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Anova intends this to be the directions for using their sous vide machines. As such it fails. There simply are not enough clear directions provided. Very many of the user-contributed recipes are poorly and unclear written as to technique. Those need to be much better-curated. Some examples of issues Anova leaves unanswered: Is there a limit to the amount of product you can cook at one time? When cooking animal flesh, can you put more than one cut (e.g., one pork chop or steak) into a single bag? If so, would you “stack” them one on top of another, or lay them side by side? Do you put the product in the water before it has come to temperature, or after? Many recipes give very large ranges for cooking times, what gives? Do those relate to the thickness of the cut? When the product is done cooking, can/should it be removed immediately, or can it be left in the (gradually cooling) water to keep warm until ready to sear/serve? Is it dangerous if a small amount of air is left in the bag (because it leaves product out of contact with hot water), or is it ok so long as the bag is fully submerged? It is very unfortunate Anova leaves so many basic questions unanswered. Sous vide is a unique technique; I am a skillful home chef but the skills used in other cooking techniques do not directly transfer to sous vide cooking.

The hardware is great. I can’t begin to describe what a game changer sous vide cooking is. If I had it to do over though, I’d buy a base model with no connectivity because the app is a joke. First, the WiFi settings are ridiculous. After trying to connect unsuccessfully many times, I went to the web. I found out that neither your WiFi network name nor your password can be over 15 characters long. Their solution, I kid you not, is to change your network name and password to be shorter (less secure) than it is now. Also, there are many times where the app continues to tell me I need to get within range of the cooker so it can connect. It’ll stick like this with the app 3 inched away from the cooker. Better to just use the manual controls. Beyond that, I don’t understand how hackish their developers must be to not be able to get a simple timer right. It seemed to work on my first two cooks. After that, the timer now starts during the warm up phase. So you end up having to manually time everything anyway. And you have to listen for the cooker to hit the right temperature. The convenience of “set it and forget it” is totally missed with the poor app functionality.

The only way I can get the app to recognize the cooker is to reinstall each time I use the device. Four cooks - four installs. I then have to go through the entire setup process each time. I should be able to plug in the device and start the app to start cooking without having to reinstall each time. Once it is installed and working I love the results but this is getting ridiculous. I will return the device as defective if this happens again. Not only this but you can’t manually control the timer. If I don’t want to reinstall the app each time I use the device I guess I’ll have to use the timer on my phone Update: 6 cooks - 5 reinstalls. It works great after reinstalling the application each time but that is just wrong. I’m sending the device back as defective. There is no way this is the correct behavior. Update: I returned the cooker and received a new one. This one doesn’t have the issue that causes me to reinstall. That was due to a bad unit. I’m still giving the app one star though as it is barely functional. I’m not going to repeat all the issues here because several other reviews cover these in detail but the way the timer works, the interaction with the recipes, the failure to support multiple cookers and the behavior of saved cooks are all issues for me. Now that I have a working cooker, I’m happy with the device but until the app gets some significant updates I can’t recommend it