Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker Nano 2.0

I thought I had the perfect smoked chicken in my charcoal smoker. When done to the proper temperature, the breast would be moist and a dark smoky bark would form. But I experimented with the Anova cooker.All of the whole chicken sous vide recipes called for spatchcock, but I kept my chicken whole in the zip lock bag for 3 hours at 150 F. Then into the charcoal smoker for about 1 1/2 hours until a nice dark brown formed.The big difference is that the moisture does lock into the bird. Even the wings were still moist, and the breast was moist and fork tender. Also, the seasoning was more even throughout the meat.It's different from 4 hours in the smoker without sous vide. Is sous vide smoked chicken better? I would say yes for most people. If you like a strong smoky bark, then straight smoker is probably better for you. But if you want a mild smoke flavor, tender, moist and evenly seasoned, then sous vide is better.And the Anova is super easy to use and does the job well.

Love love love this. Definitely worth getting

We LOVE this product. Great quality and makes meat so easy to cook and so much more tender and juicy. Easy to use. Pretty quiet and super easy to clean.

(Edit: The complaint I had about the micro controller locking up (and locking to the last heater coil setting), hasn't happened again, and I've used it probably a couple dozen times since. So I've added back in more stars the rating.)Got this yesterday, and last night I picked up a tri point roast. Figured this would be a good cut of meat as a first test of this cooking method.The temp and time was easy enough to set, very intuitive touch interface. Put the roast in a bag with seasoning, and set time time for 5 hours, at 130 F. Checked on it periodically, and observed that it displayed the current temp, which floated between 129.9 and 131.1 (this is normal, the processor is constantly adjusting the heating coil power based on input temp). Well, later on I noticed the temp was right at 129.9 and never moved anymore. Went to check the timer on the unit, and the display didn't respond. The water was still circulating, however when I checked the water temp with a meat thermometer, it read just above 134 F. Unplugged and plugged back in the unit, and it confirmed water was now at 134. This was around the 5 hour mark, so I took it out, and sure enough the center of the meat was at 134, a bit higher than I wanted (was wanting to keep it at 130, slightly rarer, as the temp would come up a bit when flaming it on the grill to finish it off).So this loses points for the lockup and overheating issue. I'm assuming that the coil was last set to a temp a bit warmer than the desired water temp, because the uncooked meat is constantly absorbing heat from the water -- so to keep it at 130, i needs to initially have the coil set to something like 135 or 140. So it was probably about midway through the cooking cycle that the lockup happened, and when the meat temp finally equalized, the water came up to 134 and over-cooked the meat.The roast still came out OK, I just had to be a bit more careful when finishing it off on the grill. Still mostly pink in the middle, even cook, and really tender. I highly recommend this cooking method if you like your steaks to be close to restaurant quality. But I'm going to make sure I double-check the temp every half hour next time I use it.

As far as the sous vide, for immersion cooking, I'm perfectly happy with it. It works perfectly, although personally keeping it to 800 watts like the old non-nano version had would have been preferable to me.Before I purchased this unit, I had an opportunity to try out my co-worker's Wancle 850 watt sous vide just to see if I wanted to get into the immersion cooking game, so I have a side-by-side comparison. I'll list pros and cons of each later.As far as Bluetooth connectivity, it suffers. While the unit is still running, I've had it drop connection when my phone is still within 15 feet (no wall separation). Sometimes it will reconnect by opening the app, other times it will not and act as if the unit is powered (plugged in) but not cooking, it's asking you to set time/temp and press 'start cooking' - meanwhile you can hear it running from the other room (in otherwise complete silence). That's not something you want to see when you're halfway through a 48 hour cook. The only way to restore proper connectivity is to (for Android users) go into 'Settings' and force kill the app and re-open it.That being said, Bluetooth isn't all that important to me. Bluetooth has a small range (aka, within my house), if I want to know THAT bad what my Anova is doing, I can walk to the kitchen. The best option for this device would have been the WiFi version for when I'm not home, but I saw a review that convinced me otherwise of spending the extra money for it.Now, as far a comparing the Anova 750 watt Nano to the Wancle 850 watt:Immersion cooking: Tie. They both perform their desired function perfectly. If you stick a thermometer into the water while it's running, you'll see the temperature is accurate down to the tenth. They both do exactly what they were built for.Noise: Wancle wins. Completely silent. The Anova makes a whirring noise that as I sit at my PC 15 feet away, can still hear.Sleekness: Anova wins, hands-down. As you'll see from my photo of them side-by-side, the Wancle is a bit...top heavy, but part of that is for the next review item.Water level selection: Wancle. Both have a min and max for water selection for when the sous vide is submerged. However, with the Anova, it's a fixed point on the body of the unit with a thumbscrew clamp to secure it to whatever container holds your water. The Wancle has multiple height selections to comply with the water line, selectable with a trigger below its top handle (which is what adds to its top heaviness aside of the display).All in all, I'm satisfied with my Anova purchase, but if I had saved $5 by ordering the Wancle, it still performs immersion cooking just as well as the Anova if you don't need the Bluetooth bells and whistles.