Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker Mini, 850 Watts, Black and Orange, App Enabled

This thing works perfect. Simply screw it on to a pot or container and let it rip. Best way to cook steaks is by sou vide and this little device makes it worth it. Doesn’t make much noise, easy to use, and fits about any pot you may have. Keeps the temperature the whole time. Worth every penny.

Parfait

This is an excellent immersion circulator for the price. I think of it as a "starter" immersion circulator for sous vide cooking. I wanted to try this method of cooking, but did not want to make a big investment. This cooker works great. It does what it is supposed to do. The only downside is you have to be connected to the internet and use your phone to control it. The temperature control is spot on, and it is not noisy at all.

Im torn on this thing - on the one hand it's $30. Sometimes even $20. It will heat water to roughly the temperature you set via the app, and that's it. Don't count on it to do anything else, or even be particularly good at that. But - if that's all you need then it's probably fine. For one, the thermometer is surprisingly off. Like, i didn't think it was possible to be that far off with a modern computer controlled thermometer, but it was pretty consistently up to 8f off from multiple other thermometers. Which is like, the whole reason you buy a "precision" cooker. Worse is that it seems relatively consistent in how off it is which means they just either didn't calibrate it or did it wrong, neither of which is particularly confidence inspiring. For some reason it also just stops reading below about 47f, which means that you can't use it to do things like quickly defrost bagged food. The circulator will run, which helps, but you cant use the heater to bring the bath up at all since it needs to be set below 40f. It also sits weirdly high in whatever container you put it in because of the placement of the little pot hook. That means that you have to fill whatever you're using almost to the brim, and in some cases in my use right up to the brim. During some cooks, it would take as little as a few hours for the water to evaporate below the minimum fill line, at which point it just stops - no notification, no light, no noise, no nothing - which is incredibly dangerous for a device that is meant to run sometimes for literally days. Where it really falls apart is the app. It's bad. Really bad. From the start it needs your wifi credentials. Why? I have no idea since even with the subscription i never got a notification, or was able to connect to the cooker remotely. When i tried using it away from home i had to completely re-set up the device from a hotspot on my phone, even though after it showed i was connected over bluetooth before. Every time it starts it asks you to purchase their subscription. So what exactly do you get for this subscription? As far as i can tell some recopies that you can look up online anyway and that's pretty much it. I wouldn't even be that annoyed with the subscription... EXCEPT - there's one subscription feature that i'm going to rail against - the one for multi-cooker support. Having to purchase a subscription be be able to use two devices within the same app is so asinine, user hostile and poorly planned on the part of Anova i won't ever be able to recommend any of their products. Not only do you have to pay for the privilege of buying two of them, but swapping between devices within the app is a nightmare. It's buried in your account for some reason, instead of just being able to switch at the top where it shows your connection, or heavens forbid just being connected to both over the network. It also takes *forever* to connect to the other device, and fails occasionally even though both are connected to the same wifi. In theory, i'm not really opposed to this device. It kind of does what it sets out to do, be a really cheap immersion circulator that maybe makes money by throwing some ease of use features behind a paywall. But the failure of the app to either do anything well or even allow you to use all the items you already purchased make this a terrible deal on every front. Spend a bit more (not even that much) and buy almost literally any other one on the market.

I got the Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker Mini, 850 Watts, 2024 Model and it has completely changed the way I make L. reuteri yogurt and other recipes at home. The setup is simple and the app makes it easy to control the temperature precisely. For my yogurt, maintaining a steady temperature is key and this device does it perfectly. I’ve been able to get consistent, creamy results every time without worrying about hot spots or fluctuations. It heats up quickly and holds temperature very accurately. I’ve also used it for eggs, meat, and vegetables, and everything cooks evenly and stays juicy. The mini size is nice for my kitchen since it doesn’t take up much space, but it’s still powerful enough to handle several jars of yogurt at once. Cleaning is easy too. The stainless steel part detaches and can be wiped down quickly, and the rest of the unit doesn’t get messy. If you want precise temperature control for yogurt, sous vide cooking, or experimenting with recipes, this mini cooker works exactly as advertised and makes the process simple and reliable.