If you're looking for the best sous vide circulator under $100, we've got the information you need to buy the right machine.
Even if you're not on a budget, you may want to consider one of these inexpensive circulators, and here's why: The higher-priced name brands are made in China, just like the lower cost circulators: this includes Anova and Joule. The quality of the higher-priced name brands might be better, but it's hard for sure that's the case.
Immersion circulators are simple devices: all they do is move water around and hold it at a set temperature. There's really not a lot to them, so there's no reason to believe that paying less for an off-brand product will result in a huge reduction in quality.
It's entirely up to you, but we think there are a lot of great options for sous vide circulators under $100; there are even some decent models under $50.
We look at all the models on Amazon under $100 and do a micro-review of each; an asterisk indicates a recommended circulator. We also discuss the features in a sous vide circulator that are important to look at, including power, accuracy, user interface, size, attachment design, noise, Internet connectivity, and more. So if you have different criteria than us, you can find a model that best fits your needs.
Unfortunately, off-brand circulators can go in and out of stock frequently, so we apologize in advance if a product we link to is not available.
For more on sous vide cooking, see:
Why Have Prices on Sous Vide Circulators Fallen?
Just like other technology that catches on, what was once a spendy proposition is now quite affordable. Sous vide circulators have dropped from a high price of around $1000 down to $100-200. Now, you can find many immersion circulators under $100, and even under $50.
What's driven prices down? Primarily competition. Just a few years ago, you had only a few options: Anova, Joule, and a few others that we reviewed a couple of years ago. If you were willing to spend more, you had some other options as well (PolyScience, for example).
Today, there are hundreds of immersion circulators on the market, and the prices have dropped to reflect the competition in the market. Even the big makers, Anova and Joule, have introduced lower-priced options--but as far as we know, none of the brand names offer an option under $100. The one exception is the Instant Pot Accu Slim, which gets great reviews but is only 800 watts; for reasons we'll explain in a minute, we like circulators that are at least 1000 watts.
About Sous Vide
Sous vide has become hugely popular in recent years, and with good reason: it's an easy, inexpensive way to upgrade your cooking game. It makes perfectly cooked steaks easy, tough proteins a thing of the past, and creme bruleé one of the easiest desserts imaginable. Visualize perfect, crisp-tender veggies and easy homemade yogurt. Never eat a dry chicken breast again.
Sous vide is a French term that translates as "under vacuum." The original sous viders vacuum-sealed food to cook and easily keep ready at serving temperature. Sous vide was initially used in institutional settings such as hospitals and prisons because it simplified the task of serving hundreds of people at a time.
In the 1970s, some professional chefs began to adopt the method for many of the same reasons: it was an easy way to prep food for many people at once and to hold it at serving temperature until it was needed; it also makes it easy to keep food at the perfect doneness temperature. The method was used exclusively in professional settings until the 2010s, when Nathan Myhrvold released his Modernist Cuisine books, which began as a text on how to sous vide. Myhrvold was a layman chef (and a literal rocket scientist) who became interested in the sous vide technique. When he couldn't find helpful literature on the method, he decided to write his own. (The books became quite a bit more than just sous vide, they became a treatise on modernist cooking. But according to Myhrvold himself, their foundations are in sous vide.)
Sous vide has since grown into a hugely popular cooking method. People love the hands-offedness of it and the ease of creating delicious, foolproof, near-perfect dishes. Sous vide is not a fast method--in fact, it's been called the new "slow cooking," which is accurate--but because it requires almost no monitoring (even less than a slow cooker), you can go off and do other things without any worry of burning or drying out your dinner, even if you leave it in the sous vide cooker for hours longer than you planned.
Today, there are different schools of thought on how to sous vide. People have adapted different ways to use the technology, and they all work. Our particular lineage--Nathan Myhrvold's--is that sous vide "frees you from the tyranny of the clock" (a quote from this article). But if you have different interests, there are plenty of ideas out there for you.
For this reason, we're a little disappointed that most of the new generation of immersion circulators come with timers, and a few even require that you use a timer when setting up your cook. Apparently, sous vide has grown far beyond Myhrvold's vision of it. But the truth is that watching the clock is only necessary for a few dishes, while for the vast majority, you only have to worry about the minimum cook time, which frees you up in a lot of ways. As great as sous vide results are, we think that this is the true beauty of sous vide cooking.
Is Sous Vide Easy to Use?
