How a toaster oven helped me learn to stop worrying and love the Internet of Things

A fast convection oven and a host of other functions make this toaster oven worth a look.

Read the whole story

 

[Errum]

Even a hard-core, connected-appliances Luddite like myself is considering an IoT toaster oven now.

I use an IR laser thermometer to find out internal temperatures (on the rare occasions that I should).

Unless you paid extra for the Superman X-Ray Vision option your IR laser thermometer tells only the surface temperature. For sufficiently long cooking times that may approach the internal temperature, but I don't think that's the point.

 

[Decoherent]

Even a hard-core, connected-appliances Luddite like myself is considering an IoT toaster oven now.

I use an IR laser thermometer to find out internal temperatures (on the rare occasions that I should).

Unless you paid extra for the Superman X-Ray Vision option your IR laser thermometer tells only the surface temperature. For sufficiently long cooking times that may approach the internal temperature, but I don't think that's the point.

Well, given sufficient power, it might tell you the temperature of the exploding chicken in front of the laser; I wonder if that type of thermometer can measure a plasma?

 

[reverend atman]

Those yams look like sea lions.

 

[Errum]

Even a hard-core, connected-appliances Luddite like myself is considering an IoT toaster oven now.

I use an IR laser thermometer to find out internal temperatures (on the rare occasions that I should).

Unless you paid extra for the Superman X-Ray Vision option your IR laser thermometer tells only the surface temperature. For sufficiently long cooking times that may approach the internal temperature, but I don't think that's the point.

Well, given sufficient power, it might tell you the temperature of the exploding chicken in front of the laser; I wonder if that type of thermometer can measure a plasma?

Maybe with the Solar Eclipse Sunglasses option? ;-)

 

[Kevinv]

The best way to cook bacon in an oven is to use Dan Benjamin's Bacon Method:

http://baconmethod.com

Pretty much flawless in my crappy non-June, non-Breville toaster oven.

 

[El Chupageek]

For most internet connected devices the risk isn't to the owner - the exploit scenarios most of them offer just aren't interesting. Rather its a "public health" matter of them being used as a botnet against an unrelated target. Given that June can't make a non-glitchy mobile app I'm not super confident they can make a secure service either


But the larger issue is when they go belly up/sold off/decide a monthly fee and your toaster is worthless (hell, even google only supports an android release for a couple years). I've largely avoided giving anything with less than 4GB of Ram an IP in my house, but I had a navdi HUD for my vehicle. Despite supposedly having an offline mode when navdi went bankrupt I had a $500 paper weight. They wouldn't even give me the API documentation so I could make my own solution without a crap ton of reverse engineering. So yeah, as cool as some of the internet features are, the fact that companies have no interest in designing the device to be resilient to their company failing means I have no interest in their products

But I do have interest in the popcorn video. Please post

 

[sonolumi]

I already have a fantastically good oven. An internal camera and sensor would be great for the absent minded owner though.

 

[Impugno]

Don’t tease us with the air popped popcorn and not give us a gif at least!!

 

[Deleted member 1]

You can air pop plain popcorn in the microwave with pretty good results (2:30 in my 1200 watt). It sounds like this device is almost good. But I'd want a test with the internet down, at the minimum. Wifi-only would probably be safe enough for the reasonably paranoid, and a camera to keep tabs on food without hovering is useful. Even then it's a hard sell at $600.

 

[LetterRip]

The big question - what size pizza can it cook and how well does it do?

 

[LetterRip]

[duplicate]

 

[acmegamer]

As I read this article and the writer made light of the fact that installing this app could potentially be weakening her own security I felt that some where Dan Goodin was face palming. Megan, it's not that people can see what your cooking, it's that you've now installed yet another vector into compromising all your information. IoT devices are terrible about updating, and security.

 

[dmsilev]

So basically in terms of core functionality ("cooking stuff"), it's on a par with the Breville that costs 1/3 as much. Is having a webcam inside your toaster really worth $400?

 

[fivemack]

Why on Earth is a device of that price, made in 2018, equipped with a camera and with access to a smartphone's-worth of processing, using a timer rather than looking at the food to see whether it's done yet?

 

[LordDaMan]

I don't think I've ever heard of an IoT device that's more likely to set your house on fire than this.

It will be even more fun when about 6 mouths down the line some one hacks the security and can cause it to turn and run for many hours at a time

 

[LoweStein]

"The best feature was the timer; you could pop a banana bread in there, set it for 40 minutes, and go walk the dog knowing that, when the 40 minutes ended, the Breville would shut off, and your food would slowly stop cooking."

