I recently got an Anova -- with touch controls, and it works great both with and without the app. The top is a big bigger to handle the screen and touch controls.
Making an immersion circulator app-only is likely a BOM-reducing measure, which is fine (given that active time is probably at most a few minutes like twice a day). And you can get smaller form factors too with app-only control (e.g. Ember Mug).
It’s not fine. I still use electrical appliances that are 10-50 years old. I’m pretty sure these “smart” devices apps won’t work in a decade (if that).
My Anova touchscreen frequently fails to work in service, I think because of the humidity, which seems like something reasonably foreseeable by the designers...
I like it, but now leave it pre-set to 135°F lest I set it elsewhere and then lose the ability to adjust it, so I think they dropped the ball on the design.
