A #1 bestseller on Amazon, the Duo offers all of the standard Instant Pot features with an extra setting for making homemade yogurt. It also lets you pressure cook on low (in addition to high), so you’ll have more control over the cooking temperature of soups and lentils, which may ultimately prevent them from overcooking into mushy oblivion. It's just $20 more than the most basic Instant Pot model (the Lux) and often goes on sale, so we think this one’s the best bang for your buck.
Finally, an air-fryer has been built into the Instant Pot. This six-quart size has enough room for a four-pound chicken, which means that there's plenty of space for any smaller things you'd like to air-fry. Of course, the Vortex also has programs for dehydrating, baking, broiling, roasting, and even reheating your meals. It's easy to program and even easier to clean, and at just over one foot wide, it doesn't take up much counterspace.
This model offers everything that the bestselling Duo does, plus settings for making cakes, eggs, and sterilizing. With the sterilize program, you can pasteurize milk, and sterilize baby bottles, jars, and utensils. Another key feature of the Duo Plus is the upgraded display: It’s bigger, bluer, and has brighter LED backlighting than the Duo. So if you ever find yourself straining to read the graphics on your appliances (like, say, in the middle of the night when you're heating up a bottle), look no further.
With endless options for customization, the Ultra is packed with extra features for the home chef who loves to experiment. It offers 21 pre-set temperature options, more than any other Instant Pot model on our list. The Ultra even lets you adjust for altitude, which takes the guesswork out of recipe conversion to provide a more precise cooking time. Unlike other Instant Pots that only have button controls, this one’s smooth dial also makes programming a breeze.
The Smart WiFi multi-cooker has many of the extras that other Instant Pot models offer, along with the addition of WiFi connectivity, which allows you to set, monitor, and control your cooking from virtually anywhere. It also comes with more than 750 pre-programmed recipes that you can peruse via the Instant Pot app. When your dish is nearly done, you’ll receive an alert on your smart phone, and can even send your recipes and cooking results to your family. Cooking function-wise, this 8-in-1 model is more similar to the Duo or Duo Plus (rather than the Ultra), though it does have three different "keep warm" temperature settings.
