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(More customer reviews)I'm an engineer, not a cook, hence the appeal of a crockpot (I can't boil water without burning it...)
I had an old Rival crockpot that worked well for many years (manual, round, and small). It broke, so I bought a 5-quart Smart-Pot at Costco this past weekend. I noticed it ran very hot (top of outside WILL burn your hands if touched!), so decided to test it.
I filled the unit 3/4 full of water and placed it on the high setting (4 hours) and measured the temperature after several hours with a thermometer. Water temperture was about 215 to 220 degrees F. I then repeated the process for the low temperature setting, but the temperature was about the same!
This disturbed me, so I placed a Kill-A-Watt (very handy device to measure electrical power consumption and wattage for electrical devices) between the pot and the outlet. Sure enough the unit draws the same power on the low and high settings (about 245W). Occasionally on the low settings the unit would pulse the power (this is probably how they get the lower temperature; by modulating the power, rather than using separate, and more expensive, heating elements in the manual units). The problem is that sometimes the low setting does pulse the power, and sometimes it does not. Even on the warm setting I found that occasionally the device will draw the maximum power without pulsing. It is apparent to me that they have a controller problem with the SmartPots that is overdriving the temperature. The units themselves run very hot, and I wonder if the excessive temperature causes controller problems.
I am going to return and try another one, but I suspect I will get precisely the same results, in which case I'll avoid the Rival brand entirely. This is an obvious problem that many people have complained about over the past year or so (viz. the comments), so they have either a major defect, or severe quality control problems, both of which shoudl warrant some kind of response from them. I am disappointed. If the second unit works correctly, I'll post on my success.
Interestingly, Rival makes a separate controller for an older crockpot to allow timing and temperature control (same idea of pulsing the heater current, and varying the duty cycle to change the effective heating capability --a perfectly legitimate approach), and it is inexpensive ($13-$15 on the street).
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