Review: Febote 1000 W Sous Vide Cooker

Febote’s 1000W Sous Vide Cooker is a great gift for those in your life looking to give sous vide a try. Its low barrier of entry, and included food-safe sous vide bags, mean that you can get cooking right out of the box. With that said, there are definitely a number of quality of life improvements. Many sous vide units on the market have like wi-fi, Bluetooth functionality, or saved settings – that regular sous vide cooks may miss.

Despite this, the Febote Sous Vide Cooker impressed due to its affordability and the fact that, at the end of the day, it just worked.

Specifications

The wattage for the Febote matches its weight in heft. Check out the full details below.

• Dimensions: 3.2 x 14 x 6.5 inches
• Weight: 3.8 lbs
• Temperature range: 32F to 203F (0C to 95C)
• Temperature accuracy: +/-1F (0.5C)
• Minimum water depth: 2.6 inches
• Maximum water depth: 5 inches
• Pump Speed: 7-8 liters per minute
• Power: 1000 Watts at 100-120 Volts

Again, note that this is very much a “plug and play” sous vide cooker. It comes with no in-built Bluetooth of wi-fi functionality.

Build Quality

The first thing I tend to notice when reviewing sous vide products is feel and quality. The Febote Sous Vide Cooker is a hand full. Personally, I quite like heavier sous vide units. However, most of the weight rests in the stainless-steel sleeve, which leads into our next point.

The actual plastic shelling around the electronics feels both light and a tad cheap. It’s two pieces of plastic sealed together rather than a single enclosed cap. This, although not a deal breaker by any means necessary, is something to watch out for. Crevices and seals are the number one area for non-impact related breakages. The tension clamp to connect the unit to the water bath also didn’t feel especially strong. The plastic ring around the above the maximum water line, meanwhile, seems to be fixed in place. Removing the sleeve to service the heating coils was definitely a puzzler at first. I was pretty worried about accidentally breaking something during my fiddling, perhaps due to the quality of the plastic.

Meanwhile, the metal seam between the display and the plastic shelling is tight and secure. The display is also clear and bright with sharp white and blue lettering. Compared to some displays we’ve reviewed this one definitely impressed. If Febote flashed the cash for any feature it was the electronics and the display. At its price point this is certainly understandable, but something that buyers should be aware about.

Tactility, however, is another matter – to be discussed under the Function heading below.

Form

Some sous vide units deviate from the norm by wide margins. We’ve reviewed entirely stainless steel units, cookers that resemble apple products, and the SR-71 Blackbird of sous vide circulators. All this is to say that these days there are a number of radical sous vide designs out there. For a long time the standard has been black plastic and stainless steel. The Febote deviates from the norm in one notable respect

Its water circulation cover.

Most sous vide units feature circulators built into the sleeve. The Febote Sous Vide Immersion Circulator instead, or perhaps in addition to, sports a hard plastic water circulation cover that levels off the bottom of the unit. It ejects water directly out and away from the unit at the lowest possible grade.

As someone strictly opposed to vent blockages I thought this was a smart design choice. We’ve seen similar innovation in higher end units with bevelled circulation bases, so it’s nice to see a similar attention to detail entering a more affordable market place.

However, the clamp for the Febote Sous Vide Cooker is a standard spring-grip. The rubber teeth don’t grip the sides of pots especially well. There can be some slipping during the cooking process (something we ran into during out test cook). As someone who is a big fan of screw-based grips this was a slight disappointment.

Even so, it’s clear that thought went out to what is on offer at this price point. the Febote we used for review came with plastic, food-safe sous vide bags with in-built seals plus hand-pump for creating a manual vacuum seal.

For an experienced sous vide cook this is a negligible bonus. For someone just getting into sous vide this is a really thoughtful touch.

Before using one of the provided bags we would recomend testing the seal in a water bath. Seeing as there have been reports of leakage in similarly priced units this is something to bear in mind.

Function

The Febote Sous Vide Cooker impressed on a number of fronts during testing. Many units in this price-bracket can take up to 20 minutes to go from a default temperature of around 50 degrees Fahrenheit to 135 degrees. On this front the Febote blew us away. It managed to hit this mark at just around 15 minutes.

It was also remarkably quiet, although nowhere close to silent. Still, considering the power it was packing into this price point I was impressed. During cooking it held fast to 145 degrees, only dropping below that temperature once or twice while testing.

The display itself is, as mentioned earlier, excellent. However I found that the buttons, due to lack of haptic feedback, to be a little tricky. The amount of force required to change settings varied quite a bit. Although, I’m sure this is something that ben acclimatized to in time.

However, we did run into a few issues during cooking. One was the EOL error, despite being below the water mark. Eventually we figured out that this was due to the unit being on a slight angle. It was a strangely finicky moment with an otherwise cooperative kitchen partner.

During the last minute of cooking an alarm sounds. This is a great touch as it will pull you back to the kitchen if you’ve been having a spot of tea in the living room. With that said, I was unable to figure out how to shut it off during this last minute of cooking. Hopefully I was just missing something obvious, but so far I haven’t managed to find a way to shut it off early or disable the feature entirely.

Freshly Minted

For our test cook we decided to go with lamb, specifically lamb stew.

There’s always been something absolutely perfect about the combination of lamb and rice. My family and I have been big fans whether served in Greek, Iranian, or Irish fashion. Given the colder whether in Canada we felt that the latter might be most appropriate. The results speak for themselves.

During the holidays we were fortunate enough to stop by the local holiday market for provisions. We also snagged the local lamb featured above, in addition to more microgreens that I could manage.  The lamb was toothsome, easily cuttable with the side of a spoon, and the broth thick and rich. This was courtesy to my secret weapon. I made the stock with beef bones from my butcher.

All in all we found the Febote to be an almost perfectly priced sous vide cooker. It’s just what it says on the tin. Otherwise it’s a completely serviceable, fast friend.

However, if you’re looking for the most high-tech kitchen gadget out there this isn’t likely for you. The Febote is a great first step for sous vide. Just don’t expect it to reinvent the wheel.