This rice cooker was expensive when I bought it, and it's gone up in price now that I'm looking for a second smaller one. I have the 10 cup, and am considering adding the 5 cup due to I like brown rice, and the rest of my family prefers white. The expense, however, is the ONLY con after over 4 years of owning it and honestly, it's been worth every penny so I don't really consider it a con. We had gone through probably 5 different cheaper rice cookers over the years, you know those common models where it has one button to start and a glass lid... while a few of them did Jasmine rice pretty good, none of them could do both brown and Jasmine rice perfectly. This one does. If you've only ever had the one button rice cookers with the glass lid, and you move to this one, it's like going from an old base model Toyota Tercel from the 90s, to a nice modern Lexus sedan. Night and day difference. The rice cooks perfectly every time. Seriously, almost every time we have dinner guests over, someone comments on how good the rice is. Which if you think about it, is kinda exceptional. I mean it's just rice, right? By itself it's a fairly boring basic thing, and yet this rice cooker makes it better than a standard rice cooker, or what an average person can achieve on a stove. I say average person because one of my friends whose a chef, his stove top rice cooking skill rivals it. I can't do it, but this machine is like having him in my kitchen every time I make rice. But it's not just the perfect rice. This machine keeps rice good and warm and ready for anyone to have a serving for DAYS. Those one button rice cookers we used to own, even the better ones that could do a good pot of Jasmine, you had to get it out of there by the next day, or it was going to get bad. This allows us to have cheap warm good food ready across days. I made a pot yesterday at the time of this writing, and I just had perfect jasmine rice with sardines for lunch, I'll have a perfect rice with grilled mackerel later, and I'll have perfect rice with my beans tomorrow at lunch. If my kids are hungry in the middle of the day, and they want a quick something... there's warm rice and usually something in the fridge to throw on top of it, quick and easy and far healthier(usually) than microwavable frozen food. Now if you only eat rice once in a while, and it's not a staple in your house, and money is an object, then this is probably overkill. You're not going to get your money back in the convenience and higher quality of your staple, like you absolutely will if rice is a staple of your diet. But if it is a staple, and you've only ever used those cheaper one button rice cookers with the glass lids, and especially if you're trying to use brown rice to eat healthier, this rice cooker will be worth every penny. Pot after pot of perfect rice, regardless of what kind of rice you cook in it. And if rice isn't currently a staple for you but money is no object and you buy this, don't be surprised if rice becomes a staple... the convenience of this with the quality of rice it makes, may well lead to you eating it far more often. And for those of you who are into GABA rice... You don't need to buy special GABA rice, this will turn brown rice or other whole grain rice(white rice is not whole grain and can't be turned into GABA) into GABA for you. It takes longer to cook, about 3 and half hours(on the GABA setting, the regular brown rice setting is 90 minutes), but you're talking about getting GABA for a fraction of the cost. Just checked here on Amazon, GABA rice is going for about 10 bucks a pound if you buy it in a one pound bag. At my local Winco, brown jasmine in the bulk section is like a buck something for a pound and if you buy it in 25 pound bags like I do, on sale, you can get it for well under a dollar a pound. So you will very quickly recoup the costs of this rice cooker, if you're currently buying special GABA rice regularly as you can just buy a whole grain rice and use the GABA setting to activate it/turn it into GABA rice. So in closing, there are many kitchen appliances that promise to deliver perfect this, or perfect that with greater convenience, and few of them really deliver but this rice cooker absolutely does when it comes to rice. I can not imagine going back to one of those cheap one button glass lid setups, they're just a significant downgrade. I would absolutely miss this if I had to do that.
