Tovala's smart oven was tested over two weeks to see if it could make dinner preparation easier, as the company claims. While it doesn’t replace the quality of a home-cooked meal, it offers a convenient alternative on days when cooking isn’t desired. The idea for Tovala came from its co-founder and CEO, David Rabie, who, during business school, wanted a solution that was as easy as takeout or frozen meals but offered the experience of a real home-cooked dish. Rabie noticed that he was often just pressing buttons while cooking with multiple appliances, which led to the concept of an end-to-end system: fresh, prepped meals paired with a connected oven that could cook them automatically. The Tovala system delivers meals with ingredients already portioned out, and its smart oven handles the cooking. Users unwrap everything, follow simple instructions such as adding seasoning packets, place everything in provided trays, scan a QR code via the companion app, and let the oven do the rest. The countertop-sized oven follows cooking instructions automatically, switching temperatures and cooking modes throughout the process. It can bake, broil, air fry, toast, and reheat. The standard model costs $299, while the Smart Oven Pro costs $349 and includes a steam function. There are over 45 meals to choose from each week, including options like steak and garlic mashed potatoes, salmon with vegetables, butternut squash soup, pasta dishes, and more. Meal plans come in sizes ranging from 4 to 16 meals per week. Users can skip deliveries, pause their plan, or cancel if they don’t need meals that week. Single-serving meals start at $13.99, and two-serving meals start at around $8.99 per serving — $17.98 total — plus a $10.99 shipping fee. The company recently launched family-sized meals, starting at $35.96. Unlike meal-delivery services like HelloFresh, Tovala focuses on the added convenience of having most of the cooking handled for users. Taste and quality were the most skeptical aspects of the review. The reviewer, who has become more interested in cooking, found the texture of meats and how they cooked in the oven to be a downside. A steak was finished in a steel pan for extra browning, which improved the result but defeated the hands-off process. However, not every dish had this problem. One favorite was the pineapple shrimp stir-fry, with well-cooked rice and a flavorful sauce. Tovala's grocery-food feature allows the oven to recognize certain grocery-store products, enabling users to scan barcodes and let the oven automatically select appropriate settings. This feature makes Tovala feel more like a genuinely smart oven rather than just a machine built to cook its own meal kits. Even if users stop ordering Tovala meals, they can still use the oven with compatible grocery products. Tovala is available on the company’s website and Amazon. It ships to most U.S. states, but it does not currently ship to Alaska or Hawaii.