Sous vide is extremely easy to use. There are two primary tools for sous vide: the immersion circulator:
And the water oven:
Both provide a way to heat water and hold it at a precise temperature. For example, you can heat the water to 131F for a perfectly medium rare steak, and the steak will stay at that temp no matter how long it sits in the water bath (it can't overcook--though the texture can change if it sits for several hours).
Immersion circulators are currently winning the technology battle, probably because they're smaller, cheaper, and easier to use--you just have to supply your own cooking vessel.
This article reviews immersion circulators only.
Sous vide immersion circulators are simple tools, and so are also pretty simple to use. All you really have to do is set the temperature, the timer if desired (or necessary), drop your food into the water (bagged, of course) and let the circulator do the rest. When it's done, you finish most foods with a quick sear--if you have a grill to do this, you won't even have a pan to wash.
What Can You Use Sous Vide For?
The early appeal of sous vide was that it made tender, juicy, perfect proteins. This is still the primary reason people buy sous vide machines, but you can use sous vide for many other things, including:
- Vegetables
- Fruits
- Yogurt
- Eggs
- Creme bruleé and other creamy desserts (e.g., flan, pots de creme)
- Cheesecake
- Beans, legumes and rice
- Heating leftovers
- Thawing frozen food
- Pasteurization.
As popularity grows, people find new and interesting ways to use their sous vide cookers. We've even seen recipes for cakes and cookies. And sous vide coffee is also a thing--we haven't tried it, but people claim it's the best cup of coffee you'll ever have (no bitterness from too-hot water).
What Are the Benefits of Sous Vide Cooking?
Sous vide has numerous benefits:
Hands Off Ease: Since you can't burn or overcook food--it will never go above the set temperature--you can drop your food in the water bath and go do other things, whether in the kitchen or out. Some foods are more delicate than others--you don't want to leave shrimp in the sous vide cooker overnight--but almost all foods have an extremely large window in which you can let them go. As long as you go the minimum time, you'll be fine. So if you get sidetracked and forget about your food for a few hours, you're almost certainly fine.
Moistness: Because there's nowhere for moisture to go, sous vide food retains moisture extremely well; probably better than any other cooking method.
Manipulating Texture: While most foods are done within a couple of hours, you can use the water bath to manipulate texture. This is most useful for tough cuts of meat, which become soft and tender with long cooks without losing moisture or flavor or getting overcooked. Also, since you're cooking to a specific doneness, you can achieve tenderness while keeping the cut a perfect medium rare. This is not possible with any other cooking tool. Here's an image of 72-hour sous vide short ribs (courtesy of the Oliso website):
High Nutritional Value: High temp cooking methods destroys some nutrients. Cooking at low temps locks in nutrients.
Is Sous Vide a Safe Way to Cook?
Yes, sous vide is safe, as long as you follow a few simple rules that require you to keep cooking temperatures high enough to kill bacteria. For more information, see our article Is Sous Vide Cooking Safe?
What Else Do You Need for Sous Vide?
For best results, you do need a few pieces of equipment. These include a sous vide container, a lid for long cooks, and a way to brown your food before you eat it (not necessary for everything, but essential for proteins, which are by far the most common way to use sous vide). We also recommend getting a vacuum sealer, which makes sous viding infinitely more simple--as well as helping you save money and making food prep simpler.
Aside from the vacuum sealer, you probably already own everything you need.
Sous Vide Container: You can buy a dedicated sous vide container, but it isn't necessary. The easiest way to sous vide is to attach your immersion circulator to a stock pot or large Dutch oven. Or, if you own a large plastic container, that works too. (It doesn't even need to be food grade because the food is completely sealed.)
For large cooks, some people like to use a cooler--but if you're going to do this, make sure your circulator has an clamp or clip large enough to attach to the cooler (many do not, especially those with clips).
If you do want to buy a dedicated sous vide container, be sure that it's designed to work with the immersion circulator you own. In most cases, this means buying a container compatible with an Anova circulator. Those compatible with Joule are too small for most other sous vide circulators. And some circulators are too large to fit into any hole designed to work with Anova. (This is an important reason to pay attention to the size of the circulator you buy.)
Lid for Long Cooks: If you use a stock pot for sous vide, obviously the lid isn't going to fit with an immersion circulator sticking out of it. Again, you may think you need a dedicated container with a lid customized for sous vide, but you really don't.
If you use a stock pot, simply cover the top with aluminum foil. That's all you need to solve that problem.
