I got a Fireboard Extreme BBQ Edition for Christmas. My wife knew I wanted one. She also, I'm pretty sure, is tired of me complaining about not having enough grill and meat probes. Well, now I have 2 grill probes and 6 meat probes. Although I can only use 6 of them at a time. But, I can see on my WSM where I would use 2 grill probes and 4 meat probes. It will be pretty cool when I am cooking 3-4 pork butts.
My first observation when I unwrapped it is that the packaging is solid all the way around. I knew I was getting a high quality product. Much nicer than getting my system in plastic packaging that I have to cut open with a pair of utility shears. Instead, it came in a very nice box, with the Fireboard and set up instructions in a top compartment and the probes and charger in separate compartments in the box. It was like buying an Apple or Amazon product, in that sense.
The next obvious thing is how much higher quality this is than a Maverick ET-732. You'll see in the pictures, that the Fireboard probes are much better than the Maverick probes. The Maverick probes are crimped to the cable, where the Fireboard probes have a spring to keep the cable from pinching, followed by a waterproof coupler to attach the cable to the probe. The Fireboard base unit is about the same size as the Maverick base unit. However, it is much higher quality plastic case, heavier (due to the internal battery) and feels better, more solid, higher quality in your hand.
Set up was easy. I downloaded the Fireboard app from the Apple app store (since I use an iPhone). If you have any sort of Android based tablet or phone, Fireboard app is available in your app store. And, if all else fails, you can just login to the website and do it that way. Once the app was on my phone, I created an account. With bluetooth turned on, I quickly and easily found my Fireboard. I set up WiFi on it and changed its name. That took me all of two minutes. And I was ready to go.
I did a few tests to confirm that this thing worked. My wife was cooking some brownies, so I stuck a probe from the Maverick and from the Fireboard in the oven. The oven said it was 350. The Maverick, which I know is accurate +/- 2F, said the oven was 338. And the Fireboard said it was 339.2. Pretty darn close. More than close enough. I also probed some boiling water .... Fireboard said 210.8 and Thermapen said 211. Great!!!!
When it came time to cook, once you plug your probes in and turn the Fireboard on, it automatically creates a new cooking session. It was very easy to rename the cooking session, add some notes about ambient air temp, weather conditions, what I was cooking, what grill I was using, etc. Then I clicked on each probe and renamed them to be appropriate to my cook .... i.e. Probe 1 got renamed Grill, Probe 2 to Roast, etc. Then I was able to set high and low temp alarms and configured them to be sent to me via SMS text messages. Pretty cool!
The Fireboard worked flawlessly during the cook. It was as easy to read temps and know what was happening with my grill and meat as the Maverick. Even better, configuring alarms was 1000 times easier than on the Maverick. Even better, all the data is uploaded to my Fireboard account every 5 seconds. I can download that data and put it in a spreadsheet, or just use the basic graphing and visualization tools that Fireboard provides for me. I'm an engineer by training and trade, so lots of data about my tools makes me very happy.
An interesting observation, confirming what Meathead and his team have been telling us, is that opening the hood of the grill affects grill temp, but not meat temp. Not only that, the meat really just continues on cooking without any significant impact. According to the raw data, the meat dropped about half a degree over a 50 second time span and then returned to its original temp and continued right on cooking. A half degree impact for less than one minute is statistically negligible when we are looking at a 3 hour cook involving a temperature change of 100 degrees. In other words, opening the lid of your grill does not cause your cook to take significantly longer. It will have other impacts, of course. You will change the humidity and smoke of your cook chamber, which may be a much bigger issue to consider.
Overall observations. This is a high quality tool. Having WiFi and a cloud based application makes this the tool I've been looking for. Not only can I remotely monitor my cooking, like I could with the Maverick ET-732 or Thermoworks Smoke, but I can retain the data, keep data for each cooking session, and monitor my cook from anywhere on earth. That's pretty damn cool.
I'm really looking forward to my first long cook, either a pork butt or brisket, so that I can get my hands on a lot of data and see what it looks like.
I know this is expensive. But it's not that much more than the Thermoworks Smoke, and it has the ability to run 6 probes. And it is cloud enabled right now. Smoke won't be until May. And will require an add-on unit. The basic Fireboard, base unit, grill probe and 2 meat probes, is $189. For Smoke to compete with all the features of Fireboard is going to require that Smoke Gateway add-on unit, so it will be about the same price. But still only have 2 probes. To get the same amount of probe capability, you will need 3 Smokes @ $99 each. Compared to a single Fireboard, with 8 probes (6 usable at a time) for $249. And we don't know how that Gateway is going to cost.
If you are looking for something higher quality than the Maverick, with remote monitoring, multiple probes, cloud capability .... this is the unit to buy.
I literally had no cons for this. It is the absolute best pit monitoring system for the backyard or competition cook, in my opinion. If I was designing it, this is what you would get.
The box
Here's the contents of the box .... look at the quality of the packaging!
