Aroma Housewares ARC-6206C Professional Digital Rice Cooker & Multicooker with Ceramic Inner Pot, Steam Basket Included, 12-Cup cooked / 4Qt, White

First I will say. It had no smell that I heard people complain about. I removed and washed the inner metal lid and also washed the Ceramic pot prior to cooking rice in it. Seems to have made a difference. Never smelled anything while it cooked. Except the rice smell.The pot is not thin as some comments mentioned. It is thick considering what it is. The rice didn't stick to the pot. The cooking seemed to happen instantly and didn't seem to be different than my old cooker that had a non-stick pot in it. The rice was cooked evenly and no burn spots on bottom.This unit can cook up to 6 cups of dry rice. Meaning it makes about 12 cups of cooked rice. It's smallest cooking quanity is TWO CUPS. I wouldn't try and cook only one cup in it. It probably needs the water for at lest two cups to work properly and not over heat and crack the pot. Not worth the risk! Most medium to large rice cookers require at least two cups or more be cooked in them.Unit is easy to clean. I used it like I have always used rice cookers. I always wait TEN MINUTES after rice is done to eat it. The rice is still cooking and really isn't ready when the chimer rings. This is a rule my Mom had me follow since I was a child. Growing up, the only rice cooker was those single press button Hibachi units with the bell that rang when done. Same noise used on phones these days as the basic chime.Warm mode is 12 hours. You can keep resetting it to prolong it being warm. Older Quality rice pots kept it warm for days. And it never seemed to spoil up to three days. Not sure why but every new model these days seems to only warm 12 or 24 hours. Must be a safety issue from people trying to go too many days and getting sick.I only cook Jasmine White Rice. It turned out perfect. I do wait the extra ten minutes once done to allow the moistures to even out and the rice to complete its cooking.You must press power/start button to turn unit on. Then you select the rice mode. Then press Power/start button again to start cooking.Unit is close to 11" wide at handle pivots (widest point), 15.5" long and 10" tall.The unit works well considering what you pay. I have owned better but I paid $450.00 and that company sold to another Japanese company.. It lasted over ten years and the non-stick is just starting to come off. Parts are not available so I tried this unit. I really didn't want teflon or aluminum pots.I really like this Ceramic pot. Be very careful with it. Getting another one is almost impossible. I looked into getting a spare to have on hand but Aroma was sold out. This pot is slicker and heavier than the traditional metal pots. I can see how one could drop it.Just remember to wash the inner metal lid and the ceramic pot before cooking with it.I am cooking rice in this at 5000 feet in Colorado. I don't think altitude effects the cooking process.After twelve hours the rice at the bottom of the cooker gets weird. Could be why the warm feature only allows 12 hours.If you dont want this to happen, you probably should buy a very high end model that is also offered on Amazon.

I had an Aroma Arc-2000 which I bought at Costco years ago. It served me well in the past years and was still working well. However, the nonstick coating of the inner pot started to peel off, which really made me uncomfortable although in reality this might be totally harmless at all. Anyway I started to search, hoping to find some rice cooker that does not use the traditional nonstick coating, and found this. It's a little bit more expensive than my budget. But I decided to give it a try for the ceramic inner pot. End of day, what can be safer than ceramics? Our ancestors already used it for a few thousand years at least. The ceramic rice cooker did not disappoint me. The ceramic inner pot has just about the right weight. Sturdy, but not too heavy. So far I have only used it to cook white rice. It did the job well. No more, no less. Cleaning is easy. And I don't have to remind myself be gentle with the nonstick coating anymore. One surprise is that I found unlike my old Arc-2000, after cooking rice, I don't find much rice residues on the inside of lid anymore. Cleaning the inside of lid on my old Arc-2000 used to be some real trouble because you cannot remove the lid from the cooker and I have to hold the whole cooker in arm while cleaning the inner side of lid under running water. Finally with my new ceramic rice cooker I don't have to go through this trouble anymore. Maybe it's because the ceramic inner pot transduces heat much slower than the old metal inner pot or some other reason, after cooking there is almost no rice residue left on the inner side of lid at all. Further the inner side of lid of my new ceramic rice cooker is actually covered by a metal plate, which can be removed easily and washed. The only small complaint I may have is that my new ceramic rice cooker does not have a condensed water collecter like the old Arc-2000. I always end up with a little bit condensed water dripped on the edge of the rice cooker when I open the lid. But the amount of condensed water is also way much less than the old rice cooker. Maybe this is why they remove the condensed water collecter from the new design? Anyway, in summary, although this ceramic rice cooker is a little bit more expensive than my original budget, the ceramic inner pot definitely makes me feel better and don't have to worry about ingesting the nonstick coating anymore. The build quality also looks good and I hope it can last me quite a few years like my old Arc-2000.