Anova AN600-US00 review

What the maker puts in writing

• “Perfect results every time: Never over or undercook your food again. The Anova Precision Cooker Pro circulates water at the exact temperature required for perfectly cooked meals, no matter what’s on your menu.”
• “What to cook: Sous vide… offers the perfect level of doneness for nearly any food. Chicken, fish, vegetables, eggs, beef, lamb, pork, and more, are all ideal foods for sous vide circulation.”
• “Our most powerful sous vide cooker: The Anova Precision Cooker Pro was ruggedized to thrive in the most demanding of kitchens, able to heat up to 100L of water when in a covered container, and run for a minimum of 10,000 hours straight. Constructed of stainless steel, it is drop tested and IPX-7 rated; drop it on the floor or dunk under water, and you can keep on cooking, no problem.”
• “Easy to use: Simply attach the precision cooker to your own pot or container, fill the pot or container with water, add your food in a sealed bag, and cook manually with the built-in controls or with the Anova app”
• “Anova App (free): Control your time and temp directly on the Anova app or directly on the cooker itself.”
• “Anova App (subscription): For $1.99 a month or $9.99 a year (cancel subscription at anytime)… Two week free trial included.”
• From the name: “Pro”, “1200 Watts”, “Black and Silver”
• Reference AN600-US00 · Catalog: 1361 g (48 oz), 351 × 89 × 61 mm (13.8 × 3.50 × 2.40 in)

Ten thousand hours, which is the only service-life figure on this shelf

“run for a minimum of 10,000 hours straight”

10,000 hours is about 416 days of continuous running — thirteen and a half months without stopping.

Which is a real statement about bearings, seals and an element, the three things that wear on a circulator, and nothing else on this shelf publishes anything comparable.

What it is not: a warranty.

One item on this shelf publishes a term. Greater Goods at $89.99: “Backed by 5-year coverage and our St. Louis-based support team.”

Thirteen publish nothing, this one included.

So the shelf has exactly one commitment and exactly one durability figure, and they belong to different products — the cheaper one holding the commitment.

A design claim tells you what the maker expects. A warranty tells you what it will do if the expectation fails. At 10,000 hours the question is what happens at 500.

What the figure pairs with is the other half of the ruggedness case, and together they are the strongest durability pair on this shelf.

“Constructed of stainless steel, it is drop tested and IPX-7 rated; drop it on the floor or dunk under water, and you can keep on cooking, no problem.”

IPX7 means immersible to a meter for thirty minutes. Six items on this shelf publish it: this and all five KitchenBoss units — and on five of those pages it is used for exactly one purpose: you can wash the whole thing. The KitchenBoss G300S at $105.99: “can be cleaned by putting the entire body in water, allowing you to deep clean every crevice of oil stains.”

Only this one adds a drop test.

Which is a professional-kitchen specification rather than a domestic one, and the bullet says so: “the most demanding of kitchens.” A circulator that lives on a bench in a restaurant gets knocked off it.

Across the shelf, the Anova 2.0 at $117.99 manages “water resistant for when accidents happen in the kitchen”, which is not a rating, and seven items publish nothing at all — including the Anova Nano at $68.28, the Anova 3.0 at $169.99, the Breville at $149.95, Greater Goods at $89.99, the Inkbird at $95.99 and the Monoprice at $44.99.

And the one thing a 10,000-hour claim should come with and does not is a service part.

Four items on this shelf publish a removable housing — including this unit’s own sibling. The Anova 3.0 at $169.99: “A removable stainless steel skirt on the cooker’s lower half makes it easy as a twist of the wrist to detach and clean the skirt either by hand or in the dishwasher.” Also Greater Goods at $89.99, the KitchenBoss G322PT at $129.99, and the G320PS and G310PS.

Because mineral scale on the heating element is what ends a circulator’s life — scale insulates the element, it runs hotter to compensate, and eventually it fails — and a sealed body is a body you cannot descale by hand.

