You can blame our cult leader
@Kaido
not really, he is into Instant Pot, not rice cookers.
Haha...well:
1. A quality computerized rice cooker is an amazing machine. Cooks perfect rice every time, cooks hands-off, and can keep it warm & moist all day so multiple meals.
2. I was a big fan of my Tiger fuzzy-logic Japanese rice cooker for many years, served my family well.
3. Higher-end models add pressurized induction cooking (those can go for $500 - $1,000+ in some cases)
4. The Instant Pot does perfect rice in 20 minutes. imo better than my fancy Japanese rice cooker. And all for $80 (3qt) to $130 (6qt...they do make larger, more expensive 8qt models, plus up to 14qt from other brands),
plus it is also a pressurized induction cooker.
5. Really the only thing it lacks is the ability to keep the rice available all day...it does have a great warming function, but I've found it doesn't work nearly as well as a dedicated rice cooker's stay-warm function does.
6. I used to have a pot of rice on all day in my Tiger & would just grab leftovers from the fridge to eat with hot rice as snacks or meals, but I've since switched to meal prep (IIFYM) with containers, so I don't really need the all-day keep-warm function anymore
TL;DR - rice cookers are great, but because I meal prep my food in containers for the week, I just do a batch in the Instant Pot now.