I was looking for a convection oven for quite a while, and did a deep research. I owned a Nuwave Oven for 1 year, got rid of it because I didn't like the plastic dome, it turned yellow and with a lot of scratches. It was impossible to see how food cooked in the oven after a few months. And then I got a Flavorwave Oven for a little bit longer, everybody loved it. My daughter took it when she came for dinner last Christmas : ( which she is still in use : ) But I really like this type of oven, and came across Secura oven the other day. It has all the features Flavorwave has and a very good review.Now I think I made a good choice, this oven performs even better than my old ones. It's more convenient to use with the hinged arm oven top, and the cord is detachable, my old Nuwave and Flavorwave oven don't have a detachable cord, so when you lift the oven's head, you need to hold and drag the cord with you. This looks like a minor improvement on Secura oven makes our life much easier.
Well the cooking result is also amazing. Cook for the same amount of time, same temp setting as my nuwave and flavorwave oven. In my opinion, the flavorwave oven and the Secura Oven are pretty the same result, quicker and juicier and you feel more favor and natural. But with the similar price, I got an extender ring, and 2 standard racks with my Secura Oven. Nuwave and flavorwave, they don't offer the extender ring for free, (extender ring's value is about $30). I used the extender ring to cook the whole chicken several times, it's very useful, a must have accessory.
This is my first product review on Amazon, and I looked all the reviews here before I bought this oven, and I think sharing some good experience is very good thing to do. I hope more and more people know this good product, and use it. We really eat healthier with it, every time I saw so much oil drip off during the cooking, I always say, "WOW I'm so lucky to have this oven, I really ate much less fat and oil very meal!
Both Secura and Flavorwave oven use Halogen heating, Nuwave uses metal heating tube. Halogen lamp definitely helps you see clearly how food cooked inside the oven. But if you do not care about this, all three ovens give you pretty good results.
Both Secura and Flavorwave oven use glass bowl, Nuwave uses plastic cover. All of them works pretty well and dish washer safe. My first Nuwave plastic cover has a lot of scratches but still very sturdy. All of them are very easy to clean, and both Secura and Flavorwave have build-in self-cleaning cycle.
Nuwave and Flavorwave ovens have a lid holder which is designed to put the oven top on after cooking. BUT, the problem is I keep forgetting to attach the lid holder to the oven, so many times I ended up looking around to find a place to hold the oven lid. :(((( You do not have to worry about this with Secura oven hinged arm oven top.
Nuwave's accessory parts feel like not as solid as Flavorwave and Secura oven. The wires and metal plate feel like a little bit thinner, but the oven head is solid enough. The Nuwave oven is only about half the weight. So if you are weak or handicapped and want to carry the oven with you on the go, Nuwave oven is easier to move around.
After 9 months, our Nuwave see-thru plastic shell cracked. Even before the cracking, it became opaque like an worn plastic car headlight. The white plastic base was already yellowing as well. The Nuwave was still functional, but it was too big and got uglier by the day. The heating unit on top was very sturdy and of a resistor design similiar to most conventional electric stovetops it probably wouldn't break for a decade.
On the other hand, the Secura Digital (SD) has a glass body shell which I greatly prefer. I don't think it is tempered, which means one shouldn't put it in cold water while hot or it may crack. Otherwise, it's a much cleaner and better design. The heating unit is halogen, like the 500w utilitarian work lights around. Halogen lights seem prone to breaking, but our oven is still is in one piece after 3 months of extensive use. Should the heating lamp break, it can be replaced for $35 and seems like a simple procedure to replace. It's rated for 2000 or 3000 hours, I believe, and the filament seems thicker (and hopefully sturdier) than said worklights.
The Nuwave has 4 big pieces to clean. The clear plastic shell covered in splatter, the gray metal drip pan, the white base (which always has meat juices in it after use, for some reason), and the metal rack. All these pieces are large, they will hog all the room of the bottom rack of a dishwasher.
The SD has 2 medium-large pieces to clean the bottom glass shell and the metal rack. The glass shell can fit in the bottom of a dishwasher with much room to spare for dishes, and the metal rack can fit in the middle rack of a dishwasher. The glass cleans easily and still sparkles like new. There is a 3rd piece, the glass on top, but a quick sponging suffices as it hardly gets dirty enough to warrant disassembling it (if even possible).