The descaling habit is worth stating because no page on this shelf gives it: a cycle of water and white vinegar held warm for half an hour will take scale off an element no cloth can reach. On an IPX-7 body you can run it without worrying; what you cannot do is see the result.

A hundred liters, and the parenthesis that carries it

“able to heat up to 100L of water when in a covered container”

Do the arithmetic. 1200 W into 100 liters of water raises the temperature about 0.17 °C a minute at best, with no losses at all.

From a cold-tap 15 °C to a 65 °C bath is roughly 50 degrees: about five hours of continuous heating, and six with losses.

So the figure is true and it is a statement about what the machine can hold rather than how fast it can get there.

“When in a covered container” is the part doing the work.

A 100-liter open bath at 65 °C loses heat to evaporation faster than 1200 W can replace it. Evaporation is the dominant loss on any water bath, and the surface of a 100-liter container is large. Cover it and the same element holds it indefinitely.

Which is the one physical insight this shelf supports and almost nobody states: insulation is what makes a large bath possible, not watts.

The only other page here to say it is the container kit at $54.99, whose neoprene sleeve “prevents heat from dissipating through the sides… It efficiently stores heat so cooking time is lessened and fuel or electricity is saved” and whose lid is there to “prevent water evaporation.”

That page gets one thing wrong worth correcting: insulation does not shorten a sous vide cook. A cook takes as long as heat takes to reach the center of the food. What insulation does is reduce the heater’s duty cycle — which is exactly what makes a hundred-liter claim possible.

The shelf, on bath volume:

100 L — this, in a covered container 50 L — the KitchenBoss G322PT at $129.99 15 L — Greater Goods at $89.99, the Inkbird at $95.99 2.6 to 4.0 gallons of pot (9.8–15.1 L) — the Monoprice at $44.99, the only one to state it as a pot, which is the version you can check before you buy Nothing — the other nine

And no flow rate is published, which on a hundred-liter claim is the figure that matters most.

20 L/min — the KitchenBoss G330 at $169.99, the G320PS at $159.99, the G322PT at $129.99 16 L/min — the G310PS at $112.52, the G300S at $105.99 8.5 L/min — the Monoprice at $44.99 8 L/min — the Anova 2.0 at $117.99

20 L/min in 100 liters is a full turnover every five minutes, which is slow for a bath with food in it — and the G322PT at $129.99 publishes 20 L/min and claims 50 liters, which is the honest pairing of the two numbers.

This page claims double the volume on no published flow at all.

And the practical shortcut no page on this shelf mentions: fill it from the hot tap. A domestic hot supply often sits at 120 to 140 °F, which is most of the way to a steak temperature — and on a hundred-liter bath it is the difference between an afternoon and twenty minutes.

Twelve hundred watts, the most on this shelf

The shelf, on power:

1200 W — this 1100 W — all five KitchenBoss units, the Anova 3.0 at $169.99, Greater Goods at $89.99, and the Anova 2.0 at $117.99 by its own bullet 1000 W — the Inkbird at $95.99, and the Anova 2.0 by its own title 800 W — the Monoprice at $44.99 Not published — the Anova Nano at $68.28 and the Breville Joule Turbo at $149.95

What wattage buys is heat-up time and nothing else.

Once a bath is at temperature, holding it takes a fraction of the rating. The heater cycles, and what it is making up is evaporation from the surface and conduction through the pot walls.

So “our most powerful sous vide cooker” is accurate and means less than it sounds. The hundred extra watts over the shelf’s common 1100 is an eight per cent advantage on the climb and nothing at all once you are there.

Where it earns its keep is exactly the case bullet three names: a very large bath. In a 100-liter container the difference between 1100 and 1200 W is half an hour of heating.

In a 12-liter pot it is seconds.

