I have always loved rice and with takeout prices what they are today, I’ve been looking for a way to make takeout rice at home. My wife always had a box of Minute Rice in the kitchen, and I always hated that taste and texture. For most of my life, I’ve settled for inferior methods of cooking rice. Believe me, I’ve been all over the internet, watching videos of people telling me how easy it is to make rice. It seemed no matter what we tried, the rice always came out sticky and with an inferior chew texture. At some point, I learned that there are different kinds of rice that I should be using and that you needed to WASH YOUR RICE before cooking. Clearly I had much to learn!Next, I graduated to an Instant Pot, but as it turns out, there is no such thing as an appliance that acts like a Swiss Army knife on your kitchen counter! You can’t be everything to everyone. Yes, the Instant Pot is good for a lot of things, but when it comes to making rice, you NEED a rice cooker if you don’t want the headaches associated with making rice the old fashioned way.If you want to find out how to make a great pizza, ask an Italian. If you want to learn how to make great BBQ, ask a Texan. And if you want to figure out how to make great rice, look no further than the great people of Japan! I don’t claim to understand the strange sorcery that the Zojirushi uses over similar products claiming to be able to make rice just as easy…but there is NO doubt that the Zojirushi does it better than anything I’ve ever used to cook rice. I don’t know how, but I landed on the Zojirushi brand and boy am I ever glad I did.I am seriously hooked on this machine! Yes…it’s expensive. Someone else already said it, but this particular model is the Ferrari of rice cookers (no doubt). The quality of rice that it outputs is better than any takeout I can ever remember. I mix 1 cup Jasmine and 1 cup Basmati rice and wash vigorously / thoroughly under cool water for about 5 minutes or until the starch is gone and the water runs clear. Do NOT skip this step! I put the rice in and fill the water up to the 2-cup line in the insert. Close it up and set the timer for when I want to eat the rice. The machine turns on when it needs to and finishes at exactly the time I requested it. Fluff and serve, it’s amazing. It reheats leftover rice to perfection as well. The device is fairly simple to clean, just basically rinse under a faucet and air dry. The machine comes w/ clear instructions to both get you started and long term care. They do NOT recommend you cook anything but rice in this cooker. They also recommend that you NOT mix with other ingredients w/ the rice (i.e. protein, veggies, etc…). Apparently the digital logic in the machine is monitoring its contents based on the rice that you put in the machine. So if you add something other than rice, then the machine can’t guarantee it does its job properly (that’s my guess anyways).You will want to plan accordingly. This machine does NOT make rice in a short period. My 2-cups of jasmine/basmati mixed rice takes around 55 minutes to be completed. Add in the 5-10 minutes of prep to WASH your wash. For us, the extra time is a small price to pay for the quality of rice you get in the end. You can’t rush quality. You could prep all of this in the morning and set a timer for it to ready later in the day, no problem. Your rice will not turn out mushy just because it’s been sitting in the inner pot w/ water all day. Rice does not work that way. To re-heat rice, you just pile your leftover rice in the middle of the inner pot, do NOT add additional water, close it up and select the re-heat function on the machine. Perfect leftover rice in about 6-8 minutes.We now eat rice at a minimum of twice a week whereas before it was maybe twice a month (at best). Last night, I commented to my wife about how I thought the rice actually out-starred the protein I served it with. If you love rice, and you can afford it, buy it! You will not regret it.My only wish is that it had a retractable extension cord like some of the other Zojirushi rice cookers as this one does not.