Accurate and feature rich immersion cooker!
I purchased this in Feb 2023. I wanted a reasonable amount of time before submitting a review, not only detailing what I thought about its performance and my first impressions - but also my assessment of it's durability and reliability over the course of 12+ months. This is a really nice immersion cooker. For the price, it holds its weight very well against the big brand models thats 2-3x the cost. I've used this model about 25-30 times in the last 14 months. I've cooked beef steaks, roasts, tenderloins, fishand brisket. All cooked wonderfully with accurate water temp. I tested numerously at different stages of cooking with my instant thermometer. Reflected temp is dead on. On a few recipes, there is a small trial and error on temp and cooking time to nail your own personal taste and texture preference. I record my perfect temp and times and every cook after that comes out perfect. With steaks, chops, roasts and tenderloins, I will always sous vide as my first option. Juiciest and tender from all other methods I've used. The only con (which is relative) is the amount of time needed to cook. Sous vide method is not the fastest but quite set and forget cooking that requires very little monitoring and affords a wide margin of error. I use cast iron or my food torch to brown food after sous vide is done. Comes out great. The inkbird app for this model works awesome. I've never had it fail. You can open the app and monitor cooking time, verify current temp, modify temp, modify cooking time, get alerts for low liquid level, among other things. Once connected to your home network, you can control it remotely from your phone, anywhere that your phone has internet. If there's one point of criticism, it's that I've seen other models circulate the water with more turbulence. I'm guessing those models have either larger impeller or faster rpm on the impeller. That being said, I'm not convinced it's relevant here as I've never had the heater not maintain temp despite the size and volume of food I've cooked in the container. I'd have to to test it in a really big volume container, I guess - but I don't have a need to get one bigger than the one I have (12 quart). Maybe one other area may be the spring clip that secures the heater to the container. It's holding up great so far after a year's use, but I'm not sure if this mechanism is better than a screw and knob style retention system. I'll revisit, maybe, after another year of use. So far, so good though. This is my first sous vide cooker - and I never thought I'd love it this much. Sous vide is a method every casual to seasoned cook should try regardless of brand of cooker you use. The method is just that good and forgiving. Results are awesome. If you want a good bang for the buck, this inkbird should be worth an audition. I've never looked back. Read more