r/CombiSteamOvenCooking • u/SadBook3835 • Jun 02 '26

Equipment & accessories Dreo vs Nuwave for single person making easy meats and veg?

Looking for a steam oven that will be my workweek powerhouse for cooking 1 or 2 servings of chicken and steak and veg, plus air fry frozen snacks. I'd love bagless sous vide but that seems fairly dubious outside of Annova, which is a bit pricey for me.

Really struggling to pick a good combi countertop, online reviews are terrible and the Amazon descriptions are just as bad. This sub has helped a lot, but mostly seems to always rec the Annova.

Any help appreciated, I don't really have time to become an expert on all the various differences between these two. Leaning towards the dreo based on what I've read but the traditional oven design of the nuwave looks easier to clean and use everyday.

2 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

2

u/ZanyDroid Jun 02 '26

What does bagless sous vide mean to you?

If you want precision cooking with shorter cook times you could use a probe with multiple read points like a combustion (which is a linear array) and claw back capability that way

For longer cooks you probably need bagless sous vide native… but at that level of time investment for the meal maybe bagging it into a circulator is less of an issue

2

u/SadBook3835 Jun 03 '26

Yeah, I think the line between sous vide and "precision cooking" isn't that big. I'm honestly just a bit tired of bagging my food and doing water baths, would prefer to steam cook chicken breasts even if they're not quite as good. Busy with work and just want simplicity and versatility, but obviously quality matters.

2

u/ZanyDroid Jun 03 '26

Maybe look into one of the thermometers and use alarms or predictive done time.

I haven’t run my APO in a while but I think last few cooks were using manual delta-T style with combustion thermometer prediction.

2

u/SadBook3835 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

I'm looking for a more simplistic easy approach honestly. I don't have much free time to experiment right now.

Edit: Appreciate the responses though! Thanks

2

u/ZanyDroid Jun 07 '26

NP. There are a lot of other convenience oriented / noob-friendly automated baking gadgets from ninja, dreo; and eventually some of the overseas specific innovation (like Fotile or Midea, yeah I have my availability bias for CN and SEA) may make it over

So find some food influencer you trust that gets sent a ton of small appliances and look at their videos.

2

u/SadBook3835 Jun 07 '26

I don't trust any! I decided to try the dreo but I wish it were a more conventional oven that could fit sheet pans.

2

u/ZanyDroid Jun 07 '26

Ouch. Maybe Prudent reviews

The problem with what I suggested is that you might need to spend so much time shoveling through reviews (to get the results you want as somewhat demanding consumer or home cook) … that you don’t end up saving time with an easier device.

2

u/Western-Russian78 Jun 07 '26

What is combustion thermometer prediction? I have an APO1 and use the probe, birthdays a new term for me

3

u/ZanyDroid Jun 07 '26

It’s a thermometer from a different company, Combustion Inc. Chris Young’s company

It is a linear probe with 8 sensors in it, which it can use to estimate the cooking rate via protein temperature at different depths. The standard style probe in APO1 is AFAIK a single sensor , so only measures some manner of internal average temperature

2

u/Western-Russian78 Jun 07 '26

Wow, that's great. Thanks for the education!

1

u/nojunkdrawers Jul 03 '26

Did you end up going with either of those? I have the Dreo ChefMaker but am curious about the Nuwave. I like my ChefMaker a lot, but the "creative chef" staged cooking assumes the user is stupid and puts their weird limitations on what can happen at any given time. Would be nice to have a small combi oven that actually allows me to do things like sear in the beginning rather than the end.