Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill?
Obviously, to power the food identification, analysis, and cooking program recommendation system that makes it a "Smart Oven".
And that's the important part. Nobody's going to pay $1500 for something that makes cooking easier. They'll appreciate it, but they won't pay for it. Lot's of people will pay $1500 for a gadget that makes cooking better.
People who are passionate about cooking tend to do it for more people than just themselves.
It handles baking dishes up to 11"x16".
Most family size single-baking-dish recipes are sized for a 9"x13" baking dish.
> And it can only cook one thing at a time so wave goodbye to roasting veggies while the meat cooks.
While I suppose for some people a countertop oven might replace a full-size oven, most of the target early-adopter market for expensive kitchen gadgets is going to have a decent size kitchen with a full-size oven as well as any countertop oven; the features this has might reverse the traditional "large oven is primary, countertop is secondary" arrangement in those households, but I don't think most people in the early adopter market is going to be using this as their sole oven (though, I suppose, if you were particularly price-insensitive, especially if you already had a cooktop separate from a large oven, getting two of these for a dual-oven setup would be more space efficient than most dual-oven setups.)
And, for those who find a turkey a less-than-stellar example for whatever reason, a 12-pound turkey is a lot larger than a roughly four-pound roast, which (with various different marinades and preparation techiques) is the base for lots of ~6-8 serving main course recipes.
There are lots of people who cook turkey only on Thanksgiving, but it is far from true that no one cooks turkey except on Thanksgiving.
So? The target market of early adopters for high-end kitchen gadgets are willing to pay pretty high premiums for unique features. (And aren't people who could replace their existing set of appliances for $1500; they're more like the people that spend close to half of that on a high-end VitaMix blender alone.)
(whelp - after checking, it even seems that the Miele oven I had in mind as a reference point is over $5000 in the US)
Selecting common recipes from the console is a fairly common feature even in inexpensive microwaves and toaster ovens. Moving that to a phone app isn't really much of a comparative selling point, and its cheap and easy for existing incumbents in the market to replicate.
Onboard identification is much more of a unique feature. Sure, it adds quite a bit to the cost, but -- as long as it remains relatively unique -- it probably adds more to the appeal and potential selling price than to the cost.
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The first popular countertop microwave oven was sold in 1967 at a price that is equivalent to about $3,500 now. New tech in appliances is often very expensive; the early adopters (as in many fields) are people that aren't very price sensitive if there are new features that aren't available elsewhere.
Anyway, a countertop oven that can handle up to 11"x16" baking dishes isn't too small to cook a family meal, so even if your premise was correct, its not really applicable to the device in question.
would the market accept eating robot feces?
What might be more interesting is a gas-phase chromatography which analyses the vapors and deduces the various reactions going on. But that's going to be severely over-kill (and incredibly priced).
But I am not defending this product. It may find a market but it would not be for me. I have been learning to cook through trial and error and find it fun and rewarding. Not only that, it really doesn't take that much time.
Likewise I feel microwave ovens should have a microphone to sell captured conversation data to corporations and the NSA ... oh wait strike that ... I mean analyze the sound of popping popcorn and stop the oven at a time that optimized the poppping yield while optimistically minimizing burning.
Given the bifurcation of the american economy into a small number of uber rich and a vast number of dirt poor, its hard to sell a $3000 oven when that represents a substantial portion of a line cook's annual salary. If you only use it a hundred times its cheaper to hire a cook either directly or indirectly via a restaurant owner. The uber rich could afford $30K or $300K so you're leaving cash on the table, and the average $30K/yr joe6pack will never be able to afford it. The game plan could be to monetize as much as possible in the short term before the Chinese clones arrive at walmart for $99 rather than being a sustainable luxury goods business. Or maybe not.
I think the main selling point of streaming HD video is it allows you to check visual indicators of doneness without walking over to the oven.
People constantly post their nice-looking food to Facebook, I'm sure this will be its main purpose.
- Signed, an envious commoner.
Any good cook is not going to need some gimmicky gadget like this and will likely stay clear of this. You could get so many other great tools and more useful gadgety things for what they're asking. Immersion circulator, anyone?
I probably have $1500 in cookware and my knife collection and large stand mixer and just cooking stuff in general, but if you buy quality it lasts decades (or at least it used to), which might be a slightly longer time horizon than the typical gadget, or in this case, toaster oven.
A few (2-4?) good knives (full tang), a honing steel, a large wood cutting board, and a knife block would likely be the first things I'd recommend someone starting out to get, along with a basic knife skills class. In addition to buying quality items, caring for them properly will definitely serve you well.
This is why this oven exists???
Or do we think image recognition and AI is easy and can be programmed up on a weekend on a phone?
SoCs cost at most like $20 each (if you have scale, which these guys won't)); the cost amounts from elsewhere. They'll form a comparatively small part of the total cost (which they can iterate on in later editions) but that make things simpler overall.
If they wanted to, they could just include dev boards in the devices; at $300 it would only be 10% of the price.
[0] - on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/presentations/S4412-tegra-k1-automotive-industry.pdf
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-...