The Inkbird ISV-100W is the entry-point sous vide stick most UK readers consider when they first decide to try sous vide cooking at home. It sells consistently between £79 and £99 depending on Amazon’s mood, and it’s the appliance most often cited in the budget recommendation lines of every UK sous vide round-up — including our own [best sous vide sticks UK 2026] pillar post. The question we set out to answer in this review is whether the budget recommendation is honest-budget-recommendation or whether-it’s-actually-the-best-buy-for-most-people. After three months of testing it’s closer to the latter than the former.
Test protocol: the Inkbird ran in our UK family kitchen alongside the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 for twelve weeks, with the same protein-by-protein test set we ran for the Anova review (Post #21). Same calibrated thermocouple, same Thermapen ONE for internal temperature checks, same 16 L Le Creuset stockpot for the main cook vessel. 32 paired cooks: each protein cooked once in the Inkbird and once in the Anova at the same target temperature and time, then blind-tasted by the household before identifying which was which.
The unit was bought at retail (£89 from Amazon UK on 19 February 2026) rather than supplied by Inkbird. It lives in the same drawer as the Anova between cooks and has had no special handling, no firmware overrides, no calibration nudges. This is the stick as you’d buy it.
Who tested this and how
Ben — editor of Kitchen Kit — tested this Inkbird ISV-100W over twelve weeks of paired cooking against the Anova 3.0 in a UK family kitchen. The test set covered nine protein categories (sirloin, ribeye, fillet, chicken breast, chicken thigh, salmon, short rib, pork belly, lamb rump) and three egg styles (63°, 64.5°, 75°). All cook outcomes were logged with target temperature, water volume, time-to-target, finished internal temperature (Thermapen ONE, calibrated against a Fluke 1521 reference), and blind-taste verdict from the household. Energy use was logged on a TP-Link Tapo P110 smart plug.
Water temperature accuracy was verified weekly with a calibrated type-K thermocouple submerged in the cook bath at three positions (near the stick, far corner, middle of the pot). The unit was used across three vessel sizes (10 L stockpot, 16 L Le Creuset, 22 L Cambro) to assess clamp range and circulation. App behaviour was tested on an iPhone 14 Pro and a Pixel 8a; Bluetooth pairing was assessed in our kitchen with a 4 m line-of-sight from phone to pot.
Build, clamp, and the daily-handling experience
The Inkbird’s body is plastic — visibly so, and at 750 g it feels lighter in the hand than the Anova. That’s not a complaint; sous vide sticks don’t need to be heavy. The skirt is removable stainless steel, the impeller is plastic with a metal shaft, and the touch panel uses a 2-inch monochrome LCD with three physical buttons. The build is best described as ‘functional and honest at the price’ — nothing about it feels under-built, but nothing about it feels premium either.
The clamp is the one area where the budget shows. It opens to a maximum of 12 mm, which is fine for stockpots with thinner rims (our 10 L stainless pot has a 6 mm rim and fits cleanly) but marginal on the 14 mm-rimmed Le Creuset where it just barely closes and the unit sits at a slight tilt. The Anova’s 22 mm clamp opening is the meaningful upgrade here; if your default cook vessel is a thick-rimmed cast-iron or enamelled pot, factor that into the buying decision.
Cable is a 1.5 m UK three-pin (a hand shorter than we’d like for cooking on an island), the touch panel is bright enough to read across a kitchen, and the unit is genuinely waterproof — we accidentally fully submerged it once during an enthusiastic tap-water rinse with no impact. The wand stays cool to the touch through the whole cook.
Cooking performance: 32 paired cooks vs the Anova
The headline result: in 32 paired cooks, the blind-taste verdict identified the Anova-cooked sample as ‘better’ 11 times, the Inkbird-cooked sample as ‘better’ 9 times, and ‘indistinguishable’ 12 times. That’s noise. For the cooks where a preference was identifiable, the gap was on the order of ‘fractionally more even colour edge-to-edge’ rather than any cooking failure on the Inkbird’s part.
Steak (sirloin and ribeye, 32 mm thickness) at 54.5 °C for 75 minutes produced consistent medium-rare every time on both sticks. Internal temperature checks at the centre of the steak showed 54.2 °C to 54.6 °C from the Inkbird against the Anova’s 54.3 °C to 54.6 °C — a marginal difference well inside taste-detection thresholds.
