Gourmia GSV130 Review: Affordable and Precise for Home Cooks

Full Review: Gourmia GSV130

Gourmia specializes in creating kitchen appliances and products while ensuring innovation, performance, and value. We recently reviewed the Gourmia GSV900 sous vide oven which is a great low-cost option for cooking sous vide. In this article, we’ll dive into the full Gourmia GSV130 review including design, features, and performance.

Design

The design of the GSV130 is relatively modern but doesn’t quite stand out like Sansaire or Nomiku. Overall, the GSV130 is very similar in appearance to the Anova immersion circulator, but with a weaker clip. The top control panel and backlit display, however, is absolutely great. Although, we wish it were slightly angled so that you can see the temperature/status from across the room instead of having to look down at it.

Overall, the design works, especially given how affordable the product is. Even better, it comes in three colors: black, white, and gold.

Features

The Gourmia GSV130 has limited unique features since it is aimed at being the most affordable immersion circulator. If you’re looking for more unique features such as wifi compatibility, stay tuned! Gourmia recently announced a new sous vide immersion circulator that will be hitting shelves soon.

Heater

The Gourmia GSV130 has a powerful 1200W heater that maintains precise temperatures with 0.1 degree F, which is truly remarkable given the low cost of this device. As a comparison, the $800 PolyScience CHEF only has 1100W, and Sansaire comes even lower with 1000W. The main benefit of having the powerful heater is to bring water to temperature faster. In reality, this benefit may only end up saving you a few minutes. However, the other benefit people tend to look over is that the more powerful heater can also help maintain more accurate and consistent temperatures. If you have a poorly insulated container (or one without a lid), temperatures are naturally cooling off quite rapidly, but the bigger heater can bring the temperature back to your preferred setting quicker.

Even though the heater is powerful, the Gourmia GSV130 is only rated for up to 3.5 gallon pots (or containers), which we believe is due to the circulator. We’ll discuss this more below.

Circulator

The water circulator on the GSV130 is very quiet, however it is also weaker compared to a few other sous vide immersion circulators, such as Sainsaire. Gourmia GSV130 circulates up to 1.5 gallons of water per minute while Sansaire can circulate up to 3 gallons of water per minute. As a result, Gourmia falls short in regards to maintaining consistent water temperatures in larger water baths. However, if you plan on using smaller pots or containers for cooking smaller amounts of food, the smaller circulation will not be of concern.

Timer

Yes! We celebrate every time an immersion circulator comes with a timer (I mean really, how hard is it for one of these to be included on every device?). The original GSV130 never included a digital timer, but new product listing state they are included.

Performance and Final Thoughts

The Gourmia GSV130 performs amazingly for smaller water baths. It’s powerful heater heats water quickly and maintains temperature, but the weaker circulator prevents it from being used in larger containers. Overall, the GSV130 is perfect for entry-level sous vide cooking since it comes in under $150.

Recent Update:

January 14, 2022: The Gourmia GSV130 is no longer in stock. For another budget-friendly product, check out the Inkbird Sous Vide Precision Cooker.