No, you don’t need a sous-vide. You don’t need one from Mellow or Anova or Nomiku. A sous-vide will not make your life better or easier or more fashionable. This is not a crockpot. This is not an instant pot. Dinner won’t magically appear at 6:30pm. Despite what sous-vide makers tell you, food will not always be the perfect temperature or consistency as long as the word “perfect” is subjective.

You won’t always even be sure you like the food that comes out of your sous-vide.

So what are these various sous-vide contraptions? They’re experiment machines. If you like to play around in the kitchen, if you’re OK with a meal occasionally turning out a little weird or a little raw in exchange for that one magic night when everything tastes out-of-orbit amazing, then perhaps a sous-vide is for you. But disabuse yourself of the notion that you’ll be using this every night to feed your large family of toddler children. This is for the big kids and the people who can chug wine if the fat on your meat never rendered. This is for the stay-cation date night.