It works great

It works but tends to fog up

..but it still works! The glass sheath is just designed to separate the inner thermometer from whatever boiling oil/sugar/liquid you're trying to measure. I happened to smash the top (dropped onto a hard floor from not very high), so it still works as expected. It has a neat cardboard legend on the back (inside) which details various temperatures for different types of sugar bonds (e.g. hard crack, syrup) and some deep fat fry temperatures. The inner thermometer has a heat conductive ball at the base so the sheath doesn't give false readings.I'm going to check out its accuracy with a thermocouple one of these days, but the caramel sauce I made with it was tasty!So the only warning is that it's rather fragile, but if you're a klutz like me there are always metal backed models.

I first tested the accuracy of this thermometer in the steam of a kettle as suggested by a previous poster only to find that it was almost 15 deg C short of 100. Aargh! However, I thought I'd double check it by putting it in a pan of boiling water on the stove and it showed exactly 100 deg C. Phew!I've used it for tempering chocolate which you need to measure at quite low temperatures (only just on this thermometer's scale, but to be fair, this product is designed for higher temperatures) and was impressed at how well the chocolate turned out, considering I'd never done it before and was relying solely on the guidance of this thermometer.It can be a little difficult to work out what temperature each line of the scale equates to as the centigrade scale (in red) is measured in 25 degree intervals ((i.e. 50, 75, 100, 125 etc), with 5 degree marks in between, whilst the fahrenheit scale (in black) is measured in 50 degree intervals (e.g. 100, 150, 200, 250 etc) with a thicker black line at the 25 degree interval and thinner black lines at 5 degree intervals. The back of the scale shows the temperatures required for candy and deep frying.The thermometer is approximately 20cm long which seems to be a good size for most pans. Some I had looked at were nearly 30cm long and looked rather unwieldy. A great little feature is a moveable clip (like a biro clip) for attaching the thermometer onto the pan. This means that you can use it on any size of saucepan including quite small milkpans, without having to hold it or ensure it keeps upright.All in all, a lovely little thermometer and a great price!

Value for money and works well