e. using precise temperature control), and cooking on a Control Freak is a whole new ballgame for some of us. But there are lots of ways to cook things, so the (potentially significant) extra cost doesn't make sense for everyone.

I have a Hestan Cue, a One Top, a Vollrath HPI4-3800 and a couple Control Freaks here. I'll share my experience. Your results may vary. The Control Freak is a different class of device than the others. It has really tight temperature control and it measures the temperature of the pan with a contact sensor. It works really well for precision cooking, using small and medium-sized pans. Compared to anything else in the 1800W class, I haven't found anything else which compares. Breville got a patent on their design a decade or so ago, and I suspect it will be a while before we see anything which competes well against it. I just wish they'd make a high-wattage version with a large coil. The Vollrath is a nice induction unit but, unlike the Control Freak, it does not have a pan-contact temperature sensor. If you ramp up the power ("temperature") slowly and you have quite a bit of thermal load in the pan, the under-glass temperature sensor might work for your application. And if you're cooking something with a temperature probe sticking into the pot, the Vollrath might also work for you. Just be aware that the Vollrath units' temperature accuracy/precision claims are almost surely related to the temperature probe, not to the pan temperature control. The first time I tested my HPI-3800, I put an induction-compatible copper pan on it and set it to a medium temperature and it quickly shot up to temperatures that threatened to warp the pan (500F+, 260C+) but didn't realize the pan was above the set temperature. I think the product is designed for and marketed towards commercial kitchens, rather than precision-cooking chefs.

@KennethT -- have you seen this induction cooktop? Equipex Bioline 3600 https://equipex.com/shop/bric-2500-3000-3600-bioline-panther-countertop-induction-cookers/ It's made by a company in Rhode Island in the U.S. (apparently using a design made by a longstanding induction cooktop company from France?). It's 3600 watts, and they claim that it has good pan temperature control. After seeing under the glass (in the video below) I'm guessing that the pan temperature accuracy is probably similar to my Vollrath (i.e. not very accurate). But there are some other really interesting features. For instance, they demonstrate: Control by wattage (instead of %) or by temperature 11 inch coil (which they show in the video), reportedly the largest in the industry; it appears that they've loosely wound a coil, and made its diameter bigger. They call the unit "super heavy duty" or something along those lines. "Pan quality" measurement: you can turn the cooktop to 3600W and then hold down two buttons and it'll tell you the amount of wattage it's willing to put in that pan. The higher the number, the higher the pan quality (their words, not mine). It sounds like they have put some thought into the feedback loop, for pan safety. They'll also show you the current temperature reading if you hold down a series of buttons while the cooktop is warming. I wish that were displayed all the time like on the Control Freak--but it's still a nice feature to have even if it's hidden away. I don't know if the unit pulses power on/off when it warms or not. I can't justify spending $1800 to find out. But it's certainly an interesting option, and presumably in the same league as Hatco or Vollrath when it comes to the heavy duty gear.

That makes sense. And you make a good point! I suspected that the electronics were doing some conversion because they also accept either 50Hz or 60Hz AC as input. The thing that confuses me is the "220V 3000W" spec. The reason the spec is a little confusing to me is because I don't know if that means that I'll get 3000 watts of power at 208V and 220V and 240V -- or if I'll get 2836 watts of power at 208V, 3000 watts of power at 220V and 3272 watts at 240V. Or something else completely. Maybe it's regulating the power to exact output wattages. In contrast, my Vollrath unit outputs around 3300 watts (16A) at 208V and around 3800 watts (16A) at 240V. The wattage they quote is based on 240V, and then it scales down from there. At 220V (which is what Aervoe/Max Burton uses in their spec), I suspect that the Vollrath unit would output around 3520 watts. In any case, that Max Burton unit appears to put out quite a bit of power.

I do have an oscilloscope, a data acquisition unit (multi-channel digital multimeter) and a few real-time energy meters in the little test kitchen here, so we could have some fun finding out. From my experience measuring induction cooktops' energy usage so far, the coils are effectively shut down with power generation shut down when a pan is removed. You make a good point that the coil is still searching for a pan, and that does take a little bit of energy through the coil (albeit perhaps in very small amounts, and pulsed at intervals). Wireless charging pucks for our phones do something similar. Power that's being generated has to be transferred or converted to another form of energy--so if the induction stoves kept generating a lot of power when pans were removed they'd basically have to "burn off" that energy as waste heat, something we'd notice very quickly. Anyway, sans pan, the coil power should be de minimis. When I measured the power consumption of my Vollrath 4-series yesterday, for instance, the power consumption dropped like a rock when I removed the pan. It was basically just using a little bit of power to run the fan and keep the touch-enabled display going, and using a tiny bit of power to watch for the pan to return. Just a few watts of power.