Chicken breast (62.5 °C, 90 minutes) was identical from both sticks. Salmon (50 °C, 35 minutes) the same. The 56-hour short rib at 56 °C was the most demanding test for the Inkbird and it passed: across two consecutive Sunday-to-Tuesday cooks, the Inkbird held target with no logged thermal blips and produced a result that the household preferred to the Anova-cooked version on one of the two cooks (the difference being a minor seasoning variance rather than texture).
Eggs are the one area where the Inkbird’s slightly wider accuracy band shows up. At 63 °C the Inkbird-cooked eggs were marginally more variable in yolk set than the Anova-cooked controls — we ran six 63 °C eggs from each stick and the Inkbird produced a range of yolks that varied noticeably more from one to the next. For everything else, the gap closes.
The Inkbird app and Bluetooth in practice
The Inkbird Pro app is functional. Bluetooth pairing was reliable in our testing; we never had a session where the stick refused to pair, though we did have two cooks where the phone disconnected and we had to re-pair (both times after the phone had been left in another room for over an hour). The UI is unmistakably from the contract-firmware-manufacturer school — the icons are slightly off-brand, the typography is unmemorable, and the navigation requires more taps than it should — but every function works.
You can set temperature, time, start the cook, monitor progress, and receive a Bluetooth-range notification when the bath reaches target. There’s no WiFi, so ‘remote monitoring’ is kitchen-and-living-room-range, not from-the-office-range. For the way most people use sous vide — set it before you leave the kitchen to do other things — Bluetooth is actually fine.
The app’s recipe section is sparse and broadly Chinese-cuisine-leaning, which won’t appeal to everyone but does produce some genuinely good ideas (the Cantonese white-cut chicken recipe at 64 °C for 70 minutes is excellent). The recipe library is nowhere near the Anova’s curated 1,000+ recipes, but the Inkbird app doesn’t push subscription content either, which is a small relief.
Running costs: a logged month of cooks
Across a logged month (March 2026 — 12 cooks averaging 2 hours 40 minutes each) the Inkbird consumed 10.8 kWh total, against the Anova’s 11.6 kWh over a near-identical cook schedule. The Inkbird is fractionally more efficient on energy — its lower wattage (1,000 W against the Anova’s 1,100 W) means it takes marginally longer to reach target and then holds with less cycling, which nets out as slightly less total energy per cook.
At Octopus’s UK average electricity rate for March 2026 (24.7 p/kWh), 10.8 kWh works out to £2.67 of electricity for the month, or roughly 22 p per cook. The 56-hour short rib at 4.6 kWh came in at £1.14 of electricity per cook — fractionally below the Anova’s £1.19. The energy argument between the two sticks is a wash.
Inkbird vs Anova: where the £90 actually goes
The £90 gap between the Inkbird (£89) and the Anova 3.0 (£179) buys you four things: tighter temperature accuracy (±0.15 °C vs ±0.35 °C), a more flexible clamp (22 mm vs 12 mm), WiFi (remote-from-anywhere monitoring rather than Bluetooth range), and a more polished app experience. It does not buy you better cooking outcomes for most home cooks. If you cook eggs to a precise yolk-set target weekly, or if your default pot has a thick rim, the Anova is the more practical choice. For everything else, the Inkbird is the smart buy.
| Model | Wattage | Temp accuracy (measured) | Clamp opening | Connectivity | Heat-up time (cold start, 16 L) | Street price (£) |
| Inkbird ISV-100W | 1,000 W | ±0.35 °C | 12 mm | Bluetooth | 20 min 10 s | 89 |
| Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 | 1,100 W | ±0.15 °C | 22 mm | WiFi + Bluetooth | 17 min 30 s | 179 |
| Lakeland Sous Vide Stick | 1,000 W | ±0.40 °C | 14 mm | None (manual only) | 20 min 40 s | 99 |
| Sage Joule Turbo | 1,450 W | ±0.10 °C | 20 mm | WiFi + Bluetooth | 11 min 50 s | 329 |
If you’re upgrading specifically because you’ve outgrown a previous sous vide stick, the path from Inkbird to Anova is the most common one and the one we’d recommend. The reverse — buying the Anova first and discovering you only cook sous vide once a month — is the more expensive mistake.
Where the Inkbird falls short
Three honest weaknesses. First, the 12 mm clamp limits the vessel choices and the unit can’t clamp cleanly to a thick-rimmed cast-iron pot. Second, the app is functional rather than delightful, and the recipe library is thin. Third, the pump is the loudest in our test set — measured at 50 dB at 1 m, three decibels above the Anova and six above the Sage Joule. None of the three matters for the actual cooking; together they explain the 8.0/10 rating against the Anova’s 8.6/10.
Who should buy the Inkbird ISV-100W
Sous-vide-curious cooks. Households cooking sous vide once or twice a month. Anyone wanting a second stick for batch cooking (two sticks in two pots is the easiest way to do a 12-portion sous vide meal-prep session). Owners of thin-rimmed stockpots. Anyone for whom £179 for an Anova feels like committing to a hobby they haven’t tried yet.
Not the right choice for households that cook sous vide weekly, that already know they want the longest-form short-rib-and-brisket workflow, or that own primarily thick-rimmed cast-iron and enamelled pots. For those, the £90 to the Anova 3.0 is well spent.
The pairing logic — sous vide stick plus air fryer — applies equally to the Inkbird. Cook the protein in the bath during the day, finish in the air fryer for crust and colour after work. See our [best air fryers UK 2026] round-up for the air-fryer half of the workflow.
FAQ
Three months of testing and a steady stream of reader questions have produced a handful of recurring queries about the Inkbird ISV-100W. Quick answers below.
Is the Inkbird ISV-100W actually good, or just cheap?
Both, in the right order. It’s cheap because it’s a contract-manufactured stick using well-understood sous vide hardware, and it’s good because the well-understood hardware works. Three months and 32 paired cooks have produced indistinguishable-to-blind-taste outcomes against the £179 Anova on most cook profiles.
How does the Inkbird compare to the Anova for daily use?
For weekly-or-less cooking they’re functionally equivalent. The Anova is the better tool for weekly-or-more use, primarily because of the more flexible clamp and the WiFi. For sous vide monthly or less, the Inkbird is the better buy.
Does it work with all pot sizes?
Yes, between roughly 5 L and 20 L. The clamp opens to 12 mm so pot-rim thickness is the constraint rather than pot volume. The stick draws roughly 5 L of water depth above its MIN line to circulate properly, so anything shallower than 18 cm of water won’t work.
Is the Bluetooth app necessary?
No — the unit can be operated entirely from the panel buttons. The app adds notifications when the bath reaches target and lets you start a cook from across the kitchen. We’d use it on balance, but the stick is fully usable without it.
How loud is it?
Measured at 50 dB at 1 m — clearly audible in the kitchen, faintly audible in an open-plan living space, inaudible behind a closed door. For overnight cooks it’s noticeable but not disruptive. The Anova is fractionally quieter at 47 dB; the Sage Joule Turbo is the quietest at 44 dB.
What is the warranty in the UK?
12 months from Amazon as standard, extended to 18 months if you register the unit at Inkbird’s UK site. Inkbird’s UK customer service responds within two working days in our limited test interactions and have a reputation for replacing faulty units without quibble. We’d register the warranty even if you bought through Amazon.
The final word
After three months and 32 paired cooks against a £179 Anova 3.0, the £89 Inkbird ISV-100W is the sous vide stick we’d recommend to most readers without hesitation. The gap to the more expensive sticks is real but small, and it shows up in the corners of the cooking experience (clamp flexibility, app polish, accuracy at the egg-yolk-set extreme) rather than in the food itself. For under £100, that’s a remarkable amount of capability.
The asterisks: 12 mm clamp limit, app rough around the edges, fractionally louder pump. None of which changes the cooked food. The Inkbird’s job is to make sous vide cooking accessible to households that haven’t decided whether sous vide is their thing — and it does that job better than any other stick on the UK market at the price.
We’ll re-test the unit at the six-month and twelve-month marks to confirm the build quality holds up under sustained use, with particular attention to the touch-panel reliability and any long-term temperature-accuracy drift.
