Great rice cooker EXCEPT you have to really rinse the rice separately before cooking to control foaming. If you do this in the container for the cooker, the outside must be carefully dried before it goes in the device. I have been using a fine mesh strainer for rinsing. With this step brown rice comes out fantastic when cooked on the brown rice function. Cook quinoa on the white rice function, which works well. Have also used the brown rice function on faro and will try other grains. Probably all rice cookers would work better after carefully washing the grains. The four stars is because there is a lid plate that needs removal and washing and any foaming makes clean up more of a chore than you would expect. Also start that brown rice early - takes nearly an hour to cook.

I'm not too thrilled about this purchase. Now this is my first rice cooker and I haven't cooked much rice in my life anyways, but it always comes out a subpar texture when it's finished. Brown or white, it's always too sticky and clumpy for my liking. I've tried the water recommendations with the cooker, from the rice bag and from reading the internet and nothing seems to make a big difference. I thought purchasing this it would make my rice come out perfect everytime but I honestly think I could do a lot better on the stove if I wanted to take the time. Luckily for this product, I don't want to take the time and the rice is good enough for my needs especially with some soy sauce or something added to unstick it a bit. Afterall, I need to justify the purchase so I still use this somewhat often...but I'm left almost feeling like other units could make much better rice.

Okay. I'll give it five stars based on the rice it produces and easy of use and design. It does indeed make pretty much perfect rice, white, brown, wild, etc. as well as other grains. It comes with a little measuring cup. The water level marks inside (none too easy to see, are calibrated for the number of these little cups of grain you use. But the cup is about 3/4 cup, Why? Because that's 1-gou, the standard Japanese rice serving measure. But that's no big deal. Nor is it a problem that the water marks inside are hard to read. Just use one measure of water to one measure of rice. I know. That's different from your usual ratio for stovetop rice.

There's a little bit of learning to do at first. I use more water with brown rice, more like 1.5 water to one brown rice. And some rice is drier than other rices, and need more water. I find that you can have a little more water, but you don't want to have too little, because the rice will be less than fully prepared. For instance, I forgot about the little measuring cup and absentmindedly used a full one cup measure but added water to the line for two gou. I got slightly underdone rice.

Remember that the cooker knows when the water has been absorbed. Rice cookers work because, so long as there is free water in the pot, the temperature cannot rise above 212F (at sea level). So all the pot need do is stop cooking and reduce temperature to warm when the pot temperature rises about 212F. That's why it works for all grains. And that means the cooker doesn't really know when the rice is done, only when the water is gone.

Now, you will see all sorts of different ratios recommended by rice cooker recipes and for different cookers. Lots of people use 1.5:1 for white rice. Quinoa is happier with a 2:1 ratio. Anything reasonably close will work, so long as you use enough water for the grain to be fully cooked when the water is gone. If you use a little more water than you needed, it will go on cooking until absorbed. The worst that will happen is that it might get a little softer than you'd like. And you can even fix it when you open the pot and find it isn't quite done. Just add a bit more water and start the cycle again. The cooker will still know when that water is absorbed. That's the lovely thing about a rice cooker. It can sort of peak under the lid for you, plus it doesn't have to be watched.

This rice cooker performed great for the first year I purchased it. However recently the paint coating on it started breaking apart and the rice started overheating. I was still able to use it for 1-2 months after it did this, but more recently the inside paint started breaking apart as well. When this happen I had no choice but to stop using it.
I would say that this product is a 5 star product for the first year of purchase, but after that it wont last long from my personal experience. I also checked the Aroma website for replacements for the pot and lid and it is way to overpriced. It ends up being better to buy a new one.

I would re-buy the product just because of the price and I got a lot of value from it. However 1 year after the product was purchase it might stop working right.

The cooker does a decent job on rice. But it takes absolutely FOREVER!! For example, white rice now takes in excess of 30 min. instead of the 20 min. when you use the stove. Brown rice? Don't even ask! It's something like an hour. The other thing I don't like is that you get a ton of condensation on the underside of the lid. Yes, of course...because it's steaming. The issue is that even after you pop off the little aluminium lid portion there is a silicone seal that you have to carefully wipe dry with a paper towel. And you really can't get it completely dry, so you have to let the whole thing sit on your counter, opened up, overnight. Sheesh. Really a poor design and nothing to recommend this rice cooker.