Every now and then, a product comes along where I hear the description and immediately go “That sounds completely ridiculous. I must have it.” The Samsung 76L Built-in Pyrolytic Flex Door Oven with AI Camera is one of those products.
It’s an oven that’s also an air fryer, which can be split into two separate sections (so you can cook dinner and dessert at the same time on two different temperatures), it has a camera which can use AI to detect food types and suggest cooking methods, you can check the camera on your phone, it has burn detect, and it makes a 10-second time-lapse video once the cook is finished that you can post to instagram.
It also has a meat probe, so it cooks roasts perfectly every time. It is the everything bagel of ovens, with more smart features (and possibly just features in general) than any other wall oven I’ve ever seen.
But, the question is: Is it any good?
Table of contents
- First impressions
- Specs and price
- Cooking performance
- AI performance
- Camera performance
- What’s not great?
- Who is it for?
First impressions
After the electrician installed the Samsung Flex Door Oven (which was an extremely straightforward process), my first impression was just how easy it was to connect to the Samsung SmartThings app and set up on Android.
Interestingly, the oven would not play nice with my iPhone, continually failing at different points of the process, but, unsurprisingly, my Samsung Galaxy S24 gelled with it instantly. Once set up in the app, it appeared in the SmartThings app across all my and my wife’s devices, making it easy to send settings to the oven and check on the oven’s camera.
Samsung Flex Door Oven (NV7B6799AAK) specs and price
| Convection | 1200 / 1200 W |
| Outside Dimensions (WxHxD) mm | 595 x 596 x 570 mm |
| Weight | 51.5 kg |
| Inside dimensions | 560 x 579 x 549 mm |
| Oven capacity | 76L |
| Oven heat range | 30~275 °C (Grill 100~300 °C) |
| Cleaning | Pyrolytic |
| Cooking modes | Air sous vide Air frying Full steam Grill Dual mode Single mode |
| Accessories | Wire / Insert Rack Square Wire Rack (Shelf / Roast) Telescopic Rail Meat Probe Air Fry Tray Glass Steam Tray |
| Smart features | AI camera SmartThings app connectivity Wi-Fi enabled |
| Manufacturer’s Warranty | 2 years |
| Price (RRP) | $3,699 |
| Official website | Samsung Australia |
This oven has features I’ve never seen before in an oven. Whether or not they’re necessary comes down to your use case. But it really can do it all.
It is weird that the oven only comes with one rack, though. I’m used to other ovens coming with a minimum of two.
Cooking performance
I have cooked a bunch of different types of food in the Samsung Flex Door Oven, with largely excellent results.
There are definitely some hot spots (the right rear side cooks slightly faster than the rest of the oven), and it does cook somewhat faster than our previous Electrolux oven. However, hot spots are extremely normal for ovens, even professional-grade ones, and are part of getting to know a new oven.
My wife is a keen baker, and was really impressed with how quickly and evenly she was able to bake cookies in this oven.
What impressed me the most, though, was how easy it was to make the perfect roast. I shoved the meat probe into the beef, placed it in the oven, selected the Pro Roast setting and set what internal temperature I wanted it to reach.
Then I watched TV until I got a notification on the Samsung TV screen that the roast was done. I then blasted the potatoes on the grill setting to get them crispier while the meat rested. Every single roast I’ve made in this oven has been the best roast meat I’ve ever cooked, and it requires zero effort or guesswork on my part. It’s turned roasts from being something I need to frequently check, to a set-and-forget meal that’s the easiest in my arsenal.
With the price of meat so high, I used to get stressed that I would overcook it or undercook it and just ruin it. Now I know it’ll come out perfectly every time, I’m excited to institute a Sunday roast tradition in winter that my daughter can grow up with. It’s almost enough to make me want to host Christmas at our place so the turkey is easier.
Having the option of dual cook flexibility has meant that there have been a few times where we’ve steamed a salmon and veggies in the bottom half, while baking dessert in the top half. This is because of how easy it is to set different temperatures and cooking modes between the oven’s halves. The steamed salmon comes out beautifully, the cake doesn’t taste fishy. I grew up with a double oven in the large kitchen at my dad’s place in the country, I hadn’t considered it would be possible to have that level of flexibility in a tiny city apartment. So that’s nice.
