Instant Pot Smart vs Duo
Instant Pot is well known for innovation. This company regularly releases new pressure cooking models with new capabilities and features. But are these added bells and whistles always necessary? Should we all be using the latest updated multi-function pressure model? Or is the basic model just as good? In this Instant Pot Smart vs Duo article, we take a look at the latest Instant Pot model—the Instant Pot Smart and see how it compares with the most popular model, the Instant Pot Duo.
Instant Pot Smart
The Instant Pot Smart is an 8-in-1 cooking appliance. You can use it as a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, cake maker, steamer, and warmer. When pressure cooking, there are 13 one-touch functions, which according to the product information, means you can cook a range of tasty dishes such as rubs, soups, beans, and more on autopilot.
What makes the Instant Pot Smart different from other Instant Pot models is that this pressure cooker is WiFi-enabled. You can control the cooking via the application or voice commands with Alexa.
Of course, you will still have to put your food into the pot manually, but once it is there, it is fully controllable via your palm. This means you could put your meal on and control cooking from a distance.
Although this sounds suitable modern and high tech, is this really necessary? After all, Instant Pot pressure cookers all have a built-in timer so you could just use this instead. In truth, we are struggling to see the point of the Smart function, and the product information does not provide enough details on why you should even want this among your cooking appliances.
If you don’t have the Smart Pot, you can still access the app for cooking advice and recipes. The product information says that you can ask Alexa for help, but again you do not need to have WiFi-enabled on the Instant Pot to do this.
Customer feedback for the Instant Smart Pot is not very impressive. Many people have struggled with installing the app—it seems to work better with iOS than Android. Besides, many customers have questioned the need to provide lots of personal information to the Instant Pot company, which is a requisite for using.
The Instant Pot customer services department is renowned for being unhelpful. People calling with technical advice have been left frustrated by the lack of assistance.
Price-wise, the Instant Pot Smart is very expensive. Apart from the WiFi function, this Instant Pot looks very similar to the Duo but is more than twice the price. The 6 qt model costs around $129, so you will be paying a lot more for the dubious pleasure of having your pressure cooker connected to the Internet.
Pros
- If you love technology, you may like the idea of having your pressure cooker WiFi enabled
Cons
- Hard to see any advantage of having your pressure cooker WiFi-enabled
- Many customers have experienced technical issues
- Very expensive
Instant Pot Duo
The Instant Pot Duo is the most popular multi-function pressure cooker in the Instant Pot range and possibly the most popular on the market. It is easy to see why. This pressure cooker offers many different functionalities; it is a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker and has a sauté function. It comes with a built-in timer and delay button so you can set the pressure cooker to cook automatically if you are not home.
Although there are some different Duo models—the Duo, Duo Nova, and the Duo Evo for example, these are all well-priced and very similar. This pressure cooker model is extremely popular with over 50 000 customer reviews for the Duo on Amazon alone.
All Instant Pot customers have access to the Instant Pot app, which is a resource of thousands of recipes and cooking tips. This means that you do have online access even if your Instant Pot is not WiFi-enabled.
Of course, with any cooking method, you do need to prepare your food physically, and add it to your pot. Once you have done this and selected your cooking method, such as a preset option, you only need to wait until it is cooked. This means that if you want your pressure cooker to cook automatically, you only have to select the delay time function, and it will do it all for you.
The Instant Pot Duo starts at around $79.00 and in our opinion is great value at this price
Pros
- This multi-function pressure cooker allows a wide variety of cooking methods
- Very high levels of customer satisfaction
- Easy to use
- Comes with a built-in delay/timer function
Cons
- Instant Pot customer services department is not very helpful
In conclusion
There seems to be little point in WiFi-enabling your kitchen utensils, but if you crave to have all your household appliances connected online, the Instant Pot Smart will fulfill this function. However, it is hard to see why you should have this. Many customers have struggled with connectivity, and unfortunately, the inadequate Instant Pot customer services department has been generally unhelpful, leaving customers confused and frustrated.
In our opinion, the technology in the Instant Pot Smart is not up to scratch yet. It seems a bit gimmicky to us, and there is nothing here really that you couldn’t do with the non-WiFi model and the app. This is an easy decision; the Instant Pot Duo wins hands down when compared with the Instant Pot Smart.
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