Joule: Sous Vide by ChefSteps

I’m not really sure why so many people have not given this the joule a better rating. I am a Chef in the food industry and I love my joule...or joules! I have 3 of them now and looking at a 4th one. I have tried competitors, but always go back to the joule. I also have had a couple of my kitchen staff buy ones for themselves. They are precise, work awesome and have not had any issues I can’t fix with the simple troubleshooting techniques. I use the recipes as well as the manual cooking option. The updates, I feel, have been great, and the chefsteps crew seems to be continuously trying to improve the whole experience. I love the tech side of the joule(though a manual control, or even better, a control from the cloud on a desktop would be nice), and multiple users being able to control the same joule at once, is awesome! The only reason I don’t give this a 5 star, is because I want and NEED a way to add and save my own “recipes”/cooking data. I cook some of the same things over and over, and I have tweaked the app recipes to what works for me. If chefsteps could have a section that saves personal recipes in the app so that I could quickly go back to them, that would make this machine perfect! Thanks for the awesome joule and keep it up!

A few requests to improve the user experience. For iPhone X/XS users the “Stop” button for the cook sits right at the bottom of the screen, which is also where you swipe up to minimize the app and use your phone for something else while Joule works in the background. Can we move this around to avoid the on screen conflict? The Alexa integration is a nice idea but it needs to keep up with the app development. For all of the hype on the website about conversational cooking it’s still not possible to simply ask when the cook will be done - what time? How much more time? This becomes even more important now that the app allows you to put the food in before the water is at the target temperature. You have to use your phone to know what’s happening or ask Alexa multiple times. Thank you for considering this input!!

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Not only is the ersatz ‘chipper’ tone annoying, it gets in the way of efficiently using the device. It would be nice if there were a toggle to turn off the cute. More crucially, there still isn’t implementation of basic functionality that was teased a year ago, eg using the top button to start again the same temp as last used. And obvious capabilities such as a workable log (which would have to allow you to assign titles to your cooks) or a more full featured custom cook creation option would at least partly justify the necessity of using a smart device to operate the sous vide. I have created my own time and temp profiles for everything I cook ... which I have to log separately and track changes for... and share with the 4 other families I have bought sous vide for (not all joules, because my in laws can’t handle a device without built-in controls). You would think the social sharing potential alone would motivate these wannabe hipsters to build in the ability to set custom cooks... but instead they pour development energy into another cutesy notification that makes me never want to tap on the app ever again. Enough with the style over substance.

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When you set the timer on most smartphones, the time end alert keeps sounding until the user acknowledges - the way it should be. With the Joule, however, the timer’s audio alert lasts only a few seconds. If an airplane flies by, or if you turn on the blender or use a vacuum cleaner momentarily, the alert gets missed. I do realize that sous-vide cooking in general is more about temperature than time but there are applications when time is crucial, for instance, ChefSteps 75 degree eggs - which is what I just happen to use the Joule mostly for. I’ve ruined many eggs by depending on Joule’s timer and now use my iPhone’s timer instead. On the other hand, suppose you stop the device manually after cooking because you don’t want to touch your phone with wet hands. The next time you turn it on and set a temperature, you must acknowledge that the water level is too low (from the previous session), turn it off from the app, then restart from the app. A big hassle. Also, many of the time/temp recommendations provided by the app are wrong. If you research the internet for time /temp recommendations, you’d be better off choosing the recommendations from other sources.

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The Joule is sleek and cool, but the software interface is a nightmare. The app does not work at all unless you create an account, which might be ok for a free service but is insane for a companion to a $150 piece of hardware that has no use for an Internet connection. It also deliberately hobbles the experience until one “updates the firmware,” but this is not possible because the app is so glitchy. The Joule might be connected fine to WiFi (or not), but the app will invariably request a WiFi connection be established in order to update. This will invariably fail. Infuriating experience. The very basic functionality available in the app is also extremely annoying. Setting a timer does nothing until you log back in after preheating and tell the timer to start. Oh, and the notifications bug people have been complaining about for months is still not fixed, so you won’t know that has happened. Any little change to time or temperature clears both settings and restarts the session. Was this tested at all?