Sous vide for dummies

I will presume at least most readers of a food blog are at least aware of sous vide (under vacuum) cooking in a water bath. It's a go-to method for Modernist cooks, as it allows for long cooking at a consistent temperature, which particularly makes cheaper, tougher, but often more flavorful meat as tender as more expensive cuts. Also, as long, lower temperature cooking effectively sterilizes, if you like your meat in the rare zone (in other words, properly cooked), you can have it without worrying about food-borne illness. It's a win-win.
The biggest obstacle to home sous vide used to be the cost and need for additional equipment. Early sous vide pioneers repurposed water baths meant for use in biology labs, at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars. You can now purchase circulators for $100-200 at Target and the like, but they still require extra storage plus a big cooking vessel for the water. If, like me, you live in a city, but unlike me don't have a big kitchen you got to design yourself, space is at a premium, and you probably avoid single-use tools costing as much as a new set of cookware. For a long time, I'd sous vide steak on the stove top in a big pot of water with a instant read thermometer, and I'd flash the flame on and off periodically to keep it in the rare (~128ºF/54ºC) range. This was annoying, but as steaks take only 45-60 minutes to cook, it wasn't infeasible.

A perfectly rare burger

For larger, tougher cuts, such as short ribs, chuck roast, or pork shoulder, although the latter I'm more apt to smoke anyway, you want 24+ hours of cooking so all the tough connective tissue (collagen) can render down and soften. I don't know about you, but to paraphrase Rita Rudner, I don't want to do anything fun for 24 hours.
Since I'm also a fan of pressure and slow cooking, I considered the Instant Pot, but I already have a stovetop pressure cooker and an old slow cooker, and the Instant Pot multicookers don't themselves do sous vide. I considered building my own sous vide with a PLC controller (you can find plans in several places), but my current slow cooker is automatic, which wouldn't work. Then for a while I coveted Wolf's multicooker, but I couldn't justify $600 for primarily sous vide, especially when it only gets 3.5 stars.
Enter the Magic Chef, a Home Depot exclusive. At only $60 on sale, it's kind of a no-brainer, and it's also a pressure cooker, rice cooker, slow cooker, and gets hot enough to sauté in. You can set the sous vide cycle for 36+ hours, and I've already used it for steak, burgers (see right), and a 27-hour grass-fed chuck roast (recipe to follow).
There are a couple of caveats: some sous vide cooking, notably eggs, require quite precise temperature control, ±0.2ºF. I haven't tested the precision of this unit that closely, but I'm fairly sure it would be challenging to attain that precision. Aside from frittata, I don't really eat eggs as eggs so it's less relevant, and you'd be unlikely to find something better at this price. Also, it doesn't circulate the water as most immersion units do, but it's well insulated so stirring the water before cooking seems sufficient.
Feel free to purchase via any of the above links. Home Depot rejected my affiliate application so I won't benefit monetarily, but I recommend it nevertheless. Maybe if I get enough traffic, they'll reconsider.