I can’t believe that was seriously written. You just described what all toaster/ovens have been able to do for decades. My $60 toaster oven does that.

"Most importantly, there's a camera inside the oven, which totally changed the way I cook."

As opposed to simply getting off your rear once in a while to check? Really? This is what it’s come to, a $600 Internet toaster/oven with a camera inside and that uses an app?

 

[el_oscuro]

This review is missing the most important part of any IoT review: Security assessment.

1. Run nmap against the device. What ports are open.? Any out dated versions of anything? What distro is the O/S based on?
2. Do you have to configure uPnP? Any default passwords?
3. Using the nmap results, Metasploit is your friend. Can you get a reverse shell?
4. From the shell you probably got, can you install tools like mimikatz for lateral movement to more interesting targets like the PC with the tax returns?
5. On the same idea, can you use any configured connections to phones to exploit those phones?
6. Configure it to use an intercepting proxy like Burp Suite. What does it connect to? Who does it phone home to?
7. If you disconnect it from the network, what functionality is lost? What will happen when the company decides to shut down the servers?

Without an assessment like this, any IoT device is worthless to me.

 

[LoweStein]

This review is missing the most important part of any IoT review: Security assessment.

1. Run nmap against the device. What ports are open.? Any out dated versions of anything? What distro is the O/S based on?
2. Do you have to configure uPnP? Any default passwords?
3. Using the nmap results, Metasploit is your friend. Can you get a reverse shell?
4. From the shell you probably got, can you install tools like mimikatz for lateral movement to more interesting targets like the PC with the tax returns?
5. On the same idea, can you use any configured connections to phones to exploit those phones?
6. Configure it to use an intercepting proxy like Burp Suite. What does it connect to? Who does it phone home to?
7. If you disconnect it from the network, what functionality is lost? What will happen when the company decides to shut down the servers?

Without an assessment like this, any IoT device is worthless to me.

All for a toaster/oven.

 

[el_oscuro]

This review is missing the most important part of any IoT review: Security assessment.

1. Run nmap against the device. What ports are open.? Any out dated versions of anything? What distro is the O/S based on?
2. Do you have to configure uPnP? Any default passwords?
3. Using the nmap results, Metasploit is your friend. Can you get a reverse shell?
4. From the shell you probably got, can you install tools like mimikatz for lateral movement to more interesting targets like the PC with the tax returns?
5. On the same idea, can you use any configured connections to phones to exploit those phones?
6. Configure it to use an intercepting proxy like Burp Suite. What does it connect to? Who does it phone home to?
7. If you disconnect it from the network, what functionality is lost? What will happen when the company decides to shut down the servers?

Without an assessment like this, any IoT device is worthless to me.

All for a toaster/oven.

As a pen tester, I don't care about the intended purpose of the device. What is important is what *I* can use it for. And the best part is, I didn't have to spend the $600 to use it.

 

[dodgyG33za]

The Ugly: It has to be connected to the mother-ship just to cook you dinner.

C'mon Ars. Surely you know your readership here. Give us a compelling reason why this cooking appliance needs to be connected to the internet.

I fear for a time where ovens or other devices won't even work without an internet connection. It is up to us to push back against such corporatisation of our private spaces.

 

[Kergonath]

P.S. The "yams" in the picture are called jewel sweet potatoes. A REAL "yam" is a particular veggie imported from the Caribbean and typically aren't found in stores. They're not particularly tasty, either, and are rather difficult to cook without over-baking them. Most "yams" seen in stores are simply sweet potatoes with an upscale market name.

I have been very confused by the yam thing. Actual yam is very difficult to confuse with a sweet potato. Also, more difficult to prepare and more toxic if not prepared correctly (and mine come from Africa, although it is cultivated in many tropical regions). Is that an American thing?

 

[Kergonath]

Not trolling, but seriously, what happens with all of this cool camera/IoT tech when June goes south or gets acquired by Google or somesuch?

Or when it gets hacked and ends up in a botnet...

 

[mltdwn]

A $600 toaster oven that will probably break in the next decade? Sorry I’ll stick to the one I got from my 85 year old grandmother when she moved in with my uncle last year. She got it in 1953 and it still works prefectly after 65 years of daily use. Oddly it seems like everything pre-1980ish was designed and built so you bought one and that was it. Even my circa 1960 circular saw (which is also all metal housing) has only ever had to have the power cord replaced.

