Gadgetory

hey I'm seen that's right wrist and I'm standing next to the frigidaire professional seven court programmable slow cooker now this is a very fancy looking device it's got this really classy stainless steel finish on the outside and these glossy chrome handles and this nice glass lid here it's a very attractive looking device it looks good and it's meant to sort of class up the humble slow cooker and they've accomplished that I give my kudos to the Frigidaire design team it does good looking appliance but I have to say the design is not terribly user-friendly take the handles they look good but there's nothing separating them from the really hot exterior of the slow cooker so when you're grabbing it your fingers early fit all the way in to begin with and they're going to get bunched up and get burnt several times I had to pick up this unit while it was hot and I burnt the back of my fingers and my knuckle I didn't have that problem with other slow cookers that all seem to figure out that you needed to have a small little patch of plastic or something protecting you there from getting burnt when you pick it up on top of that the slow cooker just lacks a lot of the type of features we would look for in an upgraded unit something you're paying more than 50 bucks for this cost $99 that's a lot for a slow cooker and it doesn't have a vent for a meat thermometer it doesn't have locks on the lid so you can travel with it there's no place to wrap the cord in the back there's just a lot of things that are missing that I wish that had as for the features that the Frigidaire Professional does have I'm not sure when I would use them for instance take a look at the presets on the front of the machine you've got low medium high and soup modes now I guess media makes sense as an extra if you're low is too low you're high as too high but still that's kind of pushing it and then I don't know that I need a dedicated soup mode on top of that you've also got warm and buffet moves those are two separate modes that both just keep your food warm as opposed to cooking it do you really need two of those the bottom line is that this is a good-looking appliance that just doesn't really have a lot of depth it doesn't have a lot of smart features or thoughtful design it just looks nice and it does basic slow cooking fine but so does a twenty-dollar slow cooker so you don't really need to splurge on this thing I'd rather have that much more affordable slow cooker than this now if you don't want that $20 slow cooker if you want something a little nicer I say the sweet spot is somewhere around 60 bucks where we found the Hamel beach slow cooker that we tested and the crockpot both of those were great and they work well they're also more affordable than this you want something really nice you can go for the ninja three-in-one cooker which will double as an oven or stove top got mixed results in our test it's worth a look for cnet I'm right Chris