Skip to main content

The Brava Smart Oven cooks with light (and costs about $1,000)

Cooking with fire was so 600,000 years ago. These days, you’re cooking with light. At least, that is, if you’re cooking with Brava’s new smart oven and its Pure Light Cooking technology, a new culinary methodology that harnesses light as an energy source to help you prepare delicious (and nutritious) meals. As its name suggests, Brava’s Pure Light Cooking tech promises to heat its proprietary lamps to temperatures sufficient for cooking, creating a cooking environment that claims to be the equivalent to a 500 degree oven. The coolest (which is to say, neatest) part? It all happens in under a second, thereby eliminating the need for any preheating.

Thanks to its unique Pure Light lamps, Brava purports to help folk cook an entire meal with less energy than required to preheat a traditional oven. With its multi-zone capabilities, you should be able to cook different ingredients at different temperatures, so you’re not scorching everything at a scalding temperature at once. Rather, thanks to a built-in temperature probe, you’ll be able to keep a careful eye on cooking levels, which ought to deliver consistent results.

Recommended Videos

“We have created a dynamic culinary engine that beautifully enhances the kitchen experience,” said John Pleasants, CEO of Brava. “Whether you’re a first-time cook or a skilled chef, Brava removes the stress and anxiety of preparing a meal and gives you confidence in the kitchen. From family dinners to date nights in, a quick lunch for yourself or hosting friends, our goal is to take the heavy lifting out of cooking to spend more quality time with loved ones.”

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Even if you’re not a star chef, Brava should be able to help with its Brava Guided Cooking’s cooking programs. Thanks to proprietary algorithms, which can apparently control lamps and analyze cook and rest times, you’ll be able to set and forget your recipes. Just tell Brava what you’re cooking (or select one of the smart oven’s preset recipes), and Brava will do the rest. The oven’s precise TempSensor will guide meats and fish to cook to their desired doneness, while a heat-resistant internal camera and machine vision will monitor your cooking progress (of course, you can keep tabs on everything from your smartphone).

Of course, such luxury doesn’t come all that cheap. The Brava is currently available for preorder on the company’s website, or at its Stanford Shopping Center showroom for the price of $995. Units are expected to begin shipping in November of this year.

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Nanoleaf opens preorders for its first-ever Matter smart lights
The Nanoleaf Essential lineup installed in a home theater.

After a brief showing at CES 2023, Nanoleaf’s Matter-enabled smart lighting solutions are now available for preorder. The Essentials lineup consists of both smart light bulbs and smart lightstrips -- and with full support for Matter, they should be easy to integrate into most smart homes.

Three new products are arriving this year, with the Essentials A19 Light Bulb, BR30 Light Bulb, and Essentials Lightstrip all expected to arrive before the end of April. All three work with Matter over Thread, marking the first time Nanoleaf has used the interoperability standard in a product launch. Pricing for the devices starts at $20 for a single smart bulb and goes up to $50 for the Essentials Lightstrip, positioning the lineup as a reasonably affordable way to bring Matter into your smart home.

Read more
8 things you didn’t know smart lights could do

Smart lights are among the simplest products to add to your smart home. After removing your old bulbs and screwing in the new ones, you’ll instantly be able to adjust their brightness or tweak their color. And while those features alone are a good reason to bring them into your home, there’s a lot more to most smart lights than you’d imagine.

Of course, each smart light comes with its own set of caveats, and not all of them can perform the same task. Philips, Wyze, Sengled, Nanoleaf, and dozens of other manufacturers are churning out smart lights nowadays -- and you can even find unique products such as LED strips or smart lamps that bring their own twist to the category. This variety has led to an explosion of innovation, with smart lights now able to perform tasks well beyond simple illumination.

Read more
Nanoleaf reveals new Matter-enabled smart lights at CES 2023
The Nanoleaf 4D TV syncing lights to the colors on TV.

Nanoleaf, a manufacturer of smart lights, introduced several new products to its lineup during CES 2023. The most exciting addition is the Nanoleaf Skylight, which mounts onto your ceiling to provide an impressive array of light shows. It’s also completely modular and can be arranged into a variety of shapes to fit every space in your home.

The Skylight connects to your smart ecosystem through Wi-Fi and works with Matter -- meaning you shouldn’t run into any compatibility issues with your current setup. The modular ceiling fixture can produce more than 16 million colors, its brightness can be adjusted through the accompanying smartphone app, and you can even set schedules to automatically adjust its settings throughout the day. The only downside? It won’t be launching for quite a while, with an expected release date in the third quarter of 2023.

Read more