THE Thermomix killer? TOKIT Omni Cook food processor for $818

The “kitchen Porsche” is often smiled at, but if you exclude the price, the Thermomix from Vorwerk is certainly a good product. I already wished for a “Xiaomi Thermomix” in the 2018 review and apparently Xiaomi was looking in the direction of Wuppertal. Then at the end of 2020, the Ocooker food processor appeared in crowdfunding, but not for Germany. Until now!

The product in question is the TOKIT Omni Cook. The Thermomix alternative was successful in crowdfunding and can now be ordered via the European site. The still unknown manufacturer is asking $799 for it. That makes it just half the price of the current Thermomix TM6, but also twice as expensive as the Silvercrest Monsieur Cuisine from LIDL. How does the OmniCook fare against this competition? Is it the Thermomix killer?

• TOKIT Omni Cook
  • at Tokit for $818,18 (Coupon: summer10%)

Tokit Omni Cook Technical Specifications

Model	Tokit Omni Cook	Thermomix TM6
Dimensions	355 x 244 x 364 mm	341 x 326 x 326
Weight	7,4 Kg	7,95 Kg
Engine power	500W nominal power	500W nominal power
Speed	12,000 rpm	10,700 rpm
Fassungsvermögen Mixtopf	2,2 L	2,2 L
Temperature	35 – 180°C	160°C
Price	$799	$1.573

“Xiaomi Ocooker” or TOKIT Omni Cook?

This Thermomix alternative has already caused a stir at the end of 2020, as it was also assigned to Xiaomi. This was because the Ocooker food processor was sold via Xiaomi’s Youpin platform, which is why it was nicknamed the “Xiaomi Thermomix”. However, the Xiaomi Ocooker food processor was only available in China and didn’t even find its way into China stores. But now this machine is planned for the global market and comes under the name TOKIT Omni Cook as a global version of the Ocooker on the market!

However, it is interesting that Xiaomi still has its fingers in the pie. Because behind TOKIT and also OCooker is Chunmi Technology, a research and development company with a focus on hardware and software for smart kitchen appliances. Chunmi was founded in 2013 and became a Xiaomi ecosystem company the following year. According to Crunchbase, Chunmi Technology is even a sub-organization of Xiaomi.

The competition

The Chinese are not the first to “copy” the kitchen machine from Vorwerk; Silvercrest (LIDL) has also dared several attempts here and was able to adapt the successful recipe with the Monsieur Cuisine Connect. Bosch also offers an alternative to the Thermomix with its Cookit food processor, but sets slightly different priorities. At $1500 RRP, this alternative is also expensive.

The Thermomix, now also dubbed “The Original”, became smart with the Thermomix TM5 back in 2014 and can also synchronize recipes and receive updates with the “Cookido” app (and subscription). Before that, they rested on the Thermomix TM31 for ten years. Currently, the Thermomix TM6 model, with an enlarged display and new features, costs $1.572 and can also be ordered directly online for the first time. A Thermomix party is no longer necessary. For 2021, the Thermomix Friend was also announced, which works together with the TM5 and TM6 thanks to automated transfer.

What is such a thing for anyway?

Since I’ve had to defend the Thermomix several times in discussions about the usefulness of the device, a short insertion about why you need such a food processor. Do you necessarily need one? No. If you know how to use pots, pans and knives, you can get along very well without one. Nevertheless, the Thermi is also very suitable for gifted and even professional cooks.

Why? It can take away work and time, as it is a blender and stove combined with a kind of “brain”. Similar to a vacuum robot, it takes away time because you don’t have to watch the food processor while cooking. If you cook a soup for 30 minutes, you can do something different in the 30 minutes without having to look after it. Stirring is automatic, nothing burns here!

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The recipes are usually fail-proof and therefore also suitable for beginners who do not have the time or leisure to learn how to cook. Since the newer models, like the Toki, take you step by step, you don’t have to do much yourself except follow the instructions. However, that usually applies to a good non-Thermomix recipe as well.

More than a Thermomix copy?

