Wolf & Fin

Anova Precision Oven

We finally received the Anova Precision Oven today and immediately began checking it out. Here are the initial impressions of our unit. First we'll start with the packaging.

The unit arrived safe and sound. The box was able to successfully withstand it's journey with FedEx from Anova's warehouse to our front door step. Inside the box the oven and accessories were securely held in place by thick Styrofoam. We removed the accessories and gave them a good cleaning with soap and water and set them to the side to dry while moving the oven into place.

The oven is much lighter than anticipated, however, that's not necessarily a bad thing. For the price point the oven appears to be reasonably made. We understand there is always a tradeoff between cost and build quality and what you get appears to be inline with expectations.

We plugged the oven in and began the pairing process. You do this by holding the WiFi icon for about 5 seconds. If successful, you'll be presented with a 4 digit code to enter into the Anova Oven application. Once you enter the code you select the WiFi network you want to join, provide the correct password, and you are good to go.

We were delighted to see that you can add multiple users to the oven, more on this later. While adding the second user, we were prompted to upgrade the firmware to version 1.0.1. We complied and everything was in working order a few minutes later. The oven comes with a quick start guide and instructions to follow a procedure to prepare the heating elements prior to use. As noted in the quick start guide, the procedure emits a smell of oil being burned off from the heating elements.

We noticed two things immediately. First the oven causes our lights to flicker. Second, the light bulb inside the oven didn't work. First things first, we decided to address the light bulb. Thankfully, inside the guide are instructions on how to replace the light bulb. While removing the four screws we learned that one of the screws appeared to be stripped. Instead of fighting it we decided to carefully swing the cover to the side, reseat the bulb, then securely fasten the 3 remaining good screws. This is kind of disappointing consider how much the oven costs, however, we were able to successfully get the light bulb to work.

Quick note on the light bulb, it appears some type of material, either felt or neoprene was used to seal the glass shield over the light bulb. I'm sure the folks at Anova designed this well, however, it will be interesting to see if it keeps the steam out of the light fixture and internal electronics. We'll keep an eye on this to see how the oven ages with time.

The lights flickering is a whole other can of worms. We were able to find a few posts online complaining about the exact same issue. Our opinion is that the flickering from lights caused by the oven gives us a headache. We're going to test to see how bad it actually is and if acceptable see how Anova addresses this issue.

We have a chicken roasting in the oven and so far, everything seems to be working for the most part. We did notice one issue with the Anova Oven application if multiple users each try to use their phone to check on the oven's status. It appears the second user simply using the application will change the oven settings disrupting the cook. We hope Anova addresses this quickly as this bug could easily ruin a meal. We'll keep you posted and keep an eye out for the recipe.