I Steamed, Toasted, Baked, and Air Fried to Test Anova's New Countertop Oven

Back in 2023, I tested the Anova Precision Oven, a powerhouse countertop oven that uses smart technology to level up cooking. This included an app and steam injection, which lets you bake crusty bread or parcook vegetables and spuds. I liked it more than I thought I would, though it did have some notable flaws. But earlier this year, Anova revealed an upgraded version of its original Precision oven: It’s bigger, it’s pricier, but is it any better? I cooked with it for weeks to find out. 

The Tests

• Setup Test: I set up the oven and connected it to WiFi and the Anova app on my phone. I noted how long this process took, if it was easy, and if the app signal was strong throughout testing. 
• Slice of Toast Test: To see how well the built-in steam-toast feature worked, I toasted a single slice of store-bought bread in the oven. 
• Toast Heatmap Test: I wanted to see how even the heat distribution was, so I spread out six slices of store-bought bread in the oven and toasted them per the oven’s suggested setting. I noted how evenly they toasted on the top and bottom. 
• Frozen Pizza Test: I used the oven’s suggested instructions to cook a frozen pizza. I noted the settings and temperature used, and the final results. 
• Roast Chicken Test: I used the included probe to track the internal temperature of a roast chicken and followed the app’s suggested recipe to cook it. 
• App Test: In all of my tests, I used the app to either track a recipe, adjust the time or other settings, choose a recipe, and more. 
• Real-World Tests: I used the Anova Precision Oven to cook a variety of meals, including convection-cooked salmon, toasted ciabatta, and steam-roasted fingerling potatoes. 

What We Learned

The Anova Precision Oven Is a Techy Countertop Oven

This ain’t your standard toaster oven. Instead, this behemoth gives Star Trek replicator vibes: It’s sleek, has a touchscreen, and also sports a built-in camera that recognizes food and suggests cook times and temperatures. In short, it’s techy. You can control the machine entirely from the app, which I found my smartphone-dependent self doing. (I think I used the touchscreen on the oven three or four times.) The only glitch I encountered was when I couldn’t watch the livestream of my roast chicken—a problem that resolved itself the next day when it was time to bake pizza. 

While I’m normally skeptical of anything that tries hard to be technologically-advanced, I was duly impressed by the Anova’s functions. The app was easy to use, letting me make adjustments to time and temperature, and the food recognition function was surprisingly accurate. I only had one instance where it incorrectly pegged some fingerling potatoes as Brussels sprouts. 

The Anova also has a “sous vide” mode, which basically uses steam to cook food gently, as well as an air fryer function that resulted in crispy chicken skin during my tests. I also liked the plug-in probe, which is not exactly innovative but lets you track the internal temperature of foods—and it was accurate when I cross-checked with an instant-read thermometer. 

The Anova Precision Oven Rocked Toast 

While it took nine minutes, the Anova made some of the most evenly toasted toast I’ve ever toasted. This was true of the single slice as well as the six pieces that I used in my heatmap test. All of them were evenly golden brown and crunchy, the epitome of toasted bread. 

Part of this is because the oven has a powerful (and loud) convection fan. The other large part is the steam: It condenses on the surface of the bread, causing a layer of starchy gel to form (aptly called gelatinization), which crisps up and gets a nice toasty color. The only con to this process is that adding steam adds time, so you’ll have to pay the price of patience for your perfectly golden bread. 

The Oven and App Are Loaded With Useful Features

I’ve touched on this already, but the Anova lets you customize and control everything: temperature, time, steam percentage, heating element, fan speed, and more. The app even lets you watch your food cook in real time and offers a post-cook video recap with satisfying play-by-play footage. I liked the count-up timer that displayed on the oven, which showed how much time had elapsed after the food finished cooking. 

The app was surprisingly good, too. Normally, I rather despise apps—they’re often ineffective and glitchy, and I’d rather manually input instructions. But the Anova app was seamlessly integrated with the oven, and the signal stayed strong throughout the cooking process. The notifications were actually useful, alerting me to next steps and when the food was finished. I could even follow a recipe on the app, engaging each step manually or just running through the whole thing in one go. This was useful when I experimented with steaming, which takes some getting used to. 