The TOKIT Omni Cook uses the idea of the original, but focuses on an independent design. Unlike the Vorwerk models, the mixing bowl is not centered, but sits on the left, while the touchscreen display is on the right. This offers a display diagonal of 7 inches, so it is still a bit bigger than a Redmi Note 10 Pro, for example. The Omni Cook is only available in one color: black and white. The base is white, but the surface is in black piano lacquer. That makes sense; stains from tomato sauce, for example, are a bit less visible this way.

The food processor does not take up too much space on your kitchen counter. It is just 35.5 cm long and 24.4 cm high. With the mixing bowl in place, the height is 36.4 cm. If you add the steam attachment, the height increases accordingly. With mixing bowl and lid, you get a total weight of 7.4 kg. This means that you can easily move it if necessary, but we would basically recommend moving it as little as possible. At least with the Thermomix, the scales can be affected by moving it, which we have not yet been able to determine with the Omni Cook.

The power switch for turning the device on and off is located on the right side. The power cord is firmly integrated and not removable, but can easily be wound onto the plastic spool on the back – practical! The feet of the food processor are also a nice addition. These are fitted with suction cups, which means that the Omni Cook’s own weight sucks it firmly to the base and it is practically impossible for it to slip. Good thinking, Tokit.

How is the Thermomix Killer processed?

“Thermomix killer made in China, that can’t be anything” some may think. Despite some experience with Chinese products, I am positively surprised by the build quality of the Tokit Omni Cook and its accessories. The food processor itself is also mostly made of plastic, but the motor and the technology add up to quite a bit of weight, which is why the plastic was necessary. The display is neatly integrated and the function dial has a pleasant, albeit somewhat rough, feedback. Only the power button looks a bit cheap – well.

Unlike smartphones or smartwatches, there are simply not many iterations and templates of such kitchen machines. Tokit or Ocooker from China had to think about this themselves and thought through many steps. It is clear where the inspiration comes from, but the knife and the pot are attached differently than Vorwerk, for example.

If you want to remove the blade, you have to loosen a kind of “nut” at the bottom that holds the blade in place and not the entire bottom of the mixing bowl like the original. This has a small disadvantage when cleaning, which we will discuss later. However, the plastic base can be loosened with three screws if necessary. The mixing bowl is also inserted differently. It automatically locks in place when you put it in, but if you want to remove it, you have to move a slider on the left.

However, there is still some criticism, which concerns the mixing bowl lid. It can be screwed in correctly without being 100% tight. The problem is that the lid still “clicks” as if you would put it in properly. Unfortunately, the back of the lid can still be on. And that even while the blender is running – this is dangerous and a no-go! If the lid is properly on and you want to remove it during operation, but there is a notification and the blender stops.

Cleaning the TOKIT Omni Cook

People would probably much rather cook if you didn’t have to clean up and clean afterward. The Tokit Omni Cook at least takes some of the work off your hands, after all, it has a “pre-clean” mode built in. This involves putting a little less than a liter of water and detergent into the mixing bowl and starting the mode, which then takes two minutes. As a few wet kitchen towels confirm to us, you should stick to the default. The result is okay, but you still have to clean the top edge manually.

Then or directly, the mixing bowl of the Omni Cook can also be put in the dishwasher, which is why the bowl is mostly made of stainless steel. The actual food processor can of course not in the dishwasher! However, it should be wiped with a damp cloth and a dry cloth in between. Besides the mixing bowl, all accessories are made of plastic, but are suitable for cleaning in the dishwasher according to the user manual.

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This all worked well in the test. The only drawback: The plastic on the mixing bowl with the gap in between can harbor some dirt in the long run. You might have to remove the casing at irregular intervals to clean it completely. If you don’t have a dishwasher at home for space reasons, you can take a look at the compact solution from BlitzWolf, which we tested.

Operation of the Omni Cook

Underneath the 7″ display is a rotary knob, which just like the original is also essential for operating the food processor. While you use the touchscreen to navigate through the menu and select recipes, you use the dial to set the level, temperature and time, for example. This is especially useful when cooking and baking, if your fingers are oily, for example, operating the dial is easier and better than using the touchscreen. With a click on the knob, you start the program or end that. Only that the rotary knob is inverted in some settings is partly not intuitive. However, switching on and off is done via the power button on the side.

