Amazon’s new smart oven can air-fry, bake, and microwave your meals

By Alina Bradford September 25, 2019

Today at the Amazon 2019 event, the company unveiled its newest smart cooking appliance, the Amazon Smart Oven. It’s described as a combination of a microwave, convection oven, air fryer, and food warmer. And what’s more, all of that cooking versatility can be controlled via Alexa-enabled devices and voice commands. Last year, Amazon unveiled a smart microwave, but it didn’t seem to wow many. This new device seems much more advanced and useful, especially for those will modest cooking skills.

Certified for humans, Amazon says this new oven is struggle-free, tinker-free, stress-free. It looks like that label is true. The smart oven has 30+ built-in presets. So, all you need to do is ask Alexa to cook a particular food and she’ll automatically find the perfect way to cook it. She will also announce when you need to stir your food during the cooking process, when the oven is preheated, and when it’s finished.

The new oven is, as a result, a non-cook’s dream. Using the app, you can scan hundreds of packaged foods and the cooking instructions for each will be sent to the Amazon Smart Oven. All you need to do is press start. No need to guesstimate cooking times or power settings. It can even take a food item from frozen, to defrosted to cooked, without human intervention. Whether the oven can live up to all of these fantastical promises is yet to be seen, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated.

It also features a temperature probe to ensure your food is truly done. No more pink chicken, not to mention it is large enough to cook a 5-pound chicken at a roomy 1.5 cubic feet.

The Amazon Smart Oven is available for $250 and comes with an Echo Dot. When ordering you can choose the color of your Echo Dot. It comes in Plum, Charcoal, Heather Gray or Sandstone. It goes on pre-sale starting today, September 25.

Amazon also unveiled new features for Alexa and several new Alexa devices including a new Echo speaker with improved sound, the new Echo Show 8 with a screen that comes in three different sizes for just $130, and an Alexa powered glowing nightlight for kids.

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Alina Bradford has been a tech, lifestyle and science writer for more than 20 years. Her work is read by millions each month…

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