Anova announced the launch of its connected, countertop steam + convection oven today. The Anova Precision Oven is a wifi-enabled, multi-stage combi oven can now be purchased worldwide for $599.
Anova, which is owned by Electrolux, made its mark in food tech with its consumer sous vide circulator, which helped kick off a consumer sous vide boom a few years back. Anova is one of the only surviving companies of that first consumer-focused sous vide circulator cohort (RIP Sansaire and Nomiku), and a smart combi oven is the first new category product for the company… though the oven does have a sous vide mode.
As Scott Heimendinger explained to us at CES this past year, the oven – which was first announced at Smart Kitchen Summit 2016 – can create 100 percent humidity in the cooking cavity, which promises to keep foods juicy because there is nowhere for water inside the food to evaporate into. It’s like cooking sous vide, just without the cumbersome water bath or the need to finish cooking in another appliance. In addition to keeping precise temperatures to cook something like a whole chicken low and slow, Anova’s multi-stage cook programs will automatically drop the humidity and raise the temperature to create a crispy skin.
“This is our magnum opus,” Stephen Svajian, Co-Founder and CEO of Anova told me by phone this week. “Everything has led up to this point.”
Beyond traditional meat proteins, however, Anova’s oven can also cook everything from vegetables to crusty breads. Out of the box, the accompanying mobile app will have automatic cook programs for 100 items, with more to come.
With precise temperature controls and robust steam cooking tools, Anova seems to be carving out its own prosumer space in the connected countertop oven market. The Tovala is a cheaper ($299) and offers steam cooking, and is geared more towards Tovala’s own meals and other CPG meals like frozen entrees. The June is also less expensive ($499), and while it doesn’t have steam cooking, it does offer automated food recognition. The Brava is more expensive ($1,095), and cooks with light rather than steam, but also allows multi-zone simultaneous cooking (meat and veggies on the same tray at the same time).
While this is a new product for Anova, the company is not abandoning its sous vide circulator roots. Svajian said that Anova’s sous vide cookers have seen 100 percent year-over-year growth, partially attributable to the pandemic and people cooking from their homes more.
While purchases of the new Anova oven commence today, the devices won’t actually ship until a little bit later: Sept. 28 for North America and December 2020 for the rest of the world. Hopefully we can get our hands on a review unit to see firsthand how hot it really is.
UPDATE: A previous version of this post incorrectly listed the price of the Tovala as $349.