In addition, the Xiaomi Ocooker is equipped with a speaker that provides spoken instructions for the selected recipe or lets you know when the dish is ready. More about that in a moment.

TOKIT Omni Cook with cloud recipes

But why do you need a touchscreen display on a food processor anyway? Vorwerk has been doing it since the TM5 and Xiaomi or Tokit has been inspired by it. Recipes are already “pre-installed” on the Ocooker, including instructions and ingredient list that you can easily read. In addition, the food processor is an IoT product, so it is equipped with WiFi and can download new recipes via the in-house CookingIoT. Android serves as the basis here, which can also play videos on the touchscreen display.

Unlike the Thermomix, where you have to pay 36€ for an annual Cookidoo subscription, the cloud recipes are free of charge. Where the manufacturer gets the recipes from and whether the number of several hundred recipes will be expanded is not yet known. After unpacking, there were still some Chinese menu items despite the selected German language, which were removed after an update. That is already a start.

The operating system is relatively clear. There are three big tabs: Recipes, Mode and Settings. The latter are limited to WLAN, volume, brightness, language, standby, unit, reset and help with reference to the support mail.

Does the Tokit Omni Cook speak German?

Yes and no. Basically, German for example can be selected as the language and the manual of the food processor is also multilingual and in German. Besides German, Chinese, Spanish and English are also possible options. Those who are proficient in English should also opt for this, because the German translation is only sometimes successful, but for the most part it is almost funny and unfortunately also unusable.

The fact that some context notifications say “Cancel” instead of “Cancel” can still be forgiven, since it is still understandable. Understanding the differences between “hack” and “chop” could also lead to completely different results. In addition, all pre-installed recipes are only in English, so the content is not adapted to other langauges – maybe better that way.

But you don’t just read, thanks to the integrated speaker, the Omni Cook also talks to you. The voice output is apparently a feature that the Thermomix does not offer, so please correct me if it does. However, this is virtually unusable in German, here should have been hired a speaker who has a better pronunciation. We have partly stood four in front of the speaker and tried to decipher the instructions. However, we can gladly record the voice package for you, Tokit.

Performance of the TOKIT Omni Cook

However, the integration into the Internet and the smart aspect are only one facet of the Thermomix alternative. In order to be able to sauté, cook, knead, crush ice, ferment or steam like the TM6, quite a bit of power is required.

The 7.4 kg device contains a 500 W motor that drives the stainless steel mixing blade. As with the original, this also consists of four blades that are slightly offset. The mixing bowl has a capacity of 2.2 liters, just like the Thermomix TM5 or TM6, and should be enough for about 3 servings, according to the manufacturer, although that certainly depends on the dish. The maximum power consumption of up to 1700W is even slightly higher than the TM6.

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The Ocooker food processor or the Omni Cook can reach a temperature of up to 180°C. The Vorwerk model can “only” reach 160°C. Vorwerk’s model can “only” reach 160°C. However, the speed is still crucial for the blender and the blade. The Tokit Omni Cook has a minimum speed of 40 rpm and a maximum speed of 12,000 rpm, while the Thermomix TM6 has a range of 100 rpm to 10,700 rpm. From the spec sheet alone, the Omni Cook actually comes out ahead.

What features does the Omni Cook have?

Tokit advertises the Omni Cook as a 21-in-1 machine, but there are “only” eleven culinary modes. These include kneading mode, steaming, stewing, juicing, ice crushing, chopping, mincing, stirring, grinding (?), sous vide, and yogurt. There is also the cleaning mode, the weighing mode and an extreme mode. These modes make sense if you don’t follow a recipe from the cloud and, for example, implement or even freestyle a Thermomix recipe from a cookbook or online. Modes like soy milk or yogurt give you instructions on what to put in, but the rest of the modes simply offer presets. For the most part, however, these can also be customized.

