When I first saw this 2-in-1 unit, I thought the concept is cute, but useless for me. The biggest advantage of a rice cooker for me is that the rice cooker cook rice while I am cooking other dishes. This 2-in-1 rice cooker only allows to do one thing at a time.
However, I do like the concept that the “heating element” of a rice cooker is not tie to only rice cooker bowl. In the last 40 years or so, there have always been advertisement push of using rice cooker for other dishes, like:
Our Zojiroushi rice cookers even have a “cake” setting.
I do not even think I have ever used a rice cooker to do these non-rice dishes, but this is considered an attractive feature for many people. So I think this is just one more step. Instead of thinking how to use the rice cooker bowl to cooking something else beside rice, it allows the heating element to be separatable from the rice cooking bowl.
I do not need this now, but I think it is an interesting idea.
