CUCKOO CRP-LHTR0609FW Review: twin-pressure rice cooker for people who are picky about rice

I’ve been using the CUCKOO Twin Pressure 6-cup rice cooker for a few weeks now, and I’ll be blunt: it’s not cheap, it’s not tiny, and the interface takes a bit of swearing to get used to. But in daily use, the rice quality is on a different level compared to the usual cheap cookers or even mid-range models. If you eat rice once in a while, this is overkill. If you eat it several times a week and care about texture, it starts to make sense.

Before this, I used a basic Japanese-style rice cooker and sometimes an Instant Pot. Both did fine for plain white rice, but brown rice and mixed grains were always hit or miss: either too chewy, or the top undercooked and the bottom mushy. With the CUCKOO, the first bowl of brown rice already felt more even and had a better bite, without me babysitting soak times or water ratios. I basically just followed the cup marks inside the pot and picked the matching program.

That said, this thing does have a learning curve. The manual feels like it was run through Google Translate and never checked. Some terms are odd ("Preset has been reserved" instead of "Timer set"), and the number of modes is borderline silly when you’re just trying to make dinner. The first two days I had it, I kept the manual near the cooker like a crib sheet. If you hate fiddly menus, you’re not going to enjoy the setup phase.

So overall, my first impression is: excellent rice, annoying interface at first, solid build, and clearly aimed at people who cook rice a lot. If that’s you, it’s worth a look. If you only need a simple side dish once a week, there are cheaper and simpler options that will feel less overcomplicated for your use.

This cooker sits in the higher price range for a 6-cup model, so the real question is: do you actually get enough out of it to justify the cost? If you only make plain white rice once a week, honestly, no. A simpler $50–$100 cooker will do the job well enough and be way easier to operate. You’d just be paying for features you’ll never use and a learning curve you don’t need.

Where the value starts to make sense is if you:

• Eat rice or grains several times a week (or daily)
• Switch between white, brown, and mixed grains
• Care about texture and consistency more than speed
• Plan to keep the cooker for several years

In that scenario, the induction heating and twin pressure actually bring something to the table. Rice quality is clearly a step up from basic models, and the variety of brown/multi grain modes is something you don’t get on cheaper cookers. The fact that it keeps rice warm for hours without drying it out also means less food waste and less hassle when people eat at different times.

Compared to well-known brands like Zojirushi, this CUCKOO is in the same ballpark price-wise, but it gives you more pressure and multi grain options. On the flip side, the user interface and manual feel less polished, and the learning curve is steeper. So you’re kind of trading better customization and rice texture for a more confusing first setup. For me, as someone who eats a lot of brown and mixed rice, the trade-off was worth it. If you mostly eat basic white rice, I’d say this is nice to have but not essential for the price.

Design-wise, this thing looks like a small white spaceship. It’s more modern than the typical boxy rice cooker. The finish is white with stainless accents, and the top panel is a sleek LED display with touch buttons. It doesn’t look cheap, and it feels more premium than most 6-cup cookers I’ve used. If you like clean, modern appliances on your counter, it fits in well with other stainless/white gear.

But let’s be clear: it’s not small. The dimensions are roughly 15.1" deep x 10.3" wide x 10.2" high, and the weight is around 19 pounds. For a 6-cup cooker, that’s pretty hefty. You feel it when you try to move it. I had to rearrange my counter and push my bread maker into a cabinet to give this a permanent spot. If you’re in a tiny apartment, measure your space first because this is not one of those slim vertical models you can tuck anywhere.

The control panel itself is a mixed bag. It looks nice, but the button labels and flow are clearly designed for the Korean market first, English second. Things like “Preset” instead of “Timer” and some slightly odd wording mean you won’t be flying blind, but it’s not as intuitive as it could be. The good news is that once you’ve memorized your go-to path — for example, White Rice → Pressure or Non-Pressure → Start — it becomes muscle memory and you stop thinking about it.

One thing I did like is the lid design and steam vent. The lid feels solid when it locks, and the steam release is controlled and doesn’t spit starch all over the kitchen like cheaper models sometimes do. The top plate comes off for cleaning, but it’s a little fiddly to snap back in until you’ve done it a few times. Overall, the design is practical and looks good, but you do pay for that with size and weight. I’d rate the design as pretty solid, with the user interface being the only real annoyance at the start.

Let’s talk about actual day-to-day comfort, because that’s where this machine is not perfect. The interface has a learning curve, no way around it. The buttons, the wording, and the whole flow are clearly designed with Korean users in mind, then translated. The manual is useable but not great; some phrases sound odd and you have to read twice to understand. The first few times, I basically followed the manual step-by-step to set timers or change modes. If you’re impatient or hate reading manuals, you’ll be annoyed at first.

Once you get past that first week, it becomes more comfortable. You figure out your 2–3 favorite programs and how to start them quickly. The voice guide helps at the start, telling you what you’ve selected, and you can reduce the volume or switch it off once you’re confident. The beeps and sounds are there but not too loud. It’s quieter than an Instant Pot when it comes to pressure release; it does hiss a bit, but it’s not dramatic or scary.

In terms of physical comfort, opening and closing the lid is smooth and the handle stays cool. The cooker is heavy, so you don’t really want to move it around every day. It’s better to give it a permanent spot and leave it there. Cleaning is a mixed bag: the inner pot is easy — rice slides off, and a quick sponge wash is enough. The lid plate and sealing ring add a couple of extra minutes of cleaning if you’re thorough, but that’s pretty normal for pressure-style cookers.