We haven’t tried all modes yet, and probably won’t cook anything sous-vide here either. The weighing mode, i.e. the integrated scale, made a good impression. This is precise and corresponds exactly to our checkweigher, and in contrast to the Thermomix TM5, it even measures accurately to 1g and not in increments of 5. The stirring mode also helped in the preparation of cookie dough and the extreme mode also had to go in sometimes to chop something.

However, you do not have to select any of the presets, but can also manually adjust the duration, temperature and speed level. This also explains the total of 21 functions of the Omni Cook, which the manufacturer then also includes the function of a water boiler, for example. There is no dedicated mode for this, but you can theoretically just fill up water and boil it with 100°C. Well, so the manufacturer “tricks” a bit here, but isn’t wrong.

What recipes are there?

The smartness of the Tokit Omni Cook is one of the most important features, especially compared to a normal blender or other food processors such as the model from Blitzwolf. Xiaomi, or rather Tokit, takes a different approach here with Android and an “open”, cloud-based recipe library than Vorwerk with its Cookidoo subscription model. Unfortunately, you cannot simply install recipes later like in the Play Store, but have to live with the preloaded recipes (for now).

These are divided into, for example, main course, appetizer, dessert, soup, drink, sauces, baking and sous vide. You can’t access all the recipes at once, so it’s hard to estimate an exact number. Under main course there are probably just under 100 recipes, under appetizer, drink and soup more like 20, under dessert just under 30 to 40 and under sous vide just four. Some of them can be filtered again, for main courses you can filter “vegan” for example, which is however only vegetarian and not vegan.

I am partially disappointed by the recipes of the Omni Cooks, but this is quite privately due to the fact that I do not eat meat and a large part of the recipes are meat-heavy. In addition, many of the recipes are from the Asian cuisine and that may not be everyone’s cuisine. You have to click through dishes like “Mee Siam”, “Kway Teow Pad Thai”, “Pad Kra Pao” or “Chwee Kueh” to understand what you can cook.

What’s cool is that some of the recipes even come with a video showing either the finished dish or how to make it. But that’s more for some, mostly you get a picture, the ingredient list, the auxiliary tool needed like the measuring spoons and the total time. Then you can click through the various steps, which works well. For example, if a liquid needs to be added, the scale is automatically activated, so you can add 100g, for example. You can also jump back and forth between the steps at any time.

Cooking with the TOKIT Omni Cook

Now there it is, in our office kitchen: the long-awaited TOKIT Omni Cook. The first question: “What do I cook?”. Theoretically, it should be easy to pick a dish thanks to the preloaded recipe library. To make it bearable for everyone in the editorial team or from the office, a vegan recipe was needed, of which there are only a handful. That’s why I had to fall back on Thermomix classics for the first lunch: Date Curry Dip and the 5 Second Broccoli Salad. Everything was made in manual mode with a recipe from Thermomix Cookido and Recipe World, respectively. Whereby the broccoli salad is almost identical as Rainbow salad in the Omni Cook.

The first impression was that the scale is very precise. After the first ingredients for the broccoli salad landed in the pot and should be chopped small, it was noticed: The specifications for a Thermomix recipe can not be taken 1:1 so with the Omni Cook. I had to make something more by feel and could not rely on it completely. My impression so far is that with the Omni Cook you should tend to select a level higher than specified in the Thermomix recipe and mix a few seconds (1 to 3 seconds) longer when it comes to short mixes. Perhaps here the transmission of the motor is not quite as immediate as in the Thermi.

This has ensured in the first attempts that the broccoli salad was sometimes too liquid and too fine. The dip went better and was a complete success in our office and has since been requested almost daily. However, these results could basically also be achieved with a good blender like the BlitzWolf BW-CB2. The great advantage of such a food processor is the possibility to also “cook”.

Even Alex and Maike, who have never worked with a Thermomix or similar before, were taken with the preparation. It took some time to get used to it and a bit of skepticism, but after the first few times of “mixing” you start to develop a feeling for it, so that even the one or other additional lunch was prepared with it.