You don't need to cover the vessel at all unless you're doing a long cook--anything more than 5-6 hours. High temperature cooks, which are necessary for fruits and veggies, also evaporate water faster, so they should be covered, too, especially if you're not around to monitor the cook.
And if you're cooking overnight, you definitely have to use a lid--it's a terrible feeling to wake up to a beeping circulator and a pot of meat in tepid water.
Another inexpensive option is to use ping pong balls. They're useful for large containers that are hard to cover another way (like coolers). They do a surprisingly good job, and have become so popular that you can buy bags designed specifically for sous vide use (such as those at the link given here). However, they're a bit of a pain to use because you have to dry them and store them. Again, we've found that a sheet of foil is the easiest way to reduce evaporation.
The point here is that if you don't want to spend the money on more sous vide infrastructure, you don't need to: a stockpot and aluminum foil work just fine. But if you do want to invest, there are several options available.
Weights: Sometimes, sous vide bags fill with air during a cook--usually from gases inside the food expanding from the heat. When this happens, you need to solve the problem because a floating bag isn't going to cook evenly. You can re-bag the food, or you can weight it down so it stays completely submerged. You can buy special sous vide weights for this:
However, you almost certainly already own something you can use instead: a big coffee mug, a small heavy pan, a cast iron trivet, an enameled cast iron Dutch oven lid; many things will work.
Although air in a bag can result in an uneven cook, keeping the bag submerged will often solve the problem (for those of us too lazy to re-bag).
Searing Tools: When you take your proteins out of the water bath, they don't look very appetizing. They'll be gray and soggy looking. This is because there is no browning with sous vide. Since browning adds flavor as well as color, you will want a way to sear most of your proteins before eating. (There are some exceptions, such as salmon and shrimp, but for most meats you're going to want a sear.)
You can sear your proteins a number of ways: you can use a torch or sous vide torch attachment (propane or MAPP gas is best), you can throw them on a screaming hot grill for a few minutes (no longer than this or you lose the perfect doneness), you can broil, bake, or pan fry, you can even deep fry (deep-fried sous vide steak is a real treat!).
The easiest way to sear is probably in a hot cast iron skillet: get that pan as hot as you can and quickly sear the protein, turning it to brown all sides. It doesn't take but a couple of minutes.
If you don't want to wash a pan, you can use your grill--or place your protein on an outdoor grill and torch it if you don't want to go to the trouble of getting your charcoal going (though a gas grill makes searing super easy!).
Again, the point is that you almost certainly already own everything you need to finish your proteins. You can invest in more sous vide infrastructure (like the Searzall), but you don't have to.
NOTE: One problem with searing, particularly with a fatty cut of steak like rib eye or NY strip, is that it's hard to get the fat fully rendered. To do this without further cooking the interior, you have to use the highest heat method possible. So whether it's a grill, torch, or cast iron pan, get that thing as hot as humanly possible for best results.
Vacuum Sealer: In the desire to sell a lot of immersion circulators, a lot of folks are telling you that you don't need a vacuum sealer; that the water displacement method works just fine. Even though "sous vide" literally means "under vacuum," you do not need a vacuum sealer. Against the recommendations of almost every other sous vide site on the Internet, we suggest that a vacuum sealer is the one piece of infrastructure that you do need.
Sure, you can use the water displacement method and get decent results. Reusable silicone bags will also produce decent results (and use less plastic, as well).
But what about meal prepping? What about having a freezer full of seasoned meat you can just pop in the water bath for an easy dinner? What about saving hundreds of dollars a year by being able to buy in bulk and freeze proteins with no worries about freezer burn?
There are myriad reasons you need a vacuum sealer in your kitchen: foolproof sous viding is only one of them. Check out our vacuum sealer archives for more info.
Are There Any Disadvantages to Cooking Sous Vide?
All cooking methods have disadvantages, and sous vide is no exception. Here are a few issues with the sous vide method:
- You have to be careful about the Danger Zone and keeping temps at safe levels.
- You use a lot of plastic (though there are ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle sous vide plastic)
- You have to plan ahead because sous vide is easy, but it is not fast.
- You need to sear most proteins after cooking sous vide (an extra step).
- You may miss the smell of roasting meat.
Important Features of Sous Vide Circulators (What to Look At)
The features we consider most important are power, accuracy, size, controls, attachment design, plus a few other less critical features such as a timer, heating capacity, and Internet connectivity. If you want Internet connectivity, a timer, or think you'll need to heat huge containers of water, then be sure to look at all of the specs before buying; Internet connectivity, in particular, isn't very common on the lower-priced sous vide circulators.
