Instant Pot Duo Plus 6 Quart Review

Performance Comparison

User Friendliness

It can be challenging to motivate yourself to pull out a kitchen appliance that works wonders on the final product but is hard to work with. That is why we chose user-friendliness as our most important metric. During our testing, we mainly paid attention to how intuitive the interface is, but we found that we were often met with the issue of where to place the sweaty lid when opening our pressure cookers. That is why we decided to give pressure cookers with a designated lid holder a few extra points in this metric.

It doesn't get much better than the Duo Plus's interface. It is straightforward to use, with dedicated buttons for each cooking preset — from soup to cake. The time, pressure, and temperature are easy to manage with the plus and minus buttons on the face, and the adjustments are represented via the digital screen.

A considerable upgrade from its predecessor is a lever or slider-operated valve seal. This upgrade alone caused our opinion of the Duo to skyrocket. This simple feature not only keeps your fingers out of the line of fire, but it's also easier to tell whether or not the valve is open by looking at the lever.

The Duo Plus's lid easily sets in its holder with one hand, so you never have to deal with dirtying up your counters. Overall we have no complaints in the user-friendliness department. Instapot answered our prayers with the slider-operated valve, and we couldn't be happier.

Cooking Performance

Cooking performance is next in line for the most important metric. We paid attention to pressure adjustability and the ability to cook meat, rice, and sauté vegetables. Most of the models in our test suite scored highly here, and the Duo Plus is right on par.

The DUO Plus excels in cooking, although there is little room for improvement. First and foremost is pressure adjustability. It offers a high and low but no medium. This limitation is rather nit-picky; however, we wouldn't mind an in-between setting here.

Our experience with cooking rice was great but left a little to be desired. Using the Duo Plus as a rice cooker results in a soft and tasty product, but it falls more on the sticky, wet side of the spectrum than light and fluffy. Our taste testers prefer fluffy light rice to the alternative, but if you like your rice sticky, this is a non-issue.

Our experience with cooking meat was fantastic. After roughly 23 minutes, our ribs came out tender and moist. They slid off the bone with the touch of a fork. We had a similar experience with sautéing. The sauté setting offers low, medium, and high options, which we greatly appreciate.

Ease of Cleaning

One of the biggest draws to kitchen appliances like the pressure cooker is how easy they make it to cook. Simply set it and forget it while you clean your kitchen, watch your favorite show, or enjoy a glass of wine. So being left with a complicated mess to clean up after sort defeats the purpose. That is why we dubbed ease of cleaning our third most important metric. We paid particular attention to how easy the lid and pot are to clean during our testing and whether there are dishwasher-safe pieces.

We found that most pressure cookers take a little elbow grease to get clean, especially the lids. This design means that none of them obtained a stellar score here, but as far as how the Duo Plus measures up to the competition, it is, yet again, right on par with the top performers. The attached lid is a true blessing while cooking, but it makes clean-up a little cumbersome. The gasket is removable, so it's not terribly difficult to get into all the nooks and crannies, but it would be easier if there were a way to remove the lid. The stainless steel pot is dishwasher safe and easy to clean, albeit not as easy as some of the nonstick pots in our test suit.

Cooking Features

While we love a specialty item, pressure cookers are relatively large, so we appreciate it when they negate the need for other larger kitchen appliances, like rice cookers. In the cooking features section, we paid attention to whether or not it offers a sauté feature and the rest of the setting varieties. The Duo Plus is a great combination of a device that provides enough distinct features without being too overwhelming.

The sauté feature offers three different settings: high, medium, and low. The stainless steel works great but requires a little extra care because sautéing often leaves a good bit of food remnants in the pot. The setting variety that the Duo Plus offers is awesome. There are separate settings for the following: pressure cooking, soup and broth, cake, eggs, slow cooking, sautéing, rice, beans and grains, porridge, and oatmeal, yogurt, and sous vide. There is even a sterilize setting.

Should You Buy the Duo Plus?

This pressure cooker is not only intuitive, but its versatility is impressive. Each feature is easy to use and performs well. It will happily take the place of your rice cooker, as long as you don't mind slightly sticky rice, and yourfavorite slow cooker, clearing up space in your kitchen. The Duo Plus is truly a marvel, and its upgraded valve control leaves us with little to complain about. The Duo Plus is, without a doubt, a fantastic value. While it is still a bit of an investment, it is far less than the most expensive options in our test suite and outperforms many of them. It is a versatile kitchen tool that not only can get all the jobs done but it does each of them quite well.

What Other Pressure Cooker Should You Consider?