People seem to either love or hate cooking sous vide. What caused me to side with those who love it, was learning that vacuum bags are not a necessary part of the process.
I do use vacuum bags on occasion, particularly if the food comes frozen in sous vide safe packaging.
The most affordable sous vide cooker is an immersion stick precision cooker. I acquired one for about $40 USD to use for poaching eggs in buttered mason jars. This was life-changing for me because I am terribly fussy about my eggs. They really do need to be uniformly consistent and exactly the right temperature. I now can poach them 8 at a time and eat 2 the first day, reheat 2 more the second day and make eggnog out of the remaining 4.
Another way to cook sous vide is by using a dedicated one piece precision cooker or a multi-cooker that includes sous vide as an option, such as this Housnat 10-in-One.
I like this for cooking bacon overnite Using it lets me cook bacon and eggs at the same time, and it keeps water hot for a long time afterward.
My high-end kitchen helper is the amazing Neovide 100 bagless waterless sous vide cooker, which is the only tool I will ever again use for steaks, pot roast, chicken, etc. More to come on this brilliant product which changed me overnight from an I-hate-to-cook frustrated would rather eat out type person to a don't want to eat out because I can make it better at home without exerting myself happy food prepper. Of course, since my favorite meat recipes take up to 36 hours to become fork-tender in the Neovide, I am glad to have the other devices to use in the meantime.