Welcome to our comprehensive guide on the best rice cookers of 2024! With the rising popularity of home-cooked meals and the increasing demand for perfectly cooked rice, we have compiled a list of the best rice cookers of 2024 that combine convenience, versatility, and exceptional performance. Whether you’re a seasoned chef or a busy individual seeking a reliable kitchen companion, this article will explore the finest rice cookers available on the market, featuring advanced technologies, innovative features, and user-friendly designs. Get ready to elevate your rice-cooking experience to new heights with these exceptional appliances that deliver delicious, fluffy rice with ease and precision. With our hands on rice cooker experience, we have curated the list of the best rice cookers to help you discover the ideal rice cooker to suit your needs and culinary aspirations. Once you’ve reviewed our top rice cookers of 2024, you can also read through our rice cooker buyers guide at the end of this post.

Rice Cooker Buyers Guide

So which rice cookers should you buy? Rice cooker is one of the most widely used kitchen appliances in the world right now. It’s hard to find a home that doesn’t have a rice cooker. Rice cooker helps us cook rice easily. However, a lot of people don’t even know that we can cook more than just rice with this. Plus, most people are unaware that there are rice cookers more advanced than the ‘One-click’ rice cooker that we see. 

These recommendations above are for you if you’re looking for a better rice cooker. If you are content with your ‘One-click’ rice cooker, it’s probably because you don’t have any idea about the advanced ones out there.

After having reviewed our top 10 rice cookers for 2024 list, you may be asking yourself, “what rice cooker should I get?”. Our rice cooker buyers guide below will help you make your decision on your new rice cooker.

What Rice Cooker Should I Get? Factors to Consider:

The first thing an informed buyer will ask himself is, “Why is this appliance good for me?” or “How is this purchase benefitting me?”. Here, it must be mentioned that there’s no ‘best’ rice cooker. Rather, we can say that there are rice cookers that perform a specific function best or can suit the needs of a particular person the best. 

That is to say, and if you want to get the best rice cooker for yourself, you need to get one that’ll suit all of your needs without breaking the bank. The only way to determine whether a rice cooker is the best for you or not is by judging some factors. Here are the factors that you need to judge when you’re buying a rice cooker for yourself:

Rice Cooker Size:

The first thing you need to get right is the rice cooker size. Now, a lot of people determine this by the number of guests that’ll be visiting them. However, this is completely wrong. If you end up getting a bigger rice cooker than you actually need, you’ll have to pay more electricity bills than you have to. 

Then again, a big rice cooker is no joke when it comes to storage. Even the smallest rice cookers need some considerable space for housing, and if you end up getting a big one, you’ll only waste a lot of space on your kitchen counter. 

That’s why we highly recommend you get a perfect size that’ll meet your daily demands. However, we also recommend keeping some headroom over the daily necessities. For example, if you need 2 cups of rice daily, you’d be better off if you buy a rice cooker that provides 3 cups of cooking space. 

If you’re concerned about what you’re going to do if you have guests over, we urge you not to worry. If you have guests and you need to cook a huge amount, you can always cook twice. We all know that it doesn’t take a lot of time for a rice cooker to finish the cooker, so the time and effort shouldn’t be too taxing for you. 

Then again, if you get a larger rice cooker than you need on a daily basis, you’ll not only end up paying more bills, but you’ll also end up with a worse quality of the dish. If you don’t fill the rice cooker with adequate rice, the heat distribution will become uneven, and the dish won’t be cooked properly. 

Lid Type:

The lid type is very important. You’ll get rice cookers with two types of lids. There are the rice cookers with sealed lids, and then there are others that aren’t sealable. Now, we’ll talk about both. 

Sealed:

The sealed lids are great if you don’t want the dish spilled and splattered. However, the sealed lids are very hard to clean. These are hard to dismantle as well, as the components are joined tightly with the body of the rice cooker. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll dismantle every part of the lid without tools. 

Unsealed:

When it comes to cleaning, the unsealed lids are best. You can eject them anytime, and most of these lids are transparent. So, you always get the added functionality of peeking from time to time to see what condition your dish is in. 

However, it also brings its own set of problems. For example, the food will splatter and spill all over if you forget to put the lid perfectly in its position. Then again, heat retention won’t be as good as the rice cookers with sealed lids.

Programmability:

Programmability is one of the major factors to consider if you’re looking for the best rice cooker for yourself. To know about the programs, we must know about the types of rice cookers first. 

There are three types of rice cookers. These are:

1. Traditional rice cooker
2. Jar-o-mat rice cooker
3. Micom rice cooker

Now, all of these may sound a bit strange to you. Allow us to explain. 

Both the traditional rice cookers and the jar-o-mat rice cookers come with a single button that will allow you to cook simple foods like plain rice, flavored rice, boiled egg, plain pasta, etc. Both of these can cook food very fast. Most traditional and jar-o-mat rice cookers take about 25 minutes to cook properly. 

However, this doesn’t mean that the traditional and jar-o-mat rice cookers are the same. For starters, the traditional rice cookers come with a single heating coil at the bottom, and this rice cooker is capable of heating the interior from the bottom only. This one-way heating method causes the crust on the bottom layer of the rice. While some people like this crust, many don’t. 

On the other hand, the jar-o-mat rice cookers also host a single heating coil, but these rice cookers can cook from the sides as well. In fact, there are a lot of rice cookers that heat from the lid as well. 

Another major distinction between the two types is the presence of a sealed lid and an unsealed one. In most traditional rice cookers, you’ll find a transparent glass lid that dissipates heat to the atmosphere. On the other hand, the jar-o-mat rice cookers come with a rubber gasket that seals the lid of these cookers tightly and thus reduces heat dissipation. 

Brand:

When someone comes to us asking, “What rice cooker should I get?” one of the most common follow up question is, “Which brand is better for me?”. 

To be honest, there’s no particular brand that’s better than the others. In fact, different rice cookers offer different models that compete with each other. However, if you’re asking for a set of brands that are evidently worth getting, we’ll name Panasonic, which is also known as National in Asia, Zojirushi, Tiger, etc. Japanese brands. 

Don’t get the wrong message. Although these are Japanese brands, they aren’t made in Japan anymore. Still, these rice cookers try to maintain their quality to keep their reputation intact. You can trust these rice cooker brands over the others any day!

Cost:

Last but not least, you need to consider the cost of the rice cooker. If you’re willing to get the best rice cooker in the market, you need to spend more than $250. The higher you go on the price spectrum, the better product you will get, and the less value per dollar you will receive. 

However, that doesn’t mean that the expensive ones are bad. These are still good if you can spend $500 on a rice cooker. 

On the other hand, if you’re looking for an affordable rice cooker, there’s something in it for you as well! You’ll get a lot of rice cooker models around the $50 mark, but not all of them are equally capable.