Weber purposefully broke my countertop oven, and it’s a reminder that gadgets don’t last forever

I got an email from Weber, the maker of grills and other appliances, that it's going to turn off all the connected services for my June Oven, a product (and company) it acquired in 2021.

If you're not familiar, June was a startup appliance company that released an intelligent countertop oven first in 2015 and a third-generation model in 2020—the June Oven.

Now, just five years since acquiring the company, Weber is turning off the connected services. These are pretty much all the fun and useful features that have made the June Oven one of the most advanced kitchen appliances. Even in 2026, no other countertop oven matches its full capabilities. So, while the oven itself will keep heating food if you use the device's screen, it will lose all of the functionality that made it special.

An oven with a camera is cool and useful

Part of what made the June Oven so cool was its internal camera. You could use the app to remotely view what was cooking. You could even record time-lapse baking videos and easily share those. These features will stop working.

Arguably the more intriguing use of the internal camera was the food recognition feature. Simply put something inside the oven, and an image of the food would pop up on the screen with a preset time and temperature for how to cook it.

It could work on items as simple as bread slices and bagels, offering to toast them. But it could also do other items like chicken, pies, and roasts. I found it super helpful for the simple items. It made it so I didn’t have to think about fussing with much. Plenty of uses were just one tap away.

The mobile app set June Oven apart

Some other countertop ovens have added steam cooking, air frying, or integrated recipes. But one area that other countertop ovens haven’t been able to compete with June is the mobile app. June’s app could start the oven, stop it, or change the temperature on the fly. It worked as expected.

Comparatively, when I tested Breville’s Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, I could set the temperature using its mobile app, but would then have to go press start on the oven itself.

June’s app really enlightened me to how great a connected app with notifications is for your oven. You can be anywhere and see when your timer is done. Even better, June would send you a notification one minute before it was done so you had a heads up that your bake would be done soon. All these notifications will stop working.

Goodbye June Oven

Weber will turn off all of the connected services for June starting September 22, 2026. How much would it cost the company to leave the service running? Probably very little. But in the case that it really is prohibitively expensive, it would have been nice for the company to offer an open-source solution for other people to host their own solutions for notifications or web access. Weber is simply shutting it down. 

I’ve worried this type of thing was coming for a while, ever since Weber discontinued the June Oven after acquisition. Unfortunately, there just isn’t a one-to-one replacement for June’s Oven. Anova has its newer Precision Oven 2.0 that has a camera inside for food identification. I’m curious about that one. There’s also the Chef iQ MiniOven.

Ultimately, Weber and the June Oven are just another reminder that not all technology products last forever, or even 6 years. Products with connected services are more susceptible to being shut down with little recourse for consumers.

My June Oven wasn’t perfect, but it fit my family’s needs and countertop exactly how we needed it to. September 22 will be a sad day in our household.