It’s Easy to Use but Slow to Cook

The Achilles heel of the Anova oven, besides its bulk, is that its fancy features can increase cooktime. For example, instead of just roasting some fingerling potatoes, the Anova suggests steaming them for 15 to 20 minutes to parcook them before roasting them for another 20 minutes. That’s double the time it usually takes me to cook potatoes. Ditto with frozen pizza, which I didn’t really need to steam before baking. Sure, the crust seemed puffier than it would have been baked in a standard oven, but it didn’t magically turn into an artisan pie. Obviously, you can skip steps on the app or manually program what you want from the oven, cutting out the steaming and other features, but then you might as well just get a no-frills countertop oven.  

The Verdict

The Anova is a tech-lover's oven. While you can manually input time, temperature, and other functions, the oven is built to identify foods and cook them via presets: In my tests, it recognized a whole chicken, frozen pizza, and bread slices. The app is chock-full of features, letting you follow recipes, adjust settings, and even watch real-time video of your food cooking, as well as footage once it’s finished. A probe attaches to the oven so you can monitor a food’s internal temperature. It cooked food well (particularly toast) and was easy to use.

The steam feature is a boon if you’re into baking bread; it was also nice for parcooking vegetables. 

All in all, if you like tinkering with appliances and are the type to have your house connected to Google Home, then you’ll probably like the Anova. If you want a straightforward oven that’ll do what you want it to do, you might find it overkill. Longevity is also a cause for pause with this oven (will it get glitchy in a few years?), as is the exorbitant price. 

Pros

Cooking with the Anova Precision Oven 2.0 was space-agey cool: It was satisfying to put in a frozen pizza and have the oven recognize it and offer instructions. It only messed up once with halved fingerling potatoes, which it mistook for Brussels sprouts—which is kinda fair? 

Connecting the app to the oven was mostly painless—it took about 10 minutes to connect, but the signal stayed strong and didn’t drop. And the app was nice, too: It lets you adjust time, temperature, steam percentage, and more, as well as follow recipes and watch food cooking. Basically, if you’re a tinkerer and love customization, the Anova’s got a (bajillion) options for you. 

Everything cooked well in the oven, but toast was where it really shone: In my heatmap toast test, nearly every piece was identical, save for a slightly darker center toast. Having tested other toaster ovens, I was impressed. The steam option is fun, and if you’re into baking bread, it helps get that crusty exterior on a boule. 

Cons 

It’s a big oven (and it weighs 52 pounds!), though the interior didn’t feel much more spacious than, say, the Breville Smart Oven Pro. It makes a gentle buzzing sound when running, and takes a while to cool down, so you’ll hear the noise even after you’re done cooking.

Following recipes on the app was pretty intuitive, though I did run into some hiccups. I was following the instructions for a roasted potato recipe, which required steaming the spuds at 250°F. However, when I tried to set the steam temperature on the oven, it said it couldn’t go above 220°F for this feature. When I engaged the recipe on the app, though, it adjusted the temperature to 250°F without a hitch. Puzzling! Speaking of steam, it took some getting used to—I think it’s more of a “nice to have” feature if you like baking bread or want to steam some broccoli or spuds before roasting. It adds a good amount of cook time, too: For example, I wanted to toast some ciabatta slices, and the oven started with steam and finished with toasting, a process that took 10 minutes. 

In some ways, this is the oven’s biggest con: It has so many options. You can air fry, convection bake, steam (and adjust the steam percentage), broil, dehydrate, bake, change the heating elements (top, rear, bottom, top and rear, top and bottom)... and within each category is near-endless variation. You can even link an Amazon Alexa device to the oven. It’s overwhelming! 

While everything I cooked came out fine, I did have to tweak the temperature and time of both the chicken and the pizza. Both were a little wan, so I bumped the temperature up and cooked them for a few minutes more. The oven is limited to a high temperature of 482°F, too. 

Finally, it’s incredibly expensive—more than double most countertop ovens, which makes it a little disappointing that the only accessories are a single baking pan and the probe. 

Key Specs

• Exterior dimensions: 23 x 14 x 20 inches
• Interior dimensions: 16.4 x 10 x 12. 4 inches
• Water tank volume: 10 cups 
• Weight: 52 pounds
• Functions: Steam, roast, convection bake, air fry, sous vide, toast, dehydrate, proof, broil, manual
• Temperature range: 75°F-482°F

Why We’re the Experts 

• Grace Kelly is a senior editor at Serious Eats, where she’s been testing gear for over three years. 
• She’s worked at America’s Test Kitchen and in restaurants. 
• She first tested the Anova Precision Oven in 2023.