Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'd checked out the reviews and understood the positives and negatives (inexpensive entry into Sous Vide / inconsistent production quality) but with Amazon's terrific customer support I figured I'd give it a chance - Lucky for me I went through Amazon - The cooker I received had issues and after two weeks of phone calls and emails without a response from Anova I returned the product - Hard to believe they never even acknowledged my correspondence - I ended up going with a Vacmaster SV-1 and could not be happier The VacMaster is more expensive than the Anova but performance wise it is markedly better (Actually when the VacMaster site runs a sale it was only $40 difference) - Anyway the Anova is mostly plastic and tops out at 800 watts ... Vacmaster is stainless steel and tops out at 1500 watts and that is a huge time difference when you are heating up your water bath - Also as stainless steel wears better the VacMater will last a lot longer The Anova pumps 2 gallons a minute with a max container size of 4 gallons ... Vacmaster circulates 4 gallons a minute with a max container of 8 gallons and than translates to more even cooking with the option of to cook multiple rib racks and larger pieces of meat - Figure you'll have a vacuum sealing system anyway so why not cook enough for several meals and vacuum seal the extras for a future day - We use two containers for our set up ... a 4 gallon for small groups and the 8 gallon when we have a party VacMaster beats Anova hand down when it comes to customer service - Call VacMaster and you'll get an actual person to pick up the phone and real time answers to your questions ... which is very helpful on soooooooooo many levels - My experience with Anova was complete frustration In fact friends that have the Anova have moved to the VacMaster SV-1 after seeing it's performance (look for used Anova cookers on ebay) The bottom line is the Anova is an introductory level machine for casual sous vide cooking - Buy from Amazon so you are protected against inconsistent quality and poor Anova customer service - On the other hand if you can spend a little more money consider VacMaster and get professional level performance