PolyScience CREATIVE Series Review: Commercial Quality for the Home

Overall, PolyScience’s sous vide products can be separated into 3 categories or series:

• CREATIVE Series (this review): lower price; meant for household use.
• CHEF Series: higher price; commercial grade sous vide cooker that’s often been an addition to home kitchens.
• CLASSIC Series: highest price of all products they offer; meant exclusively for commercial use.

Seeing how we first reviewed the more expensive CHEF Series first, it did set a certain standard that the CREATIVE Series has to live up to.The powerful performance of the CHEF sous vide cooker leaves big shoes for the CREATIVE to fill in.

In this review, we’ll test and feature the PolyScience CREATIVE, including design, best specs, and performance. At the end, we’ll see how it compares to its big brother and find out if the lower price means you should expect a lower quality of performance. Let’s get right to it!

Unboxing & Design

PolyScience designs their immersion circulators with durability in mind. Naturally, this means that the appearance of their devices is more rugged and robust than what you’re used to with entry-level sous vide cookers for home use. To put it simply,the PolyScience CREATIVE Series looks and feels more like a commercial product rather than that meant for home use, which really isn’t a surprise.

But, as a result, the design of this device is much less attractive than what its competitors, such as Sansaire, Nomiku, or Joule, offer. However, the toughness and resilience of this sous vide machine more than makes up for the plainness of the design. PolyScience CREATIVE impressed once we compared it to some competitors which use flimsy plastic.

A few key design features from the PolyScience CREATIVE Series include:

• Long power cord.
• Strong clip/clamp to hold it securely in place
• Timer
• Backlit LCD display

Features

1100W Heater

All of PolyScience’s immersion circulators come with a powerful 1100W heater that quickly warms up large water baths. As a comparison, even the bestselling Anova immersion circulator only has 800W. Naturally, we wanted to see for ourselves what difference a power increase like this makes in the device’s performance. We did a quick test to determine just how fast the PolyScience CREATIVE sous vide machine can heat water. Here are the results:

• 6 Liters of water
• Starting water temperature: 75.5 degrees F
• Ending water temperature: 135 degrees F
• Time to reach temperature: 11 minutes 44 seconds

The CREATIVE machine brought water to the set temperature exceptionally fast. Once it reached 135 degrees F, the water temperature continued to climb, inevitably reaching 138 degrees F before returning back down to 135. However, you shouldn’t let this dissuade you from thinking that this immersion circulator is precise.

This “jump” to a higher temperature is very common for all sous vide machines, since the heater does not effectively begin turning off until the set temperature is reached. After reaching the steady temperature of 135F, I used instant read thermometers to check the accuracy. The first thermometer displayed 134.8 and the second showed 134.9.

Water Circulator

With a circulator pump flow rate of 6 liters per minute, the CREATIVE Series offers half of what its bigger brother can do. However, having in mind the price range in which this device is, these value are more than competitive on the market. The 6 lpm flow rate means you can pair this immersion circulator with a container that holds up to 20 liters of water.

In case your pot or container is larger than that, you will risk the chance of inadequate circulation. In the video below, you can see (and hear) what the water circulation should be like. Overall, the circulator performed powerfully, while remaining relatively quiet– more than adequate for my water container.

Safety Controls

All of PolyScience’s immersion circulators include safety controls. These prevent potential damage of the product or injury to person using it. For instance, this sous vide cooker features a high temperature protection and low liquid level warnings, both of which help protect the cooker from damage. On the other hand, the alarm and fault indicators make sure that the user is notified if anything is amiss. We did test the low liquid level warning, which worked without any issues.

Performance

The PolyScience CREATIVE sous vide machine impressed us with its performance during this review. In order to test what this sous vide device can really do, we cooked one of our very own recipes: filet mignon with gorgonzola cream sauce. As noted above, the water temperature heated fast and with great accuracy. Once the water temperature was at 135 degrees we placed the vacuum sealed filets into the water and started the timer. After an hour and a half, we pulled out the steaks, patted them dry, and popped them into a sizzling cast iron pan for a lovely sear. The results were phenomenal, and the meal couldn’t have been any easier to prepare.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the PolyScience CREATIVE Series immersion circulator doesn’t lag behind its more expensive counterpart, the CHEF Series. For nearly half the price, the only things you’ll be missing out on are the pump speed regulation, display configurations, and certification for commercial use. PolyScience does lack many of the bells and whistles that many of the more recent sous vide machines have, including WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity and apps. However, if app-controlled cooking isn’t your thing, and you’re looking for the most durable non-commercial grade sous vide machine on the market, then you absolutely can’t go wrong with this immersion circulator.

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Looking for more information on sous vide? Check out this impressive video on The Sous Vide Revolution created by PolyScience.