I may have a bit of a gadget problem. If something comes out, is small (I have a small house), and promises to make a tough situation easier, I’ll probably buy it. I think that’s how I ended up with my current thermometer collection. I have five. Then Braun showed me the wonder of the No Touch + Forehead thermometer. If you want to know how it’s changed my life for the better you’ll first have to understand the challenges my five other thermometers caused.
Part of my thermometer collection
It started with a couple of digital oral thermometers, your basic, no frills, I think one came home from the hospital with us when our oldest was born, thermometers. For an adult they are fine, they do the job, they don’t take up a lot of space, and they are financially accessible. For my six year old they are confounding. A temperature taking at my house sounds like this – “Keep it under your tongue! No, don’t bite it! Why are you taking it out of your mouth?!? YES IT’S SUPPOSED TO BEEP!!! Put it UNDER YOUR TONGUE!!!!” And as we all know, sick kids love it when you lose your mind. Plus taking my youngest’s temperature with this type of thermometer-never going to happen!
So I did research. The first one that I bought shines lights and tells you the temperature remotely! You need to line up two circles of light until they become one and hold it steady (HA!) until you get a reading. It is always on and it also tells you the ambient temperature in the room (look closely at the above picture, it was a lovely 70.3 degrees in my home on the day I took the photo), and undoubtably you will need to put in new batteries when your kid is sick because the thermometer has been so busy telling you the ambient temperature in the cabinet in the bathroom. It’s also really hard to use on yourself. $80 when I purchased it, not to mention the batteries we run through.
The next one is a temporal artery thermometer. You need to run it over the child’s forehead. Okay when they are awake, total bummer if you are in parent stealth mode and attempting to take a temperature when they are sleeping. It doesn’t light up so you need a light nearby to see the reading and it beeps the entire time you are using it- did I say stealth mode, I meant stampede mode. $70 for something that constantly beeps.
Thermometers and wine, or how I deal with flu season.
And then I was invited to see Braun’s No Touch Forehead thermometer. It’s magical. My favorite feature- no beeping!!! It also convinced my almost four year old to go to bed. I wish I could tell you it folds laundry too but they haven’t perfected that technology yet. They spent over three years in development on this already, could you imagine the R+D budget for a thermometer that folds laundry?
The nitty gritty. The Braun No Touch + Forehead allows you to take a temperature by placing the thermometer on the forehead, right between the eyebrows, or just pointing it at the forehead within two inches. Do you want to use the no touch feature but you are spatially challenged? Don’t worry! It will tell you if you are close enough or not by displaying FWD on the large, backlit screen until you hit the sweet spot for taking the temperature.
Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy temperature taking!
The feature that convinced my almost four year old to go to bed? The color coded display. The screen lights up based on the temperature reading. Green-normal temp, yellow-keep an eye on it, and red – for yeah, that’s a fever. When my son was demanding medicine as a delay tactic for going to sleep, I took his temperature, showed him the green screen, and that alone convinced him he wasn’t sick and didn’t need any medicine, because obviously me telling him that over and over again was not good enough. To be fair he was in the yellow zone earlier and had been fighting a cold, but at this point in the evening it was a total bedtime delay tactic. I’ve also told my boys that green AND yellow mean they are ok. It’s just easier for all involved.
My No Touch + Forehead thermometer was gifted to me by Braun, but the review is entirely my own, and after trying it I would have gone out and spent the $60 MSRP to be an owner. It doesn’t beep, it lights up, and it convinced my son to go to bed. I’d be a fool not to own one!
1 comment
Woah! What a cool product!