Costco’s Instant Pot Competitor Is Only $40 Right Now

We love Instant Pots and we love Costco, so when we found out that Costco was making an Instant Pot competitor, we had to wonder: will we love the “Power Cooker 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker?” Certainly, if nothing else, we love the price: the eight-quart version is currently on sale for just $39.99 — at least one-third less expensive than similar-sized Instant Pot versions. No complaints on that front.

Buy Now: Power Cooker 8-Quart 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker, $40 from Costco

The Costco pot looks a bit flimsier than the IP, but has a non-stick inner pot, six auto settings, including steam-canning, stew, or rice. The nine kitchen appliances it claims to replace are: pressure cooker, saucepan, steamer, slow cooker, rice cooker, stock pot, Dutch oven, canner, and braiser. Like the Instant Pot, it has an automatic keep-warm function after cooking.

The pot is made by Tristar Products, and reviewers have a few thoughts on the quality. Most people coming into their first pressure cooking experience love it, but experienced pressure cookers found a few issues, starting with the non-intuitive instructions. The other big issue people have found is that the non-stick coating on the stainless-steel liner has a hexagonal pattern to it, and that causes issues with cleaning. Beyond that, people had issues with the timing controls — there are minimum and maximum times that you can pressure cook for and they ran into issues with Instant Pot recipes that require a very long or very short pressure cook time.

With a little help from the Googles, many users ended up happy with the cooker — it seems like a fine first foray into electric multi/pressure cookers for people for whom a higher-end one would be a financial stretch, or who aren’t sure they’re ready to commit. But overall, it seems you do get what you pay for — perhaps user Adrian77’s review sums up the product: “Satisfactory… I guess…”