We also looked at the model's Fakespot adjusted rating. This isn't a foolproof way to determine how accurate the reviews are, but it is a helpful tool.
(Note: Not all specs are available for all brands, but we list as many as we can.)
Power (Wattage)
Power refers to the wattage of a circulator, and it determines how fast a circulator will come up to temperature. Coming to temperature quickly is perhaps the most important trait of an immersion circulator.
You may think, "Who cares how fast it is? I'll use hot tap water so it doesn't matter." But if you become a frequent user of your sous vide machine--several times a week is common among sous viders--you'll likely get into the habit of leaving a container full of water on your counter.
This is easier than refilling a pot several times a week, and it also conserves water. But it means that you're often starting from room temperature, so it's going to take longer for that water to reach the set point temperature than if you start with hot tap. Depending on the wattage of your immersion circulator, maybe considerably longer.
You may not think there's a big difference between 800 watts and 1000 watts, but in practical terms, it can mean the difference of a half an hour or more in the speed of heating from room temperature--maybe even more if you're doing fruits or veggies that require temps up around 180F (high temperatures, above about 165F, require much more energy and take longer to reach).
In our tests, we were not surprised to find that a 1200W sous vide circulator was about twice as fast as an 800W circulator. This held true for room temperature water heated to a cooking temp of 131F and for hot tap water heated to a temperature of 150F. While heating time varied among brands, high wattage models (1000W and up) were consistently faster than low wattage models (below 1000W).
Keep in mind that your results may vary as there are a lot of factors that are hard to control for.
It's not all about wattage, as different circulators are designed differently, so some heat faster than others of similar wattage. But in general, more wattage means faster heating--and by and large, you will appreciate faster heating under most circumstances.
Another consideration: You may want to use a dedicated outlet (i.e., nothing else plugged into it when you're using your circulator) for high-wattage circulators as you may trip power breakers if you don't. Even 800W is higher than many kitchen appliances. We don't see this as a reason to go with lower wattage unless your kitchen has wiring issues and you've had problems with blown circuits. Using a dedicated outlet will greatly lessen the chances of tripping a power breaker.
Accuracy
A sous vide circulator really only has to do 2 things: 1) heat water, and 2) hold it at a steady temperature.
Thus, most sous vide circulators aren't going to fall short in this category, and all of the models we tested were able to hold water temperature within 1F. This isn't quite as impressive as it sounds, because most circulators promise accuracy 10 times better then that (i.e., +/- 0.1F).
But 1F is good enough.
Somewhat surprisingly, not all circulators can hold water to a precise temperature, especially in the under $100 category. (Just read some of the negative Amazon reviews to see what we mean.)
If you buy one of our recommendations and it's not able to hold the water temp within a degree, you should return it--it's a lemon.
Size
For most people, a good size for a sous vide circulator is "small." The Joule was innovative because it was half the size of the other circulators on the market at the time--small enough to fit in any drawer. And as nice as this is, the sacrifice is that the Joule can only be controlled remotely, through an app on a smart device. If you're over 40, this may not appeal to you (and maybe not even if you're younger than that). This can be problematic because it creates an unnecessary dependency: if you have connectivity problems in your home, the Joule is unusable.
Our pick for the best small circulator under $100 is the Instant Pot Accu Slim. The design isn't as sleek as Joule, but it's small enough to fit in most drawers and it still has a control panel (making it still not as small as the Joule, but pretty close).
The sacrifice you make with choosing a small model is that it's usually not as powerful as some of the larger ones. You'll have to settle for 800W instead of 1000W or even 1200W, which can make heating water significantly slower (see our discussion above about power).
A small circulator is nice, though, and we understand why people would want one. But be sure you can live with the lower power before you buy.
If you don't mind a circulator that's a little larger, you have several brands to choose from, and most of these are going to be more powerful than 800W (if they're not, we do not recommend them).
Controls/User Interface
Here, we looked at which circulators were easiest to use. Now, "easiest to use" is subjective, because people differ on what kind of controls they prefer. In our testing, we found that what makes a circulator easy to use is a scroll wheel (instead of a touch screen control panel).
The AICOK has a scroll wheel to change temp/time:
This emulates the original Anova design. (Sadly, Anova has moved away from the scroll wheel and has gone touchscreen only with their new devices.)
Many under $100 sous vide circulators have Plus/Minus keys for adjusting temperature (and time, if the unit has a timer):