 

[sayler]

Fracking toasters!

 

[Chemical Tribe]

Sigh, here I thought a $250 toaster oven was expensive, esp since IIRC, when I looked at Breville in person, were still made in China.

 

[Leftos]

The feature I like most is the food thermometer that comes with it. There's a jack inside that you plug it into, prod your food with the other end, and you can cook salmon or steak or what have you to the desired internal temperature, in set-it-and-forget-it style.

The built in programs are neat, as they utilize the different functions of the oven without requiring constant oversight and changing the function and temperature manually. Some foods it takes through 3 to 6 stages, say switching from preheat to broil to roast to rest to broil again, etc.

I love cooking, and it makes it easy to cook some meat or fish perfectly by just putting it in the June while I'm rangling 4 other parts of the meal manually, between the stove top and the big oven and the countertop...

So far it has cooked medium rare steak, and medium salmon, and pork loin perfectly using the thermometer. It takes care of that while I'm working on the sides.

Is that convenience worth $600? Probably not. But a colleague whose wife is a chef that caters for 70+ people on the regular swear by it for meals for the two of them since they bought one a year and a half ago, and sold me on getting one too.

I've barely used the camera, I'll admit. I don't care for the low quality live video, and anything that steams essentially makes the feed useless. The novelty of it detecting the food you've put in wears off after the first few times. But I find the UI a delight to use, and the cooking tips suggest which accessories to use and which shelf and whether to use the thermometer, etc.

And it won't cook everything perfectly. The air-fried potatoes were good, but some sides of the basket were undercooked, which is disappointing.

Still, I've had a great time using it over the first 3 months of ownership. I use it often, and it has made cooking more complex meals or just having some perfectly cooked salmon with minimal effort after a long day so, so easy.

There's an active Facebook group with people sharing recipes and tips, and the team behind June is pretty active in it, too, which is encouraging.

Also, I don't know that it will become a paperweight if the June servers go down. The programs seem to be part of the software in the oven, so you'll be able to use most of what makes this oven great, the least of which is the mobile app and live video.

And yes, it does timelapse a few minutes after cooking is done, but that's an iOS exclusive feature for now.

YMMV! Just thought I'd leave this here as a happy owner.

 

[BigOlBlimp]

I have one. I find the thermometer isn’t accurate unless the entirety of the metal pin is inside the food. I absolutely love it and it makes a fantastically functional conversation piece.

 

[Anna Moose]

The Ugly: It has to be connected to the mother-ship just to cook you dinner.

C'mon Ars. Surely you know your readership here. Give us a compelling reason why this cooking appliance needs to be connected to the internet.

I fear for a time where ovens or other devices won't even work without an internet connection. It is up to us to push back against such corporatisation of our private spaces.

I personally think its awesome to be able to pre-heat from the phone. I'm always way too impatient to preheat. With that said, I find this price to be out of line for the product at hand. I hope the price comes down soon, because I'd like it, but $300 is my upper limit on something with this feature set, if not even lower. Doesn't seem like anything is worth the $400 premium over other good toaster ovens...

 

[Chemical Tribe]

The best way to cook bacon in an oven is to use Dan Benjamin's Bacon Method:

http://baconmethod.com

Pretty much flawless in my crappy non-June, non-Breville toaster oven.

Pretty much how Alton Brown says to cook it.

Also pretty good if you are doing other stuff - deep frying.

Me? I just buy Hormel "natural" pre cooked bacon for $4 and skip the mess.

 

[Kergonath]

The feature I like most is the food thermometer that comes with it. There's a jack inside that you plug it into, prod your food with the other end, and you can cook salmon or steak or what have you to the desired internal temperature, in set-it-and-forget-it style.

The built in programs are neat, as they utilize the different functions of the oven without requiring constant oversight and changing the function and temperature manually. Some foods it takes through 3 to 6 stages, say switching from preheat to broil to roast to rest to broil again, etc.

I love cooking, and it makes it easy to cook some meat or fish perfectly by just putting it in the June while I'm rangling 4 other parts of the meal manually, between the stove top and the big oven and the countertop...

So far it has cooked medium rare steak, and medium salmon, and pork loin perfectly using the thermometer. It takes care of that while I'm working on the sides.

Is that convenience worth $600? Probably not. But a colleague whose wife is a chef that caters for 70+ people on the regular swear by it for meals for the two of them since they bought one a year and a half ago, and sold me on getting one too.

