Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Fits the Instant Pot as advertised and opens up new functionality with that pot- e.g., slow cook simmering and sweating of vegetables prior to adding other ingredients to finish a recipe, etc. As I see it, the locking pressure cooking lid works well if your cooking experience is limited or if you're in a hurry, you hit a button, close the lid and assume it's doing the right thing. When you want to cook more conventionally though, as if you were cooking on a stovetop but with very precise and consistent heat control- sauteing and browning ingredients or sweating vegetables prior to adding liquids or meat and proceeding with the pressure cooking part of a recipe, or if you want to slow cook something without the intense heat and pressure blast of the pressure cooking functionality, this lid opens up a lot of that functionality. I use this to make marinara and bolognese among a lot of other things. To be able to very consistently keep the sauces at a barely perceptible simmer all day long as needed, allows the tomatoes and/ or meat to slowly break down to develop a good consistency but keeps the tomatoes from getting bitter, as happens if you cook too quickly or on too high a heat, and you can remove the lid to stir and check consistency and flavor easily, something you can't do with a pressure cooker. The stainless liner in the Instant Pot is a big part of that as well. I've spent my life cooking on gas as a professional Chef, I really appreciate the consistent heat that I can get using this device when I cook at home and again, this lid opens up a whole new world of functionality beyond merely cooking under pressure. The "simmer" and "saute" buttons, with the 3 intensity levels for each are very, very usable controls. Simmer on the lowest setting will bubble a sauce or "bone broth" almost imperceptibly with the lid on, and saute on the highest setting will rapidly and vigorously boil a sauce (or wine, etc) to quickly reduce, and you have 4 levels between those two to use as well. Lid on, lid off, lid ajar adds even more flexibility. You can do all of that with a conventional pot on a stove, but not with this kind of predictability and temperature control.