Roast Beast and Ham on the Hasty-Bake
Maverick probe vs. Fireboard probe
Maverick base unit, remote unit, and Fireboard base unit
Example graph of data from cooking a roast and a ham
My first observation when I unwrapped it is that the packaging is solid all the way around. I knew I was getting a high quality product. Much nicer than getting my system in plastic packaging that I have to cut open with a pair of utility shears. Instead, it came in a very nice box, with the Fireboard and set up instructions in a top compartment and the probes and charger in separate compartments in the box. It was like buying an Apple or Amazon product, in that sense.
The next obvious thing is how much higher quality this is than a Maverick ET-732. You'll see in the pictures, that the Fireboard probes are much better than the Maverick probes. The Maverick probes are crimped to the cable, where the Fireboard probes have a spring to keep the cable from pinching, followed by a waterproof coupler to attach the cable to the probe. The Fireboard base unit is about the same size as the Maverick base unit. However, it is much higher quality plastic case, heavier (due to the internal battery) and feels better, more solid, higher quality in your hand.
Set up was easy. I downloaded the Fireboard app from the Apple app store (since I use an iPhone). If you have any sort of Android based tablet or phone, Fireboard app is available in your app store. And, if all else fails, you can just login to the website and do it that way. Once the app was on my phone, I created an account. With bluetooth turned on, I quickly and easily found my Fireboard. I set up WiFi on it and changed its name. That took me all of two minutes. And I was ready to go.
I did a few tests to confirm that this thing worked. My wife was cooking some brownies, so I stuck a probe from the Maverick and from the Fireboard in the oven. The oven said it was 350. The Maverick, which I know is accurate +/- 2F, said the oven was 338. And the Fireboard said it was 339.2. Pretty darn close. More than close enough. I also probed some boiling water .... Fireboard said 210.8 and Thermapen said 211. Great!!!!
When it came time to cook, once you plug your probes in and turn the Fireboard on, it automatically creates a new cooking session. It was very easy to rename the cooking session, add some notes about ambient air temp, weather conditions, what I was cooking, what grill I was using, etc. Then I clicked on each probe and renamed them to be appropriate to my cook .... i.e. Probe 1 got renamed Grill, Probe 2 to Roast, etc. Then I was able to set high and low temp alarms and configured them to be sent to me via SMS text messages. Pretty cool!
The Fireboard worked flawlessly during the cook. It was as easy to read temps and know what was happening with my grill and meat as the Maverick. Even better, configuring alarms was 1000 times easier than on the Maverick. Even better, all the data is uploaded to my Fireboard account every 5 seconds. I can download that data and put it in a spreadsheet, or just use the basic graphing and visualization tools that Fireboard provides for me. I'm an engineer by training and trade, so lots of data about my tools makes me very happy.
An interesting observation, confirming what Meathead and his team have been telling us, is that opening the hood of the grill affects grill temp, but not meat temp. Not only that, the meat really just continues on cooking without any significant impact. According to the raw data, the meat dropped about half a degree over a 50 second time span and then returned to its original temp and continued right on cooking. A half degree impact for less than one minute is statistically negligible when we are looking at a 3 hour cook involving a temperature change of 100 degrees. In other words, opening the lid of your grill does not cause your cook to take significantly longer. It will have other impacts, of course. You will change the humidity and smoke of your cook chamber, which may be a much bigger issue to consider.
Overall observations. This is a high quality tool. Having WiFi and a cloud based application makes this the tool I've been looking for. Not only can I remotely monitor my cooking, like I could with the Maverick ET-732 or Thermoworks Smoke, but I can retain the data, keep data for each cooking session, and monitor my cook from anywhere on earth. That's pretty damn cool.
I'm really looking forward to my first long cook, either a pork butt or brisket, so that I can get my hands on a lot of data and see what it looks like.
I know this is expensive. But it's not that much more than the Thermoworks Smoke, and it has the ability to run 6 probes. And it is cloud enabled right now. Smoke won't be until May. And will require an add-on unit. The basic Fireboard, base unit, grill probe and 2 meat probes, is $189. For Smoke to compete with all the features of Fireboard is going to require that Smoke Gateway add-on unit, so it will be about the same price. But still only have 2 probes. To get the same amount of probe capability, you will need 3 Smokes @ $99 each. Compared to a single Fireboard, with 8 probes (6 usable at a time) for $249. And we don't know how that Gateway is going to cost.
If you are looking for something higher quality than the Maverick, with remote monitoring, multiple probes, cloud capability .... this is the unit to buy.
I literally had no cons for this. It is the absolute best pit monitoring system for the backyard or competition cook, in my opinion. If I was designing it, this is what you would get.
The box
Here's the contents of the box .... look at the quality of the packaging!
Roast Beast and Ham on the Hasty-Bake
Maverick probe vs. Fireboard probe
Maverick base unit, remote unit, and Fireboard base unit
Example graph of data from cooking a roast and a ham
Comment