For those who want to try sous vide cooking but find the price tag for a nice immersion cooker just a bit too high — for example, the $169 Anova 900-watt, which we briefly mentioned here — the Kitchen Gizmo sous vide machine is a not-as-fancy-but-still-reliable alternative that's also easier on the wallet at $100 (blue version only as of June 12th, 2017).

This thing is super low-maintenance to use: Use the squeeze-clip to attach it to the side of a pot (or a nice polycarbonate container), turn it on, then use that nice sturdy dial to the left of the LED display to input your desired temperature and timer (which there's a button to toggle between). There's no wireless connection to speak of — meaning you can't operate it from your phone or anything — but hey, who says everything needs to be connected?

If you need more validation about the Kitchen Gizmo's quality, The Sweethome recently selected it as their budget pick:

It’s not as elegant as the circulators from Anova or ChefSteps, and it lacks any sort of wireless connection. But in our tests, it held its temperature properly and was whisper quiet.

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For the budget price, you give up any sort of wireless connection; you control everything on the unit itself. The Kitchen Gizmo didn’t issue an alarm when it reached its set temperature, which is a downside, but we loved how quiet it was: Measuring directly at the unit, we got a reading of only 39.3 dB in a 36.3 dB kitchen. It was practically silent a foot away. This is the quietest immersion circulator we’ve tested, giving competitors that cost twice as much something to strive for.

Get the Kitchen Gizmo for $100 on Amazon.