I've barely used the camera, I'll admit. I don't care for the low quality live video, and anything that steams essentially makes the feed useless. The novelty of it detecting the food you've put in wears off after the first few times. But I find the UI a delight to use, and the cooking tips suggest which accessories to use and which shelf and whether to use the thermometer, etc.

And it won't cook everything perfectly. The air-fried potatoes were good, but some sides of the basket were undercooked, which is disappointing.

Still, I've had a great time using it over the first 3 months of ownership. I use it often, and it has made cooking more complex meals or just having some perfectly cooked salmon with minimal effort after a long day so, so easy.

There's an active Facebook group with people sharing recipes and tips, and the team behind June is pretty active in it, too, which is encouraging.

Also, I don't know that it will become a paperweight if the June servers go down. The programs seem to be part of the software in the oven, so you'll be able to use most of what makes this oven great, the least of which is the mobile app and live video.

And yes, it does timelapse a few minutes after cooking is done, but that's an iOS exclusive feature for now.

YMMV! Just thought I'd leave this here as a happy owner.

Ultimately, the price is not necessarily a problem. They are never going to get a large market share, but there are plenty of people who are willing to put a couple of hundreds in an upmarket appliance. Hell, I would not necessarily mind doing it, if only the selling point was quality, reliability and durability instead of hackability and an unpredictable life span. Camera and thermometer are nice, but I don’t want to increase the attack surface in my LAN and I would like to use it for longer than the average start up life expectancy.

[edit] I like cooking and I don’t mind doing it the pedestrian way, but I definitely understand why a cook would value some good automation to simplify it at home, so that’s definitely a valid selling point.

 

[PaulWTAMU]

My *real* oven wasn't much more than 600 dollars. The hell is with a 600 dollar toaster oven that doesn't even sound that great at being a toaster oven?!

 

[Leftos]

The feature I like most is the food thermometer that comes with it. There's a jack inside that you plug it into, prod your food with the other end, and you can cook salmon or steak or what have you to the desired internal temperature, in set-it-and-forget-it style.

The built in programs are neat, as they utilize the different functions of the oven without requiring constant oversight and changing the function and temperature manually. Some foods it takes through 3 to 6 stages, say switching from preheat to broil to roast to rest to broil again, etc.

I love cooking, and it makes it easy to cook some meat or fish perfectly by just putting it in the June while I'm rangling 4 other parts of the meal manually, between the stove top and the big oven and the countertop...

So far it has cooked medium rare steak, and medium salmon, and pork loin perfectly using the thermometer. It takes care of that while I'm working on the sides.

Is that convenience worth $600? Probably not. But a colleague whose wife is a chef that caters for 70+ people on the regular swear by it for meals for the two of them since they bought one a year and a half ago, and sold me on getting one too.

I've barely used the camera, I'll admit. I don't care for the low quality live video, and anything that steams essentially makes the feed useless. The novelty of it detecting the food you've put in wears off after the first few times. But I find the UI a delight to use, and the cooking tips suggest which accessories to use and which shelf and whether to use the thermometer, etc.

And it won't cook everything perfectly. The air-fried potatoes were good, but some sides of the basket were undercooked, which is disappointing.

Still, I've had a great time using it over the first 3 months of ownership. I use it often, and it has made cooking more complex meals or just having some perfectly cooked salmon with minimal effort after a long day so, so easy.

There's an active Facebook group with people sharing recipes and tips, and the team behind June is pretty active in it, too, which is encouraging.

Also, I don't know that it will become a paperweight if the June servers go down. The programs seem to be part of the software in the oven, so you'll be able to use most of what makes this oven great, the least of which is the mobile app and live video.

And yes, it does timelapse a few minutes after cooking is done, but that's an iOS exclusive feature for now.

YMMV! Just thought I'd leave this here as a happy owner.

Ultimately, the price is not necessarily a problem. They are never going to get a large market share, but there are plenty of people who are willing to put a couple of hundreds in an upmarket appliance. Hell, I would not necessarily mind doing it, if only the selling point was quality, reliability and durability instead of hackability and an unpredictable life span. Camera and thermometer are nice, but I don’t want to increase the attack surface in my LAN and I would like to use it for longer than the average start up life expectancy.

I hear you. Again, I don't think that the important parts of the oven rely on the internet. You get software updates that mostly add new programs and make adjustments to old ones based on user feedback, and wifi allows for the mobile app to work. But like I said, I don't care or use those features much, nor is it what makes the oven great.