No temperature range and no accuracy, which the sixty-eight-dollar Nano gives

The four Anovas on this shelf, in price order:

Nano 2.0, $68.28 — “Temperature : 0˚-92˚C (32˚-197˚F) | +/- 0.1˚C (0.2˚F) accuracy”, 12.8 inches, a fixed clamp, plastic, no wattage Precision Cooker 2.0, $117.99 — no range, no accuracy; 1000 W in its title and “Power 1100 Watts.Power 1100 Watts” in its first bullet; an adjustable clamp, water resistant, 8 L/min Precision Cooker 3.0, $169.99 — no range, no accuracy; 1100 W, dual-band WiFi, a two-line touch screen, a removable dishwasher-safe stainless skirt this, $271 — no range, no accuracy; 1200 W, stainless, 100 L, 10,000 hours, drop tested, IPX-7

So the price quadruples, the durability claims get stronger, and the thermal specification disappears.

Across the whole shelf, four items publish no range: three Anovas and the Breville Joule Turbo at $149.95, which publishes no number of any kind.

What the other five publish:

32–197 °F (0–92 °C) — the Anova Nano at $68.28, the widest here 41–212 °F (5–100 °C) — the Monoprice at $44.99, the only one that reaches boiling 68–203 °F (20–95 °C) — Greater Goods at $89.99 77–210 °F (25–99 °C) — the Inkbird at $95.99 104–194 °F (40–90 °C) — all five KitchenBoss units, the narrowest, and the only floor on this shelf that excludes anything real: chocolate work in the high 80s and low 90s

Which leaves a buyer of this unit unable to answer two questions: what is the coldest and hottest it will hold.

Why the pattern is not sinister. A maker publishes the number it is selling on. Here the argument is that it will survive a professional kitchen, and hours, a drop test and IPX-7 prove it. The thermal performance is taken as read, which for a fourth-generation flagship is not unreasonable.

But the omission that matters more than the range is calibration.

Stability is how steadily a machine holds a reading. Justness is whether the reading is right.

A probe that reads 1.5 °C high holds 1.5 °C high all day and the display never flickers — and on a 100-liter bath run for days, that error applies to everything in it at once.

Only two items on this shelf let you correct it. Greater Goods at $89.99: “built-in calibration lets you fine-tune the reading against a trusted thermometer.” The Inkbird at $95.99: “a calibration function (adjustable from -10F to +10F).”

No Anova has one — which is the specification you would most want on the unit designed to run hardest and largest.

And the way the page describes the technique is the right one, even without numbers. “circulates water at the exact temperature required” and “Never over or undercook” — which is the premise: the bath is the ceiling, so the center and the surface arrive at the same temperature and neither goes past it. Its sibling the 3.0 at $169.99 says it best: “consistent, edge-to-edge perfect results, with virtually no risk of overcooking your food.”

The one machine on this shelf that gives that premise up is the Breville Joule Turbo at $149.95, whose Turbo mode runs the bath hotter than the target to get there faster — “complex algorithms and powerful cloud computing” — and that mode can overcook, because overshoot is the mechanism being managed.

Built-in controls, which the page is careful to mention

“cook manually with the built-in controls or with the Anova app”

Worth marking, because it is the thing most connected circulators on this shelf leave you to infer.

Nine items here have an app. The four Anovas — free for time and temperature, $1.99 a month or $9.99 a year for the recipe library and your own cook history, which is the only recurring cost disclosed anywhere on this shelf · four KitchenBoss units, all free · the Inkbird at $95.99, free, 2.4 GHz · and the Breville Joule Turbo at $149.95, where the app is the product: its headline Turbo feature needs “powerful cloud computing”, which is a server rather than a phone.

Only two pages state in writing that the machine works without the app: this one, and the KitchenBoss G322PT at $129.99 — “does not require mandatory WiFi or APP for basic operation.”

Why it matters. An app can be renamed, replaced, merged or retired, and a cloud service can be switched off. The KitchenBoss G330 at $169.99 is the example on this very shelf: it names the “VeSync” app where three of its siblings name “KitchenBoss”.

