AcuRite Digital Wireless Fridge and Freezer Thermometer with Alarm and Max/Min Temperature for Home ,LCD Display, Restaurants (00986M), 0.6, White

I am a wine writer and also a low carb writer. For both of the websites I run I get bombarded with questions from readers who want to know how to keep their wines and foods fresh for as long as possible. We are all trying to save money in these times, and keeping your food and drink fresh until you finish eating it is certainly an obvious way to help out. In almost every case, my guidance to the people is to test the temperature in their fridge and freezer. Many people are shocked to realize that their fridges are FAR too warm, and that is causing their food to spoil and their wine to sour.The Chaney Refrigerator / Freezer Thermometer is a brilliant way to keep an eye on how your food is doing. Here is how it works. You get one thermometer which you put into the back of your refrigerator. A second thermometer goes into the back of your freezer. Both of these send signals *wirelessly* to a display unit. The display unit is magnetic and can stick easily to the front of your refrigerator.You can walk by your fridge and see at a glance exactly what temperature your fridge and freezer are currently at. The system also displays the highest and lowest temperature each area has reached since you last reset the values. So if you set your fridge normally to 34F and you see that it has been swinging between 20F and 50F, it's time to call a repair person! That would definitely cause serious damage to your food.In addition, you can set alarm values, both high and low, for both sensors. So you can set the freezer to start beeping an alarm if it drops below -50F, or if it goes up above 0F. Of course the chance of your freezer suddenly going insane and becoming "way too cold" is probably slim - but I know a number of people who had electrical problems with their fridges and who lost cooling ability without realizing it at first. Having a beeping alarm go off before your freezer's contents all thaw is a very good thing!The wireless unit says that it can transmit a fair distance, but this of course would depend on all sorts of things - if there are concrete walls between the source and destination, if there are other interfering signals around, and so on. For me, I know it works with the display on the outside of the fridge it is monitoring. So I can say with great certainty that that works very well.I know for sure the alarm works wonderfully - only a few weeks after buying the unit, we had a thunderstorm take out the power. It was only a short while later when the fridge half of our unit began beeping.Is there a downside to this? Well, when we first got the set, the display LEDs simply would not light up well. We tried at least 8 different sets of batteries in it to ensure it wasn't a bad set of batteries. Some of the number pieces would light up, while others would stay completely unlit. We called up Chaney and they were extremely prompt and helpful. Only a few days later we had a fully functional display unit in our hands, and it worked beautifully. Electronic devices will never be 100% foolproof so I don't ding them much for having that glitch, and offer praise for them resolving it so readily.All in all, I love this device. I can glance at my fridge every time I use it and know exactly what its temperature is and what the recent ranges of temperature have been. I can optimize the fridge and freezer to have the optimal temperatures to keep my food and wine fresh for as long as possible. That means milk lasts longer, salad fixings last longer, everything lasts longer. That stretches my food dollar as well as it can be stretched, and easily pays for the price of the thermometer within a month or two.Highly recommended. I'm even looking into getting another one for my wine fridges. The only question then would be if the wireless transmitters interfere with each other!

UPDATE !/16/25:Still working great!But I just wanted to tell you that I bought a second unit for the bedrooms so we can check temps from the living room. You can't use a second set because it picks up the sensors in the fridge and freezer, even though I have batteries in the two new sending units which are I the bedrooms.So I have been using the monitor in the living room to keep an eye on the fridge temps.But now one of my friends has had a few power outages, so I'm going to give the second set to her.I am so glad I got this item. Now I can track the temp of my fridge and freezer without opening the doors! It was a simple matter of inserting batteries and placing the sensors in place. I have the monitor on the side of my fridge via the 4 magnets, but you could also hang it on a nail with the hole on the back. The sensors take 2 AA batteries each, and the monitor takes 2 AAA batteries. I used regular alkaline batteries (Duracell). I opted to not pay for expensive lithium batteries. So far, I have had no problems. I had a power outage in the recent past, and would have liked to know what the inside temps were in my fridge (without opening the doors), so I would know when to go get ice. The suction cups did not work, the sensor units fell within seconds of placement. I did not clean the wall prior to placement, so that could be a factor, but I would rather have them sit on the shelf anyway. On the back of the monitor, you have a switch for Celcius or Fahrenheit, as well as a reset switch. I do not use the alarms. You have to program the alarm settings if you want to use them. You can reset the hi and low reading by simply pushing the "clr" button.*** UPDATE 9-26-17 ***I had a 10 hours power outage about a month ago. This acurite unit performed FLAWLESSLY! I monitored the fridge and freezer temps constantly, and when the temps got too low, we went out and got bags of ice so we could put all the food in an ice chest. Then I put the sending unit in the middle of the ice chest to make sure the temp remained low enough. I can't love this item anymore than I do right now! Worth every penny in my book.NOTE: I still have the same batteries in it, and they are still going strong. I do not use the alarm. But I do check the high and low temps every morning and then reset, and I check and reset at bedtime. My freezer temp ranges from -5 degrees (f) to 10 depending on how much we open the door. It does not seem to affect my Duracell alkaline batteries. Very happy I did not pay for lithium batteries.UPDATE 8-27-18: This unit is still going strong! I recently replaced all original batteries (at about 8 months in), even though they were working just fine. I wanted to make sure the batteries did not die when I had a power outage. This is the best unit.UPDATE: 11-15-23Still going strong! I can't tell you how many times this unit has helped during power outages. We don't turn the generator on until the fridge hits 40 degrees. We are constantly checking the temps day and night for piece of mind.I'm going to buy another set to measure for cold drafts in the bedroom. Two points of reference, one display.I'm amazed how many years we have had this, and it still works.