As for air frying, it worked like a dream. I told the oven I wanted to make frozen wedges, I put the wedges on the air frying tray, and then the oven notified me when it thought they were done, and I got to eat perfectly cooked wedges. Flawless process. I slightly crowded the pan, so some were crispier than others, but that was more user error due to wanting more chips than the pan allowed.
We recently got Stanley Rogers Ceramabake cookware, including comically large American muffin pans. Initially, we were concerned that cooking such large muffins in an (at that point) somewhat unfamiliar oven, with pans that are non-stick but without Teflon, would be a disaster.
However, the oven cooked them to perfection (even though we accidentally turned the oven off mid-way through by pressing the wrong button and had to restart it), and they came out of the pan ridiculously easily.
AI performance
The AI in this oven, as with all AI, can be a bit hit and miss. The camera is supposed to recognise what you’re putting in and suggest a cooking mode for it. A lot of the time, it will accurately guess that I am, once again, roasting potatoes, but sometimes it will hedge its bets that the tray of potatoes could be a pizza or broccoli.
That said, the in-app recipes are mostly really good, and being able to follow along in the app and then have the settings automatically sent to the app at the right point in the process has been a huge help. It’s one less thing a very sleep-deprived new parent (me) or new cook has to worry about messing up.
One touted feature I have yet to experience is the AI burn detection. I did manage to forget about a garlic bread in the oven the other day, and came back to it quite blackened, but wasn’t warned about burning at any point. Perhaps it needs to be more charcoal-like to trigger the alert? Or maybe the food needs to start out paler? It’s still unclear to me.
The timer settings on the oven have so far made it very difficult for me to come close to burning anything, luckily making it a feature few will take advantage of.
Camera performance
How does one evaluate the camera in an oven? It’s certainly not the same high-quality camera as in most Samsung phones, but I also don’t think those phone cameras would survive being cooked at 210 degrees for an hour.
I’ve found that, even with cleaning the camera panel before cooking each time, the image comes out a little dark. It’s not as crisp as the simulated imagery in the ads. However, it’s more than enough to be able to check on dinner from the couch without getting up, or opening the door to let the heat out. You never need to have a meringue or soufflé fall again. It probably won’t be pretty enough to create marketing content without finding additional lighting sources.
The videos come out pretty good, as you can see in this time-lapse of a garlic bread getting destroyed. The videos can be downloaded through the SmartThings app, but the process isn’t particularly intuitive. That’s because it’s not in the oven section, but in a completely different, non-appliance section of the app.
The maximum length of the video is 10 seconds, and there are effects in the app that can be applied, like boomerang or focusing on certain parts. That’s all handled by the AI, though, and users can’t edit it by selecting their preferred moments or what they want to focus on. The AI decides that for you.
What’s not great?
The problem with making a previously straightforward appliance smart is that it adds another failure point. I’ve had to turn this oven off and then on again at the wall twice now, because even though the light was on in the oven, the screen wouldn’t turn on, and you can’t cook anything without the screen.
For many, the benefits of added tech complexity will outweigh the drawbacks. But it is something to keep in mind. I’m lucky that I have a wall socket that my oven is plugged into, which is relatively easy to access.
However, many will have theirs hardwired, which will mean there are more hurdles to power-cycling it. It would be an especially daunting challenge for people who aren’t confident about power-cycling a safety switch for a major appliance.
Who is the Samsung 76L Flex Door Oven (NV7B6799AAK) for?
This is the perfect oven for both people who absolutely love cooking and want to go really deep into features and modes, and for people who can’t cook at all and need help.
Combining all those different cooking technologies means that it’s ideal for me as an apartment dweller. I have frequently enjoyed cooking things in air fryers, but have never been able to justify the bench space for one long term. Having it built into the oven means I can enjoy air-fried wedges any time, without needing to know where to put the machine afterwards.
Then there are people with home baking and cooking side hustles and creators who can record the cooking process and put it up on Instagram and TikTok to promote their businesses.
It is double the cost of a normal oven, which will limit the market somewhat, but the features more than justify the price for those who will take advantage of them.
It’s probably better suited to those who are more tech-savvy. This oven would make someone with low tech literacy a bit nervous. But those who are comfortable controlling their oven from their phone and have no problem navigating multiple menus on a small screen will be fine.
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