Overall, I’d say comfort is decent but not effortless. Once you’ve learned it, using it becomes straightforward. But if you’re buying this for someone who hates technology or doesn’t like dealing with menus and multiple settings, they might find it frustrating. For a medium-tech-comfortable person who cooks rice several times a week, it’s fine after the initial adjustment period.

The first thing you notice when you open the lid is the inner pot. It’s heavy, thick, and has a very smooth non-stick coating that feels a step up from the usual thin pots in cheaper cookers. It’s clearly designed for induction heating, so heat goes through the whole pot, not just the bottom. That matches what I saw in use: no obvious hot spots, and rice cooked evenly from top to bottom, even on pressure mode.

The pot has clear measurement lines inside for white rice, mixed rice, porridge, etc. I mainly used the white and multi grain marks, and they lined up well with the actual results — meaning I didn’t have to guess water levels like I do with some generic cookers. Nothing stuck badly, even on scorched mode; I could scrape the toasted layer off with the plastic spatula without scratching the coating. I still wouldn’t go at it with metal utensils, but it seems tougher than the typical cheap non-stick pot.

The rest of the build is mostly stainless steel and sturdy plastic. The lid plate and steam parts are stainless, which is good for hygiene, but the trade-off is that you need to hand wash them and put them back correctly. The sealing ring (CUCKOO calls it "packing") is silicone and needs to be seated into the lid grooves just right. The first couple of times I washed it, it was annoying to realign; once I got the trick (align the tabs first, then push around evenly), it became routine. Still, if you hate reassembling parts, you’ll grumble a bit.

Overall, the materials give a premium, durable feel. It doesn’t feel flimsy and I’d expect it to last several years if you don’t abuse the inner pot. The only downside is everything is meant for hand washing. No tossing the pot or lid into the dishwasher according to the care instructions. If you’re okay with a quick hand wash after each use, it’s fine. If you rely heavily on the dishwasher, that might annoy you over time.

In terms of performance, this is where the CUCKOO earns its keep. White rice comes out consistently fluffy in non-pressure mode and pleasantly sticky in pressure mode. Compared to my older basic cooker, the grains are more evenly cooked and don’t clump into a wet brick at the bottom. On non-pressure white rice, the texture is closer to what you get in a decent Korean or Japanese restaurant: separate but still slightly sticky, not dry. Pressure mode gives that chewier, stickier result that’s nice with Korean dishes or sushi-style bowls.

Where it really stands out is brown and multi grain rice. I tested a mix of short-grain brown rice, wild rice, and some barley using the multi grain and GABA settings. On my old cooker, that combo was always risky — usually either too firm or with some grains undercooked. On the CUCKOO, every grain was cooked through without turning the mix into mush. The GABA mode takes longer (around 3–4 hours depending on settings), but the texture is noticeably softer without being broken. If you eat a lot of brown rice and care about texture, this is a big plus.

The keep-warm function also works well. I left white rice in it for around 8 hours on warm as a test. It didn’t dry out or get that stale smell some older cookers produce. The bottom darkened slightly but didn’t burn or stick badly. For someone who likes to cook rice once and eat it across the afternoon/evening, that’s very practical. The automatic switch to keep-warm at the end of cooking is seamless; you don’t have to babysit it.

On the downside, cooking times are not short unless you use turbo modes. Regular white rice can take around 30–40 minutes depending on the setting, and brown/GABA obviously takes much longer. Turbo white rice is faster (roughly 20 minutes in my experience), and still better than what I got from my old cheap cooker on its regular mode. If you want fast and don’t care much about perfect texture, you might find this overkill. But if you’re fine with planning ahead a bit, the performance is very solid and consistent, which is what matters for a daily-use appliance like this.

On paper, the CUCKOO CRP-LHTR0609FW is a 6-cup uncooked (about 12 cups cooked) rice cooker with induction heating and twin pressure. In practice, that means it can cook rice in two main ways: pressure mode for stickier, chewier rice and non-pressure mode for fluffier, separate grains. It also has a pile of preset programs — CUCKOO claims 20+ modes, and the panel shows options for white, GABA, multi grain, porridge, scorched rice, baby food, veggie rice, steam, and a few “turbo” shortcuts when you’re in a rush.

The key feature for me is the multi grain / brown rice options. Instead of one generic “brown rice” button, you get several modes like GABA, multi grain, savory multi grain, turbo multi grain, and sticky multi grain. You can even add “scorched” to some of them so the bottom gets toasted. Compared to the typical one-size-fits-all brown rice program on most cookers, you can really dial in how firm or sticky you want it. I mostly used GABA and basic multi grain, and both gave better results than my old Zojirushi and Instant Pot for the same rice.

There’s also a voice guide that talks you through selections. It sounds like a polite robot and you can change the language or turn it off. At first it helped a lot while I was learning the menu, but after a week I found it a bit repetitive and ended up lowering the volume. Still, if you’re new to these Korean-style cookers, it’s not a useless gimmick, it actually helps you confirm what you’ve selected.

In daily life, I ended up using maybe 4–5 programs: plain white, turbo white when I was hungry and impatient, GABA brown, multi grain, and steam. The other stuff like baby food and some of the niche modes are nice to have but I doubt most people will touch them regularly. The good part is: once you figure out your 2–3 favorite modes, you can basically ignore the rest and treat it as a very fancy, very reliable rice cooker that keeps rice warm for hours without drying it out or burning the bottom.