Out of all the rice cookers we tested, these are the ones we love the most

Though the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy retails for $256, it's frequently on sale at Amazon for around $190. While that may seem like a lot of money for a rice cooker, this will likely be the last rice cooker you buy in your lifetime. The Neuro Fuzzy is in the mid range of Zojirushi's rice cooker lineup, and it's hard to imagine a rice cooker that makes more perfectly cooked rice.

It's somewhat hard to explain how good the rice from this rice cooker is. After all, rice is rice, right? Wrong. If you've only ever eaten stovetop rice and then try Neuro Fuzzy rice, you're in for a huge surprise. During testing, the rice made in this rice cooker was always perfectly fluffy, never mushy, sticky, or burnt. It's virtually impossible to mess up a batch of rice in this cooker, since it features smart Fuzzy Logic technology which adjusts temperature, pressure, and cook time automatically depending on what's happening inside the pot.

The Neuro Fuzzy is also extremely versatile, with functions for normal white rice, sushi rice, quick cooking, porridge, sweet rice, brown rice, and more. We found it to excel particularly at cooking most short grain varieties, but it turns out brown rice excellently as well. The cooking time is a bit slow compared to other models, but we think the extra time is worth the wait — just plan to start your rice well before dinner time.

This is the perfect rice cooker for anyone who wants quality rice, but doesn't want to pay for a premium-priced rice cooker. Regularly on sale for around $80, the CR-0655F model from Korean brand Cuckoo did a fantastic job during our tests. The rice it made was slightly stickier than the rice made in the Neuro Fuzzy, but it still had a solid texture — much better than other budget models. It also cooked much faster than the Neuro Fuzzy, making it ideal for quick weeknight dinners.

The CR-0655F cooking pot is made of aluminum with a nonstick coating and sports a sleek red and white design on the outside. Each setting button features both English and Korean, and there's a handy steam cleaning function to freshen up your cooker between uses, which sets it apart from other rice cookers in a similar price range.

If you’re looking for a magical appliance that will cook a whole meal at once, then the Micom rice cooker from Tiger is the one for you. It has multiple functions, including a slow cooker, food steamer, and a synchronized cooking setting that work together to make dinner time a breeze. 

Although it’s minimal in its design, this rice cooker specializes in creating meals with multiple components without losing the flavor of each food element. That means you could cook rice, fish, and veggies together without each one smelling and tasting like each other. Tiger manages to do this with its specially designed cooking plate and pot that doesn’t affect the rice’s flavor or texture.

The Tiger Micom rice cooker comes with a non-stick rice paddle and spatula, a cooking plate, a measuring cup, and a cookbook that is full of recipes for "Synchrony-cooking." The rice itself doesn't come out quite as fluffy as the Neuro Fuzzy or the Cuckoo CR-0655F, but this is still a solid multi-use appliance.

Let's be real, not everyone has room to store an appliance that only cooks rice, especially if they don't eat rice very often. That's where an Instant Pot shines. We chose the Duo Plus, since it's one of the simplest models Instant Pot offers (the Duo will soon be phased out) with only features you'll actually use. You won't get the perfect, super fluffy rice you might get in a high quality rice cooker, but the Instant Pot Duo does what it needs to in terms of rice cooking — with a little bit of experimentation on your part. During testing, our first few batches came out sticky and clumpy, and we had to do some measurement adjustment to improve the quality of the rice.

Another selling point of getting an Instant Pot over a rice cooker is that it cooks extremely fast thanks to locked-in pressure. You can have rice on your plate in under 15 minutes, which is a speed you likely won't find with a normal rice cooker.

We promise that the Cuckoo and Zojirushi models on this list make the best rice, but we also get that spending $80+ on a rice cooker can seem like a lot (especially if you've never had one before). For folks who don't eat a ton of rice or who just want to spend a little bit less, this Hamilton Beach model makes good rice for the price.

You'll also get features that we normally only see on more expensive models, like a quick cook setting and a delay-start feature — both which will help you get food on the table faster.