Cooking with temperature

That’s why a Chili sin Carne was on the menu, where you first sauté onions, which the Omni Cook chops up beforehand. Combined with about oil, these had to be sautéed for two minutes. One problem: The recipe speaks of the Thermomix Varoma level. This corresponds to a temperature of 100°C, which should be remembered, such a button does not exist on the device from Tokit. Cooking and sautéing worked very well in the test, the temperature is reached within a few minutes and we were able to completely follow the Thermomix recipe.

Scope of delivery & accessories for the Tokit Omni Cook

Since the Thermomix has been around for over 50 years now – respect – it has also accumulated quite a few accessories that have been designed over the years. As someone who has often disassembled a TM31 or TM5, the accessories such as the steaming attachment and the butterfly attachment of the Omni Cook remind me of the original from Vorwerk. Here they have been much more clearly “inspired” by the original than in the design of the food processor itself.

Of course, the Omni Cook itself, the mixing knife, the mixing bowl, the measuring cup aka “stopper” for the lid, the cooking insert, a set of measuring spoons, a silicone spatula and a stirring insert are included in the scope of delivery. Compared to the TM 6, the steamer attachment is missing, but you can buy it separately from Tokit for 79€. Vorwerk has dubbed this the “Varoma”.

As spare parts, Tokit offers the mixing bowl for 169€, which includes the measuring cup and the stainless steel knife in addition to the bowl with lid. Alternatively, you can also order just the knife for 59€. In addition, there is also the stirring attachment, spatula and the measuring cup. Also available is a slow cooking attachment that sits in place of the stainless steel blade and turns the mixing bowl into a pot. There is also a plastic blade attachment, which is supposed to ensure that liquid is better distributed and not all food is chopped by the blade.

Price & Release of the TOKIT Omni Cook

The TOKIT Omni Cook has attracted our attention because it was available in the crowdfunding on Kickstarter even at the Super Early Bird price of 599€, but just very limited. The offer price was 799€, but the regular price for the Thermomix alternative is 899€. For this price, you get the food processor, the mixing bowl, a cooking insert, a stirring attachment, the measuring cup, a set of measuring spoons, the stainless steel blade and a silicone scraper.

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The Omni Cook is scheduled to start shipping in Europe on October 3, 2021, and shipping is expected to take 4 to 8 days if you order within Germany. Shipping is free for orders of $100 or more, and Tokit promises a 2-year warranty for the Omni Cook itself, but not for the accessories.

Conclusion: Buy the TOKIT Omni Cook?

The Ocooker food processor, often called “Xiaomi Thermomix”, was originally only planned for China. We are very pleased that the manufacturer TOKIT, which is quite unknown here, has decided to bring the Thermomix alternative to Europe as well. And the Omni Cook is really well implemented, especially in terms of hardware. The workmanship leaves hardly anything to be desired, except for the lid, the range of functions is very large and all functions tested so far run as desired and the results can be seen in any case. You really get an “all-in-one” machine with performance that even outperforms the more expensive Thermomix TM6.

However, the very biggest drawback is still the software and recipe selection. The Tokit Omni Cook can currently only be used in German to a very limited extent and the recipes probably correspond to a smaller target group in terms of language and selection; Vorwerk simply has the better operating system here, even if language is not integrated, for example. It is similar to the 3D printers, top models like the Creality Ender-3 benefit from the community. It’s the same with the Thermomix. At least in part, however, you can also help yourself to the recipes as an Omni Cooker. However, you cannot follow the recipes 1:1 and have to develop a feeling for the operation.

The mid-range price position with a price of 899€ between Monsieur Cuisine and Thermomix can be an advantage in the purchase decision. However, one will have a hard time. In terms of the range of functions, one stands out from the LIDL Thermomix with more rpm, higher temperature and even more functions. In return, the LIDL device is still more suitable for families due to the higher capacity and costs just less.

Due to the software, I can only recommend the Tokit Omni Cook to a limited extent, although I like it. With better translation and more recipe selection, the Omni Cook offers a lot of well-implemented functions. One serious criticism aside from that is just the lid, which poses a safety risk. We will continue to test it and are eager to hear your input!