Zojirushi NP-GBC05XT 0.54L Induction Heating Rice Cooker & Warmer - Stainless Dark Brown | Perfect for Small Households, Dorms & Office Use

This is my first review and I'm writing it in case it helps anyone out there similar to me ... so first a little background: I recently decided to change up my diet - I had been on a mostly wild salmon / some-type-of-vegetable diet. I weight train a bit so I've tried to keep my protein high and carbs low, but I decided to totally shake it up after reading a lot of research on vascular health. Despite my carb / low protein fears, I switched to a more/less vegan diet: grains & legumes for fats/protein + vegetables - zero added fat of any type, zero animal protein including dairy and whey protein powder. Well, some surprising things happened within 1 week: I lost some of my stubborn belly flab! No amount of cardio, diet, lifting has made a budge in that for 10 years, but this mostly carb diet did! Bro-trition did NOT predict that.But there was a problem, and so on with this review: cooking steel cut oats, spelt, barley, brown rice and other grains just for 1 day's meal is a real pain in the butt. Sure you can make extra ahead of time but that's not very tasty re-heated, at least for me. And, yes, you can use a slow cooker for steel-cut oatmeal, but that also has mixed results. I began researching solutions and came across rice cookers ... a dedicated appliance just for rice? really? and, holy crap HOW MUCH? I skipped it and kept on with my pots and pans ... But I couldn't shake the notion that as odd as it sounded, a dedicated appliance might actually make sense, mostly because a few years ago I bought a Zoji hot water thermos Zojirushi America Corporation CV-DCC40XT VE Hybrid Water Boiler and Warmer, 4-Liter, Stainless Dark Brown which also seemed ridiculous but has turned out to be a real luxury ... that's another story.So I did a lot of rice cooker research: Zoji, tiger, cuckoo ... and I researched all of the features: size, fuzzy logic, timers, modes, heat type, pressure, clean up, et al. With all of that I settled on this one because I've had a good Zoji experience, I like the looks the best, and I couldn't find any data showing that other brands with more features were marginally better for my needs. However, I did struggle with which size ... if you buy from other retailers, I found the next size up for $10 more once you adjust for no taxes. I decided to go with amazon and this size but it felt like a mistake.Ok, so with that, and adding that I have zero other rice cooker experience, here's my 2 cents review:LOOKS: As others have mentioned, it's very dark brown trim over a slightly tinted stainless. It more/less matches all my other stainless stuff and looks great, so unless you're particular about an exact match I'd say it'll fit in with just about any decor.SIZE: I mostly use this for just me, but it could easily work for 2 people and probably 4, but that's probably a stretch; so if you routinely cook for more than 3 people I'd go with the size up. If you're usually cooking for 3 people or less and want the counter space get this one - it's a great size and I only use about 1/3 of it's capacity on a per-meal basis ... having the larger one would really bug me, so I'm glad I got this size.FUNCTIONS: As others have mentioned it's about as easy as it gets: dump in the grain, dump in the water/broth (and mix-ins) and go. I use either 1/2 or 1 zoji cup per meal. I don't eat white rice, but I use the mixed setting for quinoa, freekeh, barley, etc and the porridge setting for steel-cut oats. I've tried using most of the modes and broadly they don't seem to make much difference, but the modes above work best for the grains listed. I love the GABA rice feature ... I don't know if GABA helps me, but I use it daily as a hacked timer: if you want hot food in 3 hours, dump-n-go, when you return hot stuff. Speaking of the timer - 2 timers! perfect for my weekday/weekend oatmeal.FOOD: Many have mentioned ... this thing makes some killer grains! No comparison to my stove-top technique. Not only does it make the cooking easy, the food comes out PERFECT. and every time. I use this thing about 4-5 times/day, and it's perfect every time. Some examples:* Steel-cut oats - the night before I dump in 1 zoji cup of oats, 1 cup of water, some cinnamon and it's perfect. I also put a tbs of fresh ground flax over the top and yeah I like it a bit thicker and am off dairy so no milk ... but I did try oat milk both before and after. I guess I'm a traditionalist but I like just water best. The oatmeal is perfect, and really the best oatmeal I've had as with all the other grains I've tried.* Freekeh, wheat berries, barley, etc: half-zoji-cup of freekeh, 1 zoji cup of veg broth, some soy sauce, a bunch of fresh or dried shitakes - perfect!* Spanish Rice: 1 zoji cup of brown rice, 1 zoji cup of hot salsa, 1 zoji cup of water - perfect!SUMMARY: If you cook grains often, it's a game-changer. Yes, it's also an expensive luxury, but it's such a daily (hourly) luxury that it makes it actually cheap given the usefulness. It's very simple to use, easy to clean, and makes perfect food. and,oh, who would've thought one could lose fat by going all carb??? Dreams do come true.