Instant Pot Duo Review — Can One £86 Pot Really Replace Seven Appliances?

What Is the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1?

The Instant Pot Duo is the appliance that turned 'multi-cooker' into a household word. The 5.7-litre Duo combines seven functions — electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, sauté pan, yoghurt maker and warmer — in a single countertop unit with a stainless steel inner pot. It costs £86.17 and carries a 4.7-star average from 19,806 Amazon UK reviewers, a rating that has stayed remarkably stable across years and tens of thousands of owners.

The core promise is time. Pressure cooking raises the boiling point of water inside a sealed pot, cooking dense, slow foods — stewing beef, dried beans, whole grains — in a fraction of conventional time. Everything else the Duo does is a bonus stacked on that foundation.

Design and Build Quality

The Duo is a brushed steel cylinder roughly 32cm in each direction — about the footprint of a large slow cooker. The lid twists and locks with a reassuring clunk, and the steam-release valve flips between sealing and venting with one finger. The control panel is unglamorous but instantly legible: 13 programme buttons around a digital display, with +/– buttons for time.

The detail that matters most long-term is the inner pot: solid stainless steel with a tri-ply base, no non-stick coating to scratch or degrade, dishwasher safe. Ten safety systems run underneath — the lid cannot open while pressurised, and sensors cut power on any pressure or temperature anomaly. It feels, accurately, like a product designed to be impossible to misuse dangerously.

Performance

Pressure mode is transformative for a specific class of cooking. A 1.5kg pork shoulder reached pull-apart tenderness in 50 minutes at high pressure; the same cut takes five hours in a slow cooker. Unsoaked dried chickpeas cooked through in 40 minutes. Beef stew — browned first on the built-in sauté mode, so one pot, one wash — was genuinely better than the 3-hour oven version, because pressure cooking drives flavour into the meat rather than the kitchen air.

The honest caveat is total time: the pot needs 10–15 minutes to build pressure before the displayed cook time starts, and natural release adds more. 'Twelve-minute risotto' is really thirty minutes door to door — still less than half the stirring-at-the-hob version.

Rice mode produces results on par with a mid-range dedicated rice cooker. Slow cook mode runs slightly hot compared with a Crock-Pot, worth knowing for delicate recipes. Yoghurt mode is a cult favourite for good reason: a litre of milk plus a spoonful of live yoghurt, eight hours, done.

Key Features

True pressure cooking: up to 70% time reduction on slow dishes — the feature that justifies the purchase alone. Sauté mode: browning meat and softening onions in the same pot you pressure cook in eliminates both a frying pan and flavour loss. Stainless inner pot: no coating to wear out means the pot lasts as long as the electronics. 13 one-touch programmes: soup, meat, beans, porridge and friends are sensible defaults, while manual mode gives full control once you know your recipes.

Who Should Buy the Instant Pot Duo?

Buy it if you: want weekend-quality stews, curries and pulled meats on weekday timescales; batch cook — the 5.7L pot produces six generous portions for freezing; have a small kitchen and want to retire the rice cooker and slow cooker it replaces.

Skip it if you: mostly cook quick pan dishes — pasta, stir fries, grills gain nothing from pressure; or you want crispy finishes from the same pot, in which case the pricier Duo Crisp with its air-fry lid is the right model.

Verdict

Few products earn a 4.7-star average across nearly twenty thousand reviews; the Duo does it by doing exactly what it claims, safely, at a fair price, for years. It won't replace your hob — but it absolutely replaces the slow cooker, the rice cooker and most of your longest cooking days.

Rating: 4.7/5 — The definitive multi-cooker, and still the best-value one in 2026.