Samsung Bespoke Series 5 NV7B5750TAK/U4 Oven with Dual Cook Flex Review
Powerful and flexible cooking
Verdict
The beauty of the Samsung Bespoke Series 5 NV7B5750TAK/U4 Oven with Dual Cook Flex is in its flexibility: it’s one large oven when you need the space, two small ovens when you want to cook different dishes, or one small oven when you’d like to save power. An excellent range of cooking options, superb temperature control and even grilling make this a great choice, particularly for more compact kitchens.
Pros
- Flexible interior space
- Even heating and grilling
- Huge range of cooking programmes
Cons
- No control over steam volume
- Results not as crispy as in an air fryer
Availability
- UKRRP: £1059
Key Features
- TypeThis is an integrated single oven, but its main compartment can be split in two, giving two separate ovens.
- CapacityThere’s a total usable space of 76 litres – enough to cook a large dinner.
Introduction
Cooking is often about having the flexibility to do the jobs you want when you want, which the Samsung Bespoke Series 5 NV7B5750TAK/U4 Oven with Dual Cook Flex delivers in spades.
With Dual Cook Flex, this oven can be used as one large or two small sections, plus there’s a wide range of additional cooking options including air sous vide, steam, and air fry.
Design and features
- SmartThings-enabled
- Splits into two cooking zones
- Wide range of programmes
Open the main door on the Samsung NV7B5750TAK/U4 and it looks and feels like pretty much any other integrated oven. The 76-litre cavity provides enough space to cook large dinners for lots of people.
The space inside is flexible, with one metal oven shelf and a baking tray, both of which can fit into any of the four fixed positions or onto the pull-out slider. So far, so normal. But as this is a Dual Cook Flex oven, there’s more to it.
Slide in the divider and the oven is split into two smaller spaces. The bottom oven is only accessible by opening the full door, while the top oven can be accessed via the top of the door. This is exceptionally clever for two reasons. First, it means you can cook food at different temperatures at the same time. Secondly, you can use just half of the oven space and save money by not heating up the entire thing.
The latter option is great for smaller dishes when you don’t really need to use the full power of the oven.
With the divider in place, the top and bottom ovens each have their own settings. The Top oven has convection (40°C to 250°C), grill, top heat, air fry (a basket is provided), and auto cook programmes, with the latter offering a range of pre-set options for foods such as baking potatoes and frozen oven chips.
The bottom oven has convection, bottom heat, and auto programmes. Here, the auto options are geared toward items that do better with bottom heat, such as pizzas and pies.
Take the divider out and you get all the same modes (bar air fry) and some extras: conventional cooking (top and bottom heat), pro-roasting, plus a couple of specials.
Natural Steam uses a steam tray, which you fill with water. Steam is a great way of making crispy and tender food – I use it for cooking baguettes. Having a dedicated steam tray is a good option instead of having to pour water into a baking tray. But a dedicated water compartment and control over how much steam is produced, such as on the Hotpoint SI9 S8C1 SH IX H, would have been even better.
There’s also Air Sous Vide, where the oven controls its temperature to cook food thoroughly. Traditionally, sous vide involves vacuum-sealing food into bags and submerging these in water to cook to a specific temperature. But the NV7B5750TAK/U4 aims to do the same thing with air alone.
A different range of automatic cooking options, including dough proofing and roasting, allows you to set the weight of the food you want to cook and let the oven take care of the rest. That’s mostly a good idea, but the range of options isn’t always there. For chicken, for example, the heaviest weight I could enter was 1.4kg, while a free-range organic chicken from any decent butcher is easily 2kg or more.
As always with automatic cooking programmes, I found them useful as an initial guide, opting for manual settings once I was used to the appliance.
The Samsung NV7B5750TAK/U4 is a smart oven, able to connect to the SmartThings platform. From the app, I could select any cooking mode, temperature, and cooking time and send them to the oven. There’s also a cooking add-on that runs through guided modes, choosing the right settings for you to cook a specific recipe. It’s a neat way of getting to know the oven.
Generally, I found it easier to set the cooking mode on the oven, although the app is still useful for guidance on the best oven settings for different recipes.
As with a lot of Samsung appliances, this one plays ditties when it turns on and when it finishes a programme. They’re a touch on the annoying side, although they don’t play for long.
Lights on the top and sides of the oven ensure that the main cavity is well illuminated, both when the oven is used as a whole and when it’s split in two.
Performance
- Air fryer function doesn’t provide the crispiest results
- Impressive sous vide mode
I started my tests by using the Air Fryer mode to cook some chips. I found that I needed a little more time than I normally would do when using a standalone air fryer.
The chips were cooked evenly, although they lacked the full crunchiness that a regular air fryer would deliver. The same was true for a hash brown – it was properly cooked, but the outside wasn’t quite as crispy as when I’ve cooked these in an air fryer. Overall, however, the results here were better than in a traditional oven.
I then turned to the Air Sous Vide mode, which is designed to maintain a set temperature for a long period for perfectly cooked meats and fish. Traditionally, sous vide is done with food sealed in bags and dropped into heated water, such as with the Thermomix TM6. Here, Samsung can do all that with air.
I filled a sous vide bag (it has a double-zip lock) with ceramic beads and left it in the oven for an hour. After removing the bag, I found that the contents were a consistent 62.1°C. That’s impressive, as perfectly cooked food is delivered at lower temperatures than with most ovens.
Next, I measured the temperature variance. I set the oven to 200°C and added a tray of ceramic beads to the top shelf. After leaving the beads for 20mins, the temperature was 198.7°C at the back and 189.3°C at the front. As you can see on the thermal image below, the front of the oven is cooler than the back, where the heating element and fan are.
Temperature variance throughout the oven is good. Moving the tray to the bottom shelf, I measured temperatures of 201.1°C (back) and 189.4°C (front), which is similar to the temperatures at the top of the oven. Depending on what you’re cooking, turning items halfway through cooking can help with evenness.
Next, I made a baguette using the gentle steam option and the oven set to 250°C. After 20mins, I was pleased to see that the baguette took on a darker brown colour, but it didn’t burn, coming out with a crispy finish.
Next, I measured the evenness of the grill by loading the top shelf with slices of white bread. As you can see from the image below, all slices are well toasted. Although the front left and right slices are a touch less done around the edges, it’s still an excellent result.
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Should you buy it?
Flexibility: If you want the maximum amount of flexibility in the space that a regular oven will fit, then look no further.
Price: If you have a smaller convection oven/microwave already, you may prefer to save a bit of cash and buy a standard single oven instead.
Final Thoughts
Few ovens can match the Samsung Bespoke Series 5 NV7B5750TAK/U4’s flexibility. In effect, you’re getting two ovens for the price of one, adding adaptability for when you need it and giving you power savings when you only want to cook small amounts of food. If you have space for multiple ovens, you may prefer that combination, but otherwise, this is a hugely versatile and smart oven.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every oven we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main oven for the review period
We use ceramic beads and a thermal camera to see how evenly the oven heats.
We use slices of bread to see how evenly the grill cooks.
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FAQs
It’s Samsung’s technology for splitting the large oven into two smaller ones.
Yes, it connects to the SmartThings app for guided cooking and remote control.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