In operation, the Nuwave cooks okay at the medium-high to low temperature ranges. It seals the air in and keeps things moist. It has a bigger body and probably can cook bigger things. I have not tried a goose with it, although I believe it might fit in this one, defitely not in the SD. If you wanted to turn meat over or add things, you have to take the heating unit off and clear plastic shell off (the top) and have a large, free space beside the machine for the top.
The SD also seals air in and cooks excellently. It gets hot faster, and has a high to low temperature range. The halogen can get really hot and give Chicken a nice crisper skin than the Nuwave. In the normal configuration, it can cook a large chicken. With the extender ring, we have successfully cooked a duck, which has an elongated body in comparison and needed to be slanted. A goose, otoh, is too big and I had to opt for the normal oven. This higher-end model has a swing arm connected to the top. It's very convenient to just flip it and meddle with the food quickly.
The display on both (digital versions) are okay and easy to use, although I think the temperature and airflow guage text are too small on the SD digital for older eyes. Eventually you'll learn the position of the LED lights to not need the guidance of the text, but it should still be bigger. The cooking time on both are easy to read and adjust. On the SD, you can adjust airflow from Hi-Med-Low which is a feature not available on the Nuwave IIRC.
A complaint I have on both machines is that the chrome on the metal racks have given way to copper underneath. They were very thinly plated, perhaps flash plated. They should have been better quality.
I knocked a star off the SD for the display and metal rack plating issues, but otherwise love it. It's superior to the NuWave as the daily appliance, it takes up significantly less space but it doesn't feel like I'm need to cook smaller portions. It's aesthically more pleasing, plus easier to clean. I'm glad I went with the digital version for the more precise control and swing arm. The extender ring is useful too. Another nice touch of the SD is that it can be truly turned off without be unplugged. It has an old fashioned power switch on the side, and not merely a "soft" off that sets the machine dozing at a few watts an hour. More and more devices are missing that these days and playing energy vampire while not in use and it does add to the electric bill with an entire household of gadgets behaving this way. Just thought I would mention that.
Bigger households may want to explore a bigger machine but I can't see why it couldn't service 4-6. It also toasts bigger bread pieces nicely in minutes:) One thing to be aware of with any machines of this nature is that it cannot cook pizza well pizza needs to be heat from the bottom, otherwise the cheese is burnt and tomato sauce is boiling, and the crust can still be frozen. A conventional oven is better for that.
To sum up:
Space Winner Secura. Less countertop footprint while having just a wee less cooking space.
Heating Element Longevity Nuwave. Uses a resistive heating coil like many stovetops do. Secura is a halogen bulb, notorious for burning out. On the plus, the bulb gets hotter and can crisp chicken skin and fries at the high heat setting.
Clean up Secura. Made of glass, easier cleanup. Less parts. Sized to fit in dishwasher. Many Nuwave parts won't fit. Buttons on secura covered by plastic sheet, so there are no spaces for gunk to accumulate.
Body Secura. Made of glass. Nuwave plastic fades and becomes opaque like a cheap car headlight within a year of use.
EDIT: October 2012
We finally had to replace the bulb as it burnt out. We used the machine a fair amount, cooked a lot of chickens, but I would say we used it 500 hours and not the 2000-3000 hours bulb life the company claims. I found a new bulb through ebay, same manufacturer, for $25. Unfortunately, what I thought would be a 15 minute affair, turned into a 3 hour one. Without instructions, my son had to grapple how to disassemble the machine to replace the bulb. It's not a simple plug & play affair, unfortunately. You have to remove the 3 cover screws and take the cover off. After that, it becomes less straightforward as there are over a dozen screws, as well as the fan. The answer is to remove the 4 deeply inset screws (that are in the circular enclosures) and to keep turning until they come out. I'm sure next time it will take only a half hour. Some of the internal pieces like screws looked sufficiently rusted that I suppose we can replace the bulbs 2 or 3 times max before it becomes a good idea to replace the machine with a new one.I have been thrilled with the results using this device.
