Every household has someone in it that cannot be trusted with expensive precision thermometers. In my house, that is me. I have never broken, drowned, melted or otherwise abused a Thermapen because I have never had one. My lesser victims reads like a who's who. My current thermometer is bent at the tip, burned at the other end and since it only reads to 302º I was forced to learn to make toffee without it.
I did take advantage of a recent open box sale to buy at Thermoworks and adopted a purple
ThermoPop ® with rotating display for $19 and a matching
Timestick ® $19.
It probably was a mistake to buy them both at the same time since it gave me an excuse to spend a whole day mindlessly recording the temperature of my coffee then plunging the thermometer into an ice slurry so I could use my new timer in the count-up mode to test the response time of the thermometer.
The thermometer does work as advertised. It is within one degree in 5-6 seconds and done by 8 seconds. It may be the fastest I have owned. The rotating display is surprisingly useful. Have not tested the splash-proof feature yet. At $19 I would rate it an excellent buy--cheap enough to save as a backup when the Thermapen is in for service. At $29, a bit less of a value.
The TimeStick is also very useful. The one handed operation is very helpful. Clock, timer, and count-up mode. It would be picky to beat it up for a winpy magnet and a display that is a bit on the small side and not backlit, but those improvements would make it practically perfect and a steal at the asking price of $25. As it is, it is a value at the open box price of $19.