variating temperature issues - slow cooker

I'm thinking that you might need circulation in your slow cooker. The Sous Vide Magic works best controlling a pot with the heat source at the bottom like a rice cooker. Rice cookers too are better because of their shape which allows good natural convection to equalise the heat in various parts of the pot.

While you didn't describe your slow cooker they mostly have the heating elements around the sides of a removable inner pot, and they are often square or oblong in shape. Both of these attributes makes getting a constant temperature everywhere in the tank much more difficult than with a rice cooker.

A lot of users have reported good results by using an aquarium air pump as a source of circulation. Get the smallest/cheapest one you can find (assuming it's not too loud) - you don't need much air to help the convection along.

The other suggestion is to attempt to Auto Tune your SVM with your set up. From the factory they are set with default values which work best with rice cookers and we know that slow cookers behave differently.

Hope this is useful,

Cheers,

Peter.

My guess is that you probably need to let the water bath pre-heat for a little longer and let the steak come up to room temperature a little more before placing in the water bath. That should help limit the variations more.

I often use a sous vide magic and while there is more variation in it than some of the more expensive options it's normally within a degree or two, not over a 5 degree range.

Thanks, I will give that a go.