I'm looking to buy a rice cooker and i'm comparing specs.
unit A (3 cup capacity) with electric heating element is rated 350W, and uses 15W in keep warm function.
unit B (4 cup capcity) with induction heating is rated 1110W, and uses 45W in keep warm function.
Both have cooking cycles of the same length.
At first i thought, oh i bet that 1110W is just peak power not the constant load so maybe it uses less power overall, but seeing how it also uses 3x the energy in keep warm function i doubt that. Asked the company about it and they said the induction one uses "slightly" more power.
Everywhere you can read that induction cooking is supposedly a lot more efficient than other methods. If it was a cooking hob i could see an argument being made that there is less waste heat, but these are rice cookers which are much more closed systems.
Anyone any idea how to make sense of this? my working theory atm is that the alleged efficiency is just a marketing speech half truth.