Best rice cookers of 2024
All of them struggled with brown rice and mixed rice. All of them struggled with brown rice and mixed rice.
The slightly larger 6-cup
Oster (our budget pick) and the Zojirushi rice makers performed nearly identically, making perfect pots of white rice in 19 and 20 minutes respectively and very good brown rice — albeit perhaps just slightly underdone — in a lightning-fast 22 minutes. The Oster is the best space-saving option. While the Zojirushi does seem slightly more solidly built, it’s more than double the price of the Oster, which gives the Oster our final nod.The simpler Oster and Zojirushi rice makers performed nearly identically in our testing.David Watsky/CNETThe $50 8-cup Hamilton Beach rice cooker
(Currently Out of Stock) seems like a good deal for the size, but its rice was inconsistent, with severely undercooked, dry rice sections. Zojirushi’s 3-cup option also disappointed with rice that was too wet and slightly broken down, losing the distinction of well-cooked white rice.Cuisinart’s 4-cup and Black and Decker’s 7-cup rice cookers were some of our least favorites because they were both so messy. Cuisinart’s rice cooker boiled every time I used it, and Black and Decker’s larger model dripped onto the counter and required significant cleanup.
An Instant Pot Zest cooker
enticed us with their various interfaces. However, all three of them produced slightly overcooked rice. This could be due to slow cooking. The Cusinart Rice Plus Multi-Cooker was also tested. While it could hold more rice and made decent batches of both white and brown rice, cooking rice with this machine took over an hour for brown rice. There are other options for rice. If you want to get the most value, you might consider a multicooker with a pressure cooker feature. For more information, I would direct you to CNET’s list of the best Instant Pots in 2024.Somehow, I didn’t blow my fuse. David Watsky/CNETFinally, the higher-end, specialized rice cookers from
Tiger and
Zojirushi were both impressive, as noted above. The Zojirushi offers the option to customize the way your rice is cooked. This is great if there are multiple people living in the same house with different preferences. The Tiger is less than half the price of its counterpart and cooks rice extremely well; faster than any other.