*The taste of meats and fish are superior. The oven cooks by infrared heat and convection. Convention means that air is circulated around the food, which seals in the juices. Meats & fish are very moist and tender inside--better than I have been able to produce by other methods of home cooking.
*I like the design because the top flips up and will stay in that position. Competing products that I have tried require one to lift the hot cover up and over the food, and put it...somewhere. The top is a little wobbly when in the up position, but it's still the best design I have seen.
*I like the glass bowl design...I can put it in the dishwasher should I need to (though it does take up a lot of space).
Tips:
*I like to line the bottom with aluminum foil to minimize cleanup.
*The oven comes with racks, but I wanted extras. On Amazon, I got some small roasting racks..I couldn't find round ones, but found some 6x9 rectangular ones. For small meals, like 2 chicken breasts, I put the rack over an aluminum pie tin(usually lined with foil so I can reuse it), and then put the chicken breasts on top so air can circulate well around them. If you want to get them higher up in the oven put the bottom rack below the pie tin. Smaller racks = less to wash.
*When cooking potatoes (40-45 min) and sweet potatoes (25-35 min), I usually flip them over half way through cooking. Browning is more even.
*Do not expect instantaneous cooking...as a conservative estimate, I would say that cooking times are from 60 to 75% of other methods.
*Fats & oils from the food tend to discolor the protective grill on the heating element. When the recipe book recommends that a food be cooked on the high rack, I position it a little lower, more in the center of the oven. I do that by putting one of my extra roasting racks on the bottom, then a pie or cake tin (foil lined, open side up), and then the "lower" rack. Food cooks the same and there's less splatter on the grill. I guess you have figured out that I REALLY hate cleaning!
Note:
The glass bowl weighs 7 pounds. It is not for the frail elderly.The 798DH is one amazing little product. I've loved it the entire time I've owned mine, which was about 8 months. I bought the product in late December of 09 and Yesterday 8/7/10 the bulb burned out and there is no way to replace the heating element. Your only option is to purchase a new one and I can't see spending $150+ on a new one that may or may not last over 6 months to a year. Luckily I paid $100 for mine as it was on sale at the time of purchase. It's just very unfortunate the bulbs can't be replaced because this is a fantastic unit otherwise.
The best thing about this unit was that it did NOT smoke... I can't tell you how important a feature this is for any turbo oven. I live in an apartment with no outside fan for the stove and got so sick of the house fogging and smoking up. This unit solved that problem. The unit cooked everything wonderfully except for maybe really odd things like large canned biscuits, although it cooks the smaller ones just fine.
The sad thing is I'll probably be forced to purchase a cheaper oven without the hinged design, due not for the unreliability of the unit but, the lack of replacement parts.
I'll probably go with a Natural Solutions Turbo Oven for a few reasons.
#1. You can buy replacement parts
#2. They offer 3 different cooking elements that are all interchangeable.
#3. 2 of the cooking elements do not use infrared so they are much less likely to burn out.
#4. Cost is under $100 for a new unit and less than $75 for a replacement cooking element.
Comment about my #4?
Yes, you can probably purchase a new oven like a Deni for less than $75, but the Deni's and Sunpentown ovens make it too hard to find replacement parts and I don't actually trust some of the reviews especially since the Sunpentown reviews look to be fake. It could very well be that the Natural Solution oven is exactly the same as the Sunpentown ovens, but I'd much rather order from a place I can actually get support from.I bought one of these about a year ago and it performed exactly as I expected.
I especially enjoyed broiling steaks in it as the heating element got good and hot and did the job in a very short time. The outsides were evenly and lightly charred and the interiors juicy and tender.
Then I switched it on yesterday and the heating element died on me. No problem, I thought. I'll just remove the element, a halogen lamp, and replace it. Not so. The lamp is hard wired and not practically replaceable.
A serious design flaw in my opinion. What were the folks at Secura thinking? That customers will simply shrug their shoulders and buy a new one? I don't think so. At least not me.
Go back to the drawing board, Secura. Make the lamp replaceable. When you do I'll think about getting another one.
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