Hey @palo you got me interested in Max Burton so I just googled a bit. It looks like the Max Burton Digital Pro Chef-3000 induction cooktop is now discontinued. A NY Times Wirecutter article says: "Aervoe, the company that makes it and the Max Burton 18XL (mentioned below), announced in late 2022 that it will stop manufacturing consumer cooktops." Aervoe themselves lists the item as a CLOSEOUT item (their emphasis, not mine). https://www.aervoe.com/product/digital-prochef-3000-induction-cooktop/ I see a bunch of these still available in the market. They might be a good value for people looking to pick up a high-power induction stovetop. The manual doesn't specify the plug type, but I assume it's a 6-15 style plug. The 220 volt spec (rather than 208V-240V or 220V-240V) confuses me a bit, especially since the wattage on these things often scales with voltage--and since U.S. standard voltage is nominally 240V these days rather than 220V. Here's a copy of the manual on that discontinued Max Burton for anyone who would like more info. [A good find, @palo!] https://aervoe.com/_files/techdata/6535 IM.pdf

With induction, the heat transfer can only happen when there's a pan on (or near, in the case of Vollrath's 4-series) the surface of the cooktop. Induction cooktops generally don't heat the cooktop surface; instead they heat the pan/pot sitting on top. This is not too dissimilar from how wireless chargers for phones work. When you take the pan off the cooktop and go to the sink, the induction coil basically shuts down while you're away momentarily. Then when you return the pan to the cooktop, your cooktop is smart enough to detect the pan and start transferring energy again (i.e. resume cooking). I just realized that the $400 you were quoting is probably CAD, not USD. I don't know what the exchange rate was a few years back on that unit. Today's price on that unit at Amazon.com (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is 250 USD, so that sounds like quite a nice high-power induction cooktop at that price point. It seems like you chose well for your application

For that 2600W unit you're mentioning, I'm seeing an off-the-shelf price of just over 1200 USD here in the U.S. (versus ~2600 USD MSRP listed on Vollrath's website). The Vollrath HPI4 units list/retail for twice (or more) of what the street price is. I don't know the reason for that; it's just how it is. Perhaps this is one case where pricing in the U.S. market is lower for a U.S. company's products. Outside of the U.S. the prices might be quite a bit higher. In any case, these are not inexpensive units.

A quick update... I ended up picking up a Vollrath HPI4-3800 (3800W, 208V-240V). Here are a few quick observations which I thought might be useful. This is not a typical induction cooktop; it has some interesting quirks and features (to borrow a line from Doug DeMuro). The pan temperature sensor is not super-accurate. When boiling water, a setting of 85C-90C would often bring the water to a boil (near sea level); other times I had to raise the temperature setting to 95-100C to attain a boil. I think the pan temperature sensor is basically measuring the temperature of the glass surface from underneath the glass (versus the Control Freak which uses a metallic, full-contact pan sensor). On that first note, preheating heavily-responsive pans (like induction-compatible copper pans) is best done with something in the pan. This machine can overshoot or misjudge the temperature of empty pans by many, many tens of degrees. I probably won't leave the cooktop unattended for the same reason (to avoid dramatic overheating of pans whose water has boiled or evaporated away). The rough pan temperature measurement is useful though, in terms of keeping the temperature in a general range. But the probe temperature control (which has direct contact with the food/liquid) is almost definitely going to be the way to go when precision is needed. On that point, I can temper chocolate in my Control Freak using pan temperature control; on the Vollrath, I need a probe in the chocolate. The cooktop delivers a variable amount of energy to maintain temperature (instead of gently pulsing power), at least in my initial tests. I monitored a power (amp/watt) meter in real-time while boiling water and the machine adjusted the power level dynamically to maintain temperature. Pretty cool. 3800W, as it turns out, is a lot of power. Vollrath equates it to 33,000 BTUs equivalent power (although they're not converting watts to BTUs in that equation). I can lift the pan off the surface by several centimeters (and maybe several inches) and the cooktop keeps delivering power. The amount of power decreases as the pan moves away from the cooking surface. This is probably useful for cooks who want to lift their pans a little to slide or flip food without losing the heat source, similar to a gas stove. I have not seen this in any other induction cooktop. Boil pattern from the coil appears to be in the 7-8" range. I will need to do some closer measurements to figure out how big the coil is. It's not a super-large coil, but it's also not small. When switching between "power intensity manual control mode", "degrees F control mode" and "degrees C control mode", the unit does not translate the temperature between C and F. It remembers the last setting in each mode. This means that switching between C and F modes can result in a very jarring acceleration in heat energy unless one transitions quickly to the next mode or turns down the dial. That really feels like a bug, so hopefully that can be fixed in a firmware update. The power intensity in manual control mode, as measured in watts, is pretty linear. The lower end of the range has a smaller wattage difference between each percent, but every 10% of the range is approximately 380 watts. The fan is not particularly quiet, and it runs when it wants to--whether or not the cooktop is running at the time. No warranty for non-commercial users. If someone asked me about a high-power induction stove for residential use, I'd probably point them at a built-in unit or perhaps the Hatco unit (if Hatco honors their warranty for residential users). But for a commercial kitchen moving from gas to induction, and for cooks who understand how to cook by sight and sound and relative power intensity (and don't care about warranty), this could be a really interesting high-power induction cooktop.

