My Rice Cooker Never Breaks

I feel like fewer and fewer people these days know the manufacturer Sanyo Electric.

三洋電機 - Wikipedia

ja.wikipedia.org

They had management troubles and are now part of Panasonic. Looking at their pre-Panasonic product lineup, many items were technically excellent or at a level that would still be considered normal to sell today.

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They also made the original eneloop (rechargeable dry cell batteries).

The Crazy Rice Cooker

One day I happened to be browsing the web and saw an affiliate-style article saying rice cookers last 3 to 6 years, so you should replace them before they break.

…Huh? How long have I had my rice cooker? When I checked, it turned out I’d been using it for a jaw-dropping 15 years… no way.

The case is stainless steel with no particular scratches, and the LCD displays cleanly. The lithium battery inside that powers the clock is still working, so it keeps time even if unplugged. (I assume a button cell is built in and its design life is about 3–4 years, but because it’s left plugged in, the battery life hasn’t dropped and it keeps running.) The inner pot’s coating has some wear but still cooks deliciously, the rubber gasket on the top shows no hydrolysis at all, and the springs haven’t broken.

The rice hasn’t lost flavor; if anything, it’s better than rice I’ve had from a fairly expensive ~¥60,000 rice cooker (at someone else’s house). Even cheap rice comes out fluffy and tasty — not soggy.

Overengineered

The manual says repair service is available for six years after production ends. If it runs fine during that six-year repair window, that’s already pretty good — yet this one was designed to not break even after 15 years. That’s seriously overengineered, but why? Japanese engineer spirit?

Making good products isn’t always the right approach

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As a consumer, I’m impressed — these products are great. But maybe the manufacturer was torturing itself with them.

Sanyo may indeed have been technically outstanding. A lithium battery that lasts 15 years, gaskets that don’t degrade, a thick inner pot… a precise pressure valve on the lid, a circuit board designed not to fail even after 15 years of daily high heat and rice steam(?) — to a layperson it all looks like a lot of money went into it.

And aside from IH rice cookers, Sanyo seemed to have invested massively in this kind of technology. Honestly, from a manufacturer’s perspective, it might make more financial sense to make products that fail often enough that users buy new ones and feel satisfied, rather than building the ultimate rice cooker.

Where will Panasonic head now? Of course they can’t go back to the days of “let’s build the ultimate appliance,” but with foreign competitors getting stronger, Japanese companies being acquired, and price competition likely intensifying, what will happen?

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From a capitalist standpoint, that’s probably how it goes, but still — today I thought it’s not a bad thing to have a tech-focused company like Sanyo.