And Greater Goods at $89.99 makes the whole argument in its product title: “No App or WiFi Needed” — “no app, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accounts, or pairing required”, with a display “at a 45° angle toward you” so the phone is unnecessary in the first place.

What this page does not publish, unlike its sibling the 3.0 at $169.99, is the WiFi band. Dual band is what the 3.0 lists as its first improvement — “We upgraded to use dual band WiFi for improved connectivity” — and the problem it solves is at setup, where a combined-band router advertising one network name can make a 2.4-only device awkward to pair.

Nor does it describe its display. The 3.0 publishes “a two-line touch screen display” so time and temperature are visible at once. Four KitchenBoss units publish a color TFT screen with 25 chef recipes and 4 custom modes. This page says “built-in controls” and stops.

What is not published

No temperature range and no accuracy figure, as above.

No flow rate, as above — on the hundred-liter claim.

No timer range. Three items on this shelf publish one: 1 minute to 99 hours on Greater Goods at $89.99 with an audible alert and an overtime counter, up to 99 hours on the Inkbird at $95.99, up to 99 hours 59 minutes on the KitchenBoss G330 at $169.99. No Anova on this shelf publishes a timer at all — and on a machine rated for 10,000 hours of continuous running, the long cooks are precisely the use case: brisket at 155 °F for 24 to 36 hours, short ribs for 48, tough cuts for 72.

And no page here except Greater Goods says what its timer does at zero. It holds temperature and counts the overtime rather than switching off — which is correct, because switching off a bath with food in it is a food-safety problem rather than a convenience.

No low-water behavior. Greater Goods at $89.99 is the only page on this shelf to publish one: “Clearly marked MIN/MAX lines show where to fill, and if water runs low, heating stops as the status light turns red; simply refill and reconfirm your settings to continue.” Which matters most on the unit claiming the largest bath and the longest running — because evaporation is what ends a long cook, and a refill that does not silently resume is a thing to know in advance. And one KitchenBoss publishes the protection: the G322PT at $129.99, “built with overheating protection and auto shut-off.”

No minimum water depth. This unit’s own sibling the 3.0 at $169.99 names the requirement without giving the figure — “nearly any pot that is deep enough to meet the minimum water depth requirements” — and the G322PT at $129.99 says “low minimum water depth” without a number. Fourteen items, no figure. This is the widest body on this shelf at 89 mm and the third longest at 351 mm.

No clamp description. Twelve items on this shelf describe how they attach; bullet four here says only “attach the precision cooker to your own pot or container”. Its siblings are specific: a fixed clamp on the Nano at $68.28, an adjustable clamp on the 2.0 at $117.99 and the 3.0 at $169.99. A fixed bracket grips one rim thickness well and a thick rolled rim, a plastic container lip or a cast enamel edge badly; an adjustable screw clamp spans the lot.

No removable housing, as above — which its own $169.99 sibling has.

No motor type and no noise figure. One item publishes a figure: the Inkbird at $95.99, “less than 40dB”, quieter than a refrigerator. Six name a brushless DC motor — all five KitchenBoss units and Greater Goods. No Anova mentions its motor, and on a machine designed to run for 416 days the pump is both the thing you hear and the thing that wears.

No calibration, as above.

No warranty, as above — and the 10,000-hour claim is where a term would have cost the maker least and meant the most.

No bag sealing. Not at least one of the eighteen items on this shelf is or includes a vacuum sealer. Bullet four says “add your food in a sealed bag” and leaves the sealing to you — and the technique needs the air out, because a bag with air in it floats and the part above the water is not cooking. Which is the failure that breaks the edge-to-edge result these pages promise. The container kit at $54.99 is the only item here that addresses flotation, with a 304 stainless rack; the Inkbird at $95.99 is the only page to offer an alternative vessel, “a sealed bag or glass jar”.

No cord length, which no item on this shelf publishes.

Availability

Read on the day this page was built: $270 at the American Amazon shop.

Read from Keepa on the day this page was last revised; stock and price both move without notice.