Does anyone know what the Combustion probe is made out of (both the shaft and the yellow plastic-looking handle at the end)? I've been on a quest to replace plastics in the kitchen with stainless steel, glass and silicone/rubber. MEATER Plus says it's made out of stainless steel and ceramic, and I'm okay with sticking that inside a Stasher bag along with a sous-vide steak. I'm hoping that the Combustion probes also use silicone or ceramic (not non-rubber plastic) for the handle area. On both the Combustion probes and on the MEATER plus probes, I'm also wondering if they're designed to work with induction stovetops (i.e. non-ferritic), as sometimes I want to add a wireless probe there too. Not a requirement, but it would be a nice bonus. Things I did find out from the combustion.inc website ( FAQ – Combustion Inc ) The probe's upper temperature is greater than 500F range, so that probably rules out virtually all rubbers and plastics for the handle end. Maybe it's ceramic? They don't recommend using it with sous vide yet because they haven't finished testing how their gaskets seal under vacuum. They intend for sous vide in vacuum-sealed bags to work. I use Stasher bags, so that's not an issue for me. The wireless signal is degraded by obstructions (which I presume also includes water). They say that induction stoves are not a problem.

Thermoworks put their Thermapen ONEs on sale a few times the last few months (first for the holidays, then as an overstock sale...and as a flash sale today they have the green and black models available for 25% off, 75 USD vs 100 USD). I'm a big fan of the Thermapen ONEs. I use mine once or twice a week on average, and I expect that the usage will go up over time if I start cooking more meat on the stove instead of in the sous vide bath. @AlaMoi's wisdom is sage: these things turn out to be a lot more useful than we initially expect them to be. BTW, the big benefit of a Thermapen ONE over a Thermopop or some of the other solutions is the instantness of the instant read. It gets an accurate reading within like a second. There are a lot of other great options, but they typically take a few seconds to settle or they're a little less accurate. Thermoworks also has quite a few other meat-related temperature probes for applications like grill cooking as well. Outside of Thermoworks, there are a number of other suppliers of food temperature probes, some of which have already been noted. Thermoworks was the known-good standard (whose reference Thermapens can be used to calibrate other temperature sensors) so that's who I went with, but some other brands have a lot of fans too. I recommend checking out their reviews and their specs (both for resolution time and accuracy). There are some good deals to be had.

I had not thought of that. That's a good idea 😄 I searched and searched online, but couldn't find any measurements on hole sizes. I'm looking to do the same thing that Hamilton Beach does with their slow cooker--but with my Control Freak. I would have just bought the lid from Hamilton Beach and hoped that the hole was the right size, but the lid is of course not the right shape and size. 😢 Hamilton Beach 6-Quart Slow Cooker w/ Probe (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) NOTE: the "Defrost Setting, Temperature Probe" (silver) version of that slow cooker has an extra-nice solution, with the dedicated white hole for the probe (which I presume has an insulated gasket).