Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had an old Panasonic rice cooker which had performed faithfully for almost 20 years, but it didn't have a Teflon pot and tended to scorch rice on the bottom -- especially brown rice. After reading countless reviews of various rice cookers, I decided to chance the Aroma ARC-914SBD. My experience has confirmed some of the tips and observations of previous reviews: ~ To avoid calamities, follow the directions in the user's manual, not what's on the rice package or what you used to do when cooking on the stove top. I was particularly surprised that brown rice takes no more water than white rice, but turns out beautifully. ~ The term "cup" does not mean an 8 ounce cup. It's actually 3/4 of a cup (6 ounces). I quickly discovered that trying to convert this idiosyncratic measurement scheme to standard English measurement is more trouble than it's worth. Just do what the directions say. ~ There's good reasons for this cooker's taking longer than stovetop cooking or what my old rice cooker took. It intentionally heats brown rice more slowly and apparently cooks at a lower temperature than with white rice. That's fine with me, since the result is perfectly cooked brown rice! ~ The top assembly is slightly more awkward to clean than a simple removable glass or metal top would be. It's really not much of an issue, but others have noticed it also. ~ The maximum capacity is claimed to be eight cups of cooked rice, which is actually six - 8 ounce cups. This is fine for one or two people, but may not be large enough for more people. After only a few days of ownership, I'm very pleased with the performance of this unit, but obviously I'm not yet able to comment about reliability or customer service. UPDATE October 2016: An apparently defective plug caused unexplained shutdowns. After plug replacement, no problems. Still in regular use and performs well.