The Best Sous Vide Immersion Circulators of 2023

Cooking is a science—a fact you’d be hard-pressed to forget when looking at the PolyScience Professional Creative Series. The chunky, clunky immersion circulator looks like lab equipment, but it performs like it too. It’s not a tool that will win any prizes for beauty, but it will heat your water bath quickly and hold it to your desired temp with above-average accuracy.

PolyScience Culinary is a longtime provider of innovative culinary tech for both home and commercial kitchens, so we can almost overlook its steep price tag. While it lacks some of the conveniences of the newer Joule and Anova, it offers the credibility of a more established brand with a focus on food science.

When we first tested sous vide machines, we loved the 800 watt first generation Anova with WiFi, as well as the 800 watt Anova with Bluetooth. But both of those products have since been discontinued, leaving just three Anova products on the market—the standard Anova, the Pro, and the Nano. The standard and the Pro connect with WiFi, while the Nano is Bluetooth only.

The Pro is the strongest performer of the three, with a very quick ramp-up speed, a durable, stylish exterior, and a whole 1200 watts of power. The Pro also maintains a consistent temperature, and it didn’t overshoot its target of 132°F by more than half a degree.

The Pro is bigger than other Anova models, with a larger, squared control panel, and it’s also waterproof and drop-resistant for accident-prone kitchens. While we were impressed with its performance, it currently retails for about $300, making it twice as expensive as the Joule.

If you want a device that’s built to last and can heat water very quickly, the Anova Pro is a solid option—but we don’t think it's worth the price for most home chefs.

Like the Anova Pro, the standard Anova is an attractive, WiFi-compatible immersion circulator with a mixed stainless steel and matte black design. It’s also the immersion circulator I have in my own kitchen. It can be controlled directly from its rounded touchscreen or via the Anova app, which is easy to use and full of compatible recipes. While we still think it’s a good product, this Anova doesn’t maintain as consistent of temperatures as older Anova models.

In our testing, this Anova took 34 minutes to bring a pot of tap water to 132°F, compared to the Anova Pro’s 22 minutes. There was also slightly more temperature variation between different parts of the submerged bag as we cooked the steak. However, the end result was still impressive—medium-rare steak, just like we asked.

The new Anova is a solid immersion circulator—and the touchscreen is very convenient if you don’t want to fuss with an app or voice controls. But for an almost identical price, we think the Joule currently has more to offer.

After three separate rounds of testing two different units of the Nano, we're sad to say it's an unpredictable machine. While its compact design and all-plastic exterior make it less expensive and more accessible than other Anova models, it’s also much less precise.

The times to temperature were fast, but varied wildly between tests—the first took 42 minutes, the second took 46, and the last took 38, all with comparable starting temperatures. While the temperature of the meat actually exceeded the desired 132 degrees in the second test, it never reached the 132 mark in the third round.

In the end, this variability didn’t seem to have a negative effect on the meat—each steak came out medium to medium-well and perfectly edible, with the typical tenderness you’d expect from sous vide. The Anova app also continued to work well, and the Bluetooth connectivity was convenient (although it didn’t extend all the way from the testing area to my desk on the other side of the building).

The Anova Nano will get the job done, but because precision and consistency are key to cooking sous vide, we just can’t give it higher marks.

With almost 100 positive reviews on Amazon, it seemed worth giving the Kitchen Gizmo sous vide immersion circulator a try. But wWhile it’s downright affordable, the device is the epitome of “nothing special.” Slow to heat and not particularly accurate or stable in temperature, the Kitchen Gizmo really has nothing going for it. Even its appearance is boring.

It’s not the worst immersion circulator on the market, sure—but we think you can do better.

Smaller, lighter, and cheaper than much of the competition, we really wanted to like the Gourmia Digital Sous Vide Pod. But low cost alone does not make something a good deal. We ran into trouble right away, with a power button that at least 8 of our 10 testers were unable to operate without consulting the manual.

Once you jump the hurdle of actually turning the thing on, it gives a rough performance: During cooking, the water stayed about 2°F above the temperature we set it at. When you're dealing with such precise cooking temperatures, that kind of fluctuation is not ideal.

You could do worse for $129.99. But if you ask us, a $100+ piece of kitchen equipment should do what it’s supposed to, and the Gourmia simply doesn’t.

If you thought the PolyScience Pro Creative Series was hefty, try the PolyScience Sous Vide Professional Immersion Circulator Chef on for size. It’s large, boxy, and loud—all qualities we’d sooner seek in a 90’s-style boombox than a cooking device. It’s also one of the priciest models on the market. In fact, the only thing we liked about the Chef was the masterful control it offers over water bath temperature, which fell second only to the Anova during testing.

An ability to precisely control water bath temperature is what matters most when it comes to sous vide, but only if you can keep the food you’re cooking submerged. The Chef allows you to adjust flow pressure for larger baths—but when we used the recommended highest pressure setting in our home-size water bath, the force of the water circulation constantly pushed our food to the surface or propelled it into somersaults. Entertaining, yes, but not exactly what we had in mind. As an extra bonus, the overzealous flow means you’re likely to end up with hot water splashing out of the container.

For these reasons, we’d recommend giving the Chef a hard pass unless you've got a commercial kitchen. It does a great job with temperature, but the Anova does better. And if you want the PolyScience branding or enjoy that bulkier design, the PolyScience Pro Creative Series has both for half the price.