Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We took the *first* Crock-Pot home from BBB and unboxed it to find the styrofoam was broken, the plastic lid handle cracked, and the glass lid smudged with dozens of greasy finger prints. The box appeared to have a new seal, so all indications suggest it came from China in that dirty, fingerprinted condition. We took it back and exchanged it for *another* new unit. On first use, the unit dented itself (see 'Customer Photos' on Amazon for a picture I took showing what happened). This occurred after cooking on high for 3 hours followed by 1 hour on warm. (Apparently the exterior sheet metal warped during the transition from high to warm.) Also, the exterior metal gets very hot during use and will burn you if you touch it. The glass lid's handle also traps tiny food particles between the handle and the glass (in the dishwasher), and it does not look good anymore after just one washing -- these food particles cause the lids to drip soiled water from the handle, resulting in filmy spots and a crust near the handle. The touch-panel on the unit doesn't feel very robust. We are taking it back and getting a Breville BSC560XL slow cooker instead. One thing that occurred to me is that the exterior of these slow cookers almost universally gets extremely hot (hot enough to burn you or melt some plastics). The electronics on a even the best programmable cooker will probably fail after a few years of cycles on high heat -- cheap integrated circuits just aren't made to stand up to cycles of high heat