After lots of experience with many rice cookers, my requirements for a rice cooker were pretty basic: it must not burn itself up due to faulty electronics, it must not have a potentially toxic Teflon or similar nonstick pot, and it must make decent brown rice. This Cuckoo had some great reviews on various sites, so I splurged and tried it. Big mistake! Now it's too late to return it. The first thing you notice is that it TALKS TO YOU! Loudly. And it talks in Korean. It's unnecessarily difficult to turn off the talking function. The instruction manual is unclear and hard to understand, and turning off the talking is completely non-obvious; it took a while. The big issue is that pressure cooking is simply a bad idea for cooking rice if you don't want it to be sticky and mushy. Non-pressurized cooking works much better. At first, I followed the instructions for brown rice and it came out awfully gooey and sticky. Yuk! I experimented with different water to rice ratios and found that 1.25 to 1, or even 1 to 1, is about right. But still, the rice is never as good as it should be. Soaking the rice before heating doesn't help. I also tried this with basmati rice, and had more problems - almost inedible. It just doesn't work well. The instructions are awful. There are some tantalizing options for "preset" and "multi-cook", but they don't help, and there is zero useful information about them in the user manual. And, this machine is big - it takes up a lot of counter space. Not good. On the plus side, it seems to be quite well designed and made, after you get over the basic problems of functionality. The pot interior has an "X-well Diamond" coating, which somewhat resembles the nonstick diamond surface of Swiss Diamond pans, which are excellent (and very expensive). I like that part. Eventually, I found another rice cooker that actually does meet the basic requirements, as far as I can tell: the Instant Pot Zest https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Zest-Rice-Cooker-Pot/dp/B07TZL8Y3C/. For about $40, you get a NON pressurized rice cooker, which is exactly what you need to make great rice, a ceramic lined nonstick pot, and (according to the manufacturer) overheat sensing, which should prevent overheating and burning. It's pretty small on the counter, and quite simple to use. The small (8 cup) model is more than sufficient for a family of 4. About overheating: I have had TWO Aroma rice cookers fail by overheating to the point that they created large amounts of horrible smoke and might have caught fire if I hadn't unplugged them. I even had the US Consumer Product Safety Commission investigate the first one. No surprise, they never got back to me and did not stop Aroma from selling those defective devices. Some other low price rice cookers have similar complaints from users. Buyer beware! And, no, I will not use a rice cooker with PFOA, PFAS, or any other sort of Teflon-related non-stick liner. Note that even the very expensive Zojirushi rice cookers use those substances, and many users complain about the nonstick stuff flaking off. Not for my family!
