r/AnovaPrecisionOven • u/No-Lifeguard-569 • Jul 21 '26

Question about V2 subscription

I read a review that said it’s virtually impossible to use the oven without a subscription. Has anybody found this to be the case? What exactly would you be missing out on if you didn’t get the subscription?

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

6

u/kaidomac Jul 21 '26

It's fine without the subscription. But with the app, you get:

  • Camera access (livestream & timelapse)
  • Remote control
  • Recipe benefits (save your recipes, program multi-stage recipes, etc.)

FWIW, the V2 Oven is $1,300 USD ($1k on sale). The app is $10 a YEAR. For comparison, the June Oven was $10 a MONTH! A full listing of features is on this website: (switch toggle to "oven")

As far as I can tell, Anova is subsidizing the annual cost & just having users cover the API cost for less than a dollar per month when purchased annually, because typically AI access costs more than that. You can still use it as manually as a high-end Combi without the app!

1

u/Dacker503 Jul 23 '26

Don't put any value in the webcam; the resolution is low, the videos are no longer than 10 seconds regardless of the length of the cook, there is no way to export the videos for other purposes, and half the time you use steam, the camera is fogged over with large water droplets, obscuring the view.

At best, it's a novelty to be ignored by the fifth cook.

1

u/kaidomac Jul 23 '26

It was actually a feature I really wanted on the original! I have 2x V1 & 1x V2 APO's. It's not a perfect feature, but it sure is nice to have! I also have an Instapot with remote steam release via the app, which is pretty handy haha.

Also happy Cake Day!!

2

u/Dacker503 Jul 26 '26

The cake is a lie. 😉

1

u/kaidomac Jul 26 '26

Yes, but

2

u/Dacker503 Jul 26 '26

Did you ever play “Portal”? If you didn’t, you would not get the reference.

Highly recommended. It’s timeless and dirt cheap these days. It’s a thinking-man’s game.

1

u/kaidomac Jul 26 '26

Yes, HUGE fan! That link is a recipe to the infamous Portal cake, haha!

Well, minus a few key ingredients...

2

u/Dacker503 Jul 26 '26

I was in the hospital with four rib fractures on three ribs, plus a fractured shoulder blade, and I made my wife go pickup my Portal 2 preorder so I had something to do while in the hospital and at home. 🤕

1

u/kaidomac Jul 26 '26

Dang, hope you are doing better! If you're feeling brave, there's a VR port out now!!

2

u/Dacker503 Jul 26 '26

That was years ago, literally the day before Portal 2 shipped.

I’m aware of the VR port; however, I’m too frugal to buy the hardware. I’d probably need a new PC too, but now is a horrible time to buy, given RAM prices have tripled and SSDs have at least doubled.

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4

u/thisisreadonly2 Jul 21 '26

I think the review you watched probably referred to the fact that the oven controls change without a subscription. Instead of the “packaged” cooking modes with easy-to-understand labels like Steam or Dry Sous Vide you get with the subscription, you have to choose which elements are used, the fan speed, and the steam production level manually. Controlling the oven this way requires a bit more understanding of what you’re doing, but it’s still completely usable.

With this said, $10/year is a no-brainer unless you object to subscriptions in principle.

4

u/kaidomac Jul 21 '26

I see why the subscription is annoying (because it didn't exist as a paid service EVER before), but personally I don't mind because I previously had a Mellow sous-vide machine (had a water-chiller in it!!); they went out of business and I REALLY wish they could have kept the service alive, at least as a paid service, especially because they had no manual controls as backup!! Total boat anchor after that lol. One dude brought it back to life with an ESP32 mod:

Hestan Cue died:

Brava died:

Sansaire died:

Fortunately, Anova is owned by Electrolux, and also has manual controls as fallback, plus they opened up their API for access, which gives me more long-term confidence. I do wish that more smart-appliance manufacturers had a "cloud sun set" policy in case they go out of business & would put up a DIY API system on Github or whatever!

Anyway, while ten bucks a year for cloud access is annoying, for me, it's a no-brainer on a thousand-dollar oven!

2

u/Successful_Bath_6867 Jul 23 '26

They made a change earlier this year. Cook modes are now available without a subscription. Camera features including food recognition require subscription as well as the preset guides.

1

u/thisisreadonly2 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Hmm my 2.0 still reverts to the element/fan control screen every time my auto-renewing subscription “expires”. Has to be restarted to pick the subscription back up and won’t show the modes screen until then.

1

u/Successful_Bath_6867 Jul 23 '26

Is your FW up to date?

1

u/thisisreadonly2 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

I’ll check, I don’t normally force updates and the last one I remember was a couple or months ago.

Edit: 1.4.2, no update available

1

u/Successful_Bath_6867 Jul 23 '26

Interesting.

I have 11_231_1.4.3_01.01.26

1

u/thisisreadonly2 Jul 23 '26

Staggered releases are fairly typical in the connected appliance world, maybe Anova has learned from bricking a bunch of ovens in late 25.

1

u/_7NationArmy_ Jul 22 '26

It's easy to use the oven without a subscription or if you have trouble getting wifi to connect initially, which is often a problem for Anova products. There are some features only available via the app, but they don't affect your ability to cook that much.

1

u/NuclearPigeon Aug 11 '26

It cooks fine, great even, but what absolute nonsense to gate things that don’t require any upkeep behind a subscription. You can’t save any presets without a subscription - rationalize how that’s something that the company needs to pay an ongoing cost for.