I use analogue I have also found that digital ones painfully poor I get readings that are more than 50% apart with some of mine. The things I look for are actually easy a well mounted 'number card' The ones sold for reptiles are often paper and not well mounted so they move. The other thing I look for is a calibration screw so if I test it (salt test is easy EASY and accurate) and it is wrong it can be corrected. I found this one (western instruments brass faced one http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita.../dp/B0007VWEQA), to be very good out of the box, accurate and consistant (I have 7 all read within 5%) the digital ones are all over the board no two read closer than 7% and many or farther than 20% I can live with 7 but 20 is a bit much.
There are very accurate digital ones avaliable but must be serviced before use and be perfectly clean, they really would be to complicated to use in relation to reptiles and too costly to toss when it was no longer working (http://www.thomassci.com/Instruments...ature-Meter/?=)
Digital thermometers are bad all across the board so buying a good one is hard (a good one... big price tag http://www.globalscientificsupply.co...ith_probe.html ) . If you look at the specs of the thomas I posted ubove the temp accuracy is 1ºC with is as close to 2ºF as makes no difference. I usually tell people buy three and check them against each other or buy a stick on liquid crystal one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_thermometer) they typically have an accuracy of 0.5ºF and although the use stuck on things is limited and the range of ones for aquariums is not useful they are accurate so they can be used to check the cheap (sub 100$ digital ones.) read your spec sheet it will tell you what the accuracy is expected to be if you check one that is farther than that you can return it!
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