I'm on vacation, but I'm definitely going to test the oven with the wifi turned off once I get back, to verify all this. I'll admit I should have tested that much sooner, since my assumptions are just that...

Edit: To respond to your edit, I love manually cooking, too! I've done it almost every day for the past 3 years, after the first 25 years of my life involved almost none of it out of sheer laziness. There's something therapeutic in cooking for me since I first tried it, and I love it. Still, the June has enabled me to try more complex recipes, and has helped me avoid take out even after exhausting days at work. That's a win in my book!

 

[fic]

Not so sure I'm sold on this one. My wife and I do use our toaster oven a lot. We have the Breville BOV900BSS Smart Oven. It's large enough to do a whole medium sized turkey and a 13" pizza. The toast function is spot on so once learned you don't need to watch your food. The convection and "air-fry" modes work great too.

I've even had great luck with the dehydrator mode making things.

Since it's just the 2 of us we find a toaster oven to be supreme for these reasons:

- Less energy use
- Takes up little space
- Doesn't heat up the whole kitchen in summer
- more functions than our regular oven
- actually cooks things better than the regular oven

We have had the Breville Mini Smart Oven for 6 or so years. First in a small condo and now in our house. It has paid for itself many times over.

To your list I would add:
- heats up way faster than the regular oven

I think the only thing we don't cook in it is the family sized pizza from Papa Murphy's because it isn't that large.

 

[jandrese]

I'm disappointed that you can tell the toaster that you want your toast to be exactly this shade of brown and have it stop toasting at just the right time. You could even put it in there and see a picture, then drag a slider where it will simulate just how brown the toast will be, and when you stop it will toast it up to that point. We have the technology, we could do this today.

 

[Mk.II]

This review is missing the most important part of any IoT review: Security assessment.

1. Run nmap against the device. What ports are open.? Any out dated versions of anything? What distro is the O/S based on?
2. Do you have to configure uPnP? Any default passwords?
3. Using the nmap results, Metasploit is your friend. Can you get a reverse shell?
4. From the shell you probably got, can you install tools like mimikatz for lateral movement to more interesting targets like the PC with the tax returns?
5. On the same idea, can you use any configured connections to phones to exploit those phones?
6. Configure it to use an intercepting proxy like Burp Suite. What does it connect to? Who does it phone home to?
7. If you disconnect it from the network, what functionality is lost? What will happen when the company decides to shut down the servers?

Without an assessment like this, any IoT device is worthless to me.

Wait, are you telling me you don’t trust a toaster oven maker to do security right?

 

[mcm69]

Remote-controlled oven open to the internet? Sounds fun, until someone breaks in and sets the preheat to 2000F. Totally unimaginable, right?

 

[jdale]

Security is a factor here for two reasons. The first is that a badly-configured device can render the rest of your local network vulnerable. It becomes a stepping stone to compromise the other devices that have more important data. The second is that any device with a heating element, when hacked and abused, can become a fire hazard, and not just for your toast. Security matters. Unless they've had an independent security audit done, you just have to assume every IoT device is vulnerable.

I also would be concerned about the proximity of the touchscreen and other internal electronics to the heated interior. Heat destroys electronics. With the screen built into the door, there's not room for a lot of insulation behind it. I don't expect this to last very long. That might be fine if it was $100, but for a $600 toaster, it's a serious flaw.

Aside from those things, I hate everything about the interface. Pages of tap-through screens wasting your time with advice. I can see the value of having that available, but the UI should make it optional, not something to tap through every time. They sort of mitigate e.g. easily add 30 seconds to your toast, but on my toaster oven I just turn the time dial and achieve the same thing, just as easily but with more freedom to change the amount of time.

I'm not even a luddite here -- half the lights and switches in my house are automated. But this has zero appeal.

 

[ZenMasta]

I had a hard time spending $250 originally on my breville toaster oven, but since then i almost never use my regular oven so I've saved a bit on energy. But this item is definitely too rich for me.

 

[sadsteve]

Internet connected and the $600 price caused me to stop reading the rest of the article. I have no interest in internet connect appliances in any form or manner. No smart speakers, Amazon echo/dots, Nest thermostats, smart refrigerators, etc. I have smart TVs but none of them are connected to my network (I only bought them because the price was right).

 

[kerbaldroptest]

The app for this device is confusingly close to the Ars color scheme lol. Kept thinking the 'edit cook settings' was a button for the website