Review: Brother Max 3-in-1 digital thermometer

We’ve always used a very basic thermometer – the kind you stick in your mouth and have to hold under your tongue for about a minute. Not quite your lethal mercury thermometer and still digital, but pretty darned useless for kids, really. We also have one of those strips you hold on the forehead and they say cold, normal or hot.

Whenever I’ve been in hospital or gone to the doctor, they’ve used one of these funky thermometers that they stick in your ear and half a second later it beeps and tells them your temperature. They’ve never had any trouble getting the girls’ temperatures, because they don’t have to leave it in their ear long enough for it to be a problem. I’ve always meant to go out and buy one, but have never done so.

Recently we had a meningitis scare. Well, really it was a high temperature, headache and sore neck. Enough to send me scurrying to the doctor. And (for once) she said I was right to come in, because you really can’t be too careful about meningitis. Living in Stroud, which was once known as the meningitis capital of England (we had a big outbreak back when I was at secondary school and a lot of local children and teenagers died), I am well aware of this and a combination of symptoms will send me straight to the doctor. It turned out she was fine and her temperature actually wasn’t that high – high, yes, but not dangerously so. If we’d had a decent thermometer, we probably would have known that it wasn’t high enough to warrant a doctor visit.

So when I was offered the opportunity to review the Brother Max 3-in-1 digital thermometer, I was very happy to take it. A decent digital thermometer that you can stick in an ear was something we really did need.

When it arrived, though, I was astounded. It looks gorgeous – not that this is necessarily important in a thermometer, of course. And it really is a 3-in-1 digital thermometer, because you can use it in the ear, on the forehead and also as a room thermometer. And it’s not that you can happen to use them in these ways, it has settings for them, so that it’s really accurate. You can even hang it on the wall if you want to, though ours is just sitting in the dining room cabinet.

This digital thermometer is a huge step up from the very basic one we used previously. Just like the hospital ones, it takes the temperature super-quick – so quick that Chris and I had to triple-check because we were shocked that it could measure it that fast. We’ve used it on both the girls without them batting an eyelid. And we’ve taken their normal temperature so we know how much higher it is when they’re ill. (Hmm, actually, I’ve completely forgotten what it was and didn’t do something sensible and write it down. Will have to do it again tomorrow.) And I’ve used the room thermometer setting a few times to check if it really isn’t cold enough for the heating to come on – now it is definitely cold enough.

So far, we haven’t any illnesses so serious that the Brother Max 3-in-1 digital thermometer has been a life-saver, but I definitely feel safer knowing it’s in the house and it will be coming along in the bags next time we go away.

If you don’t go out and buy the Brother Max 3-in-1 digital thermometer, then at least do make sure you have a decent digital ear thermometer. You can never be too careful.