Hey y'all, just looking to see if anyone's shared my experience.
Backstory: I had a Lexington that started giving me temp hi errors and shutting off, with no visible fire or anything. I replaced the little probe inside the smoker and since, it worked great, spot on(compared to an oven thermometer I bought and set inside the smoker at least). I liked it so eventually decided to upgrade.
Cue now: my new sportsman 850. Brand new, maybe 3 cooks in. I have noticed the thermometer SUCKS. This is comparing it to the oven thermometer, and I also bought some new wireless temp probes(that measure the meat temp along with ambient grill temp). I tested the new probes with varying temps inside my house and they're fairly spot on, +/- 3 degrees, so I'm saying I trust them.
Anyways, whenever I start the sports man, it's usually around 50 degrees off. For example, I am having to set the smoker at like 300 for it to actually be 250 ish inside, with the smokers own thermometer telling it it is indeed 300. The smoker eventually, but slowly, comes to true temp but I'm talking hours(much slower than the cheaper Lexington). And if I open the door for a split second to temp or probe meat, it loses heat FAST but problematically it's own thermometer reports almost no temp loss. so then what ends up happening, with the smoker SET at 300, and internal temps actually being like 160 or so, the smoker thermometer will read 300 itself, not feeding any more heat into it. This causes the internal temp to stay pretty low, because it thinks it's already at it's set point
I bought another thermometer because how it's behaving seems silly, they're cheap and it worked wonders last time, but I'm wondering if I'm going crazy. This is a brand new out of the box unit