Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm an enthusiastic user of 3 kitchen cooking methods: 1) Pressure Cooking 2) Air Frying and 3) Sous Vide I jumped at the idea of having a single appliance capable of performing the tasks of 3 separate devices! The ad copy and previous reviews handily summarize the features and basic operations of the FD302, so I won't repeat them here. Instead, I'll concentrate on comparisons with the individual appliances that I use, and how I feel the Foodi stacks up against them. Pressure cooking: I've been using an Instant Pot Ultra for a couple of years, and I love it! The built-in functions for cooking various foods such as rice and eggs work wonderfully, and can be customized, with the changed presets saved -- very handy! I use the Porridge setting for my daily steel-cut oats, and I cook dried chickpeas without presoaking using another preset that I've stored. I love using the saute function to sear meats and soften onions & garlic in preparation for a one-pot meal. All of these things are possible with the Foodi, but there aren't separate settings for the porridge, eggs, beans or soup. These are all variations of pressure cooking that are stored as convenient presets. To accomplish these with the Ninja Foodi, they must be programmed using the Pressure function. I especially prefer the Instant Pot's automatic pressure valve to the Foodi's, which must be manually closed or opened according to the selected function. Advantage: Instant Pot Air Frying: I've been using a standalone Power AirFryer XL for several years and normally just program it for the time and temperature I want to use on a particular food, rather than using its presets. So, for this function, the Ninja seems to work about the same, although I've only used it for this a few times. Advantage: non - approximately equal Sous Vide: This was one of the big reasons I opted to get the Ninja, and turns out to be my biggest disappointment. I knew going in that there's no mechanical circulation of the water inside the Ninja's pot during sous vide, but figured that it would still do an acceptable job. I quickly found out that there is very limited sous vide functionality in the Foodi, specifically in temperature and time adjustments. * The water temperature is adjustable between 120 and 190 degrees, in steps of 5 degrees. Sous vide is about precision, and I often program 131 or 132 degrees for a steak. The difference between 130 and 135 degrees on meat 'doneness' is very significant. Furthermore, the very first food I'd intended to cook called for 194 degrees, whereas the Foodi is limited to 190. Double fail on temperature. Advantage: huge, given to standalone sous vide circulator * Similarly, the cooking time is adjustable only in steps of 15 minutes, although I'll have to admit that this isn't a huge problem, as sous vide cooking times can vary widely with minimal impact on the final taste and texture. There appears to be a limit of 24hours cooking time, however. Those not familiar with sous vide cooking may not realize it, but there are some specialized instances for cooking times up to 32 or even 48 hours, meaning that the sous vide function is limited. Advantage: standalone sous vide circulator But the worst was yet to come! I tried an initial test, just to see how long it would take to heat the water to temperature, and how tightly it would maintain the temperature. My first test revealed that it heated the water in an acceptable amount of time, but when the Foodi gave me the 'Add Food' message, I measured the water temperature and found it to be 25 degrees too hot! I checked it with 3 thermometers -- 2 digital and one mercury. They all agreed. I waited a few days and tried a second test, today. This time I set the water to the default value of 130 degrees. When the heating cycle completed, I measured it at 155 degrees. Clearly unacceptable and a disaster for sous vide cooking! I'm not giving a big thumbs-down, because it's possible that I received a defective unit. However, it's clear that this is a 'compromise' device that lacks the refinement of separate appliances in an attempt to do, perhaps, too many functions in a mediocre fashion. One size never fits all. On the whole, I prefer my separate pieces -- the Instant Pot and my sous vide circulator. This is just 'ok' in my opinion. Update: May 22, 2021: After my disappointing results with the sous vide function on the Foodi, I spoke with customer service about the wild inaccuracy I found in the programmed temperature. They had little comment and no explanation for the inconsistency, but instructed me to cut the power cord to disable it, and they sent a replacement to me for the cost of shipping. When the replacement arrived, I went right to the sous vide function and repeated the test it had so spectacularly failed the first time around. To my chagrin, the results were virtually identical. I accepted the default temperature of 130 degrees, and set the time to 2 hours. When the unit signaled that the preheat was finished and it was time to add food, I measured the temperature at 149 degrees. I continued to measure at 15-minute intervals for the duration, and saw that the temperature slowly drifted down, ending up at 129 at the 1:45 mark. To my way of thinking, this is more analogous to cooking sous vide in a dishwasher than a precision cooking device.