Polyscience is one of the most trusted sous vide brands in the professional kitchen, but they generally price themselves out of the range of the home market. When they released the Sous Vide Professional they managed to bring the price point down to 799.95$, which was still several hundred dollars away from the consumer appliance range.
Today, Polyscience is consolidating the brand names of their circulators by renaming the 7306 aka the Sous Vide Thermal Circulator to the Sous Vide Professional - Classic Series. It also got some minor cosmetic changes to reflect the rebrand.
The Sous Vide Professional will henceforth be known as the Sous Vide Professional - Chef Series.
But this probably isn't interesting to anyone except for myself. Cause, as someone who covers the sous vide appliance market, I can tell you this: no one cares about this stuff except for me and like ten other people.
The exciting news (to you) is that Polyscience also announced the Sous Vide Professional - Creative Series. The Creative series is "Specifically designed for the casual user", which is code for "This is the new consumer option from Polyscience". Priced at 499.95$, this model has a number of differences from the Chef Series.
But lets get to the nitty gritty. The Creative can heat a 20 liter bath to a maximum temperature of 99ºC within 0.1ºC, and has a fixed flow rate of 6 liters per minute. Contrast that to the SVP Chef which can heat a 30 liter bath to a maximum temperature of 100ºC within 0.07ºC, and has a variable flow rate of up to 12 liters per minute. According to the website, the Creative takes up the same amount of space as the Chef (14.125 x 3.875 x 7.375 in), but is significantly lighter (5.5 pounds versus 9.5 pounds).
There are some other things you give up, including some failure mode indicators, the cookbook and the storage/carry case.
For the home user, the Polyscience Sous Vide Professional Creative Series sacrifices things you won't care about, and gives you (most of) the things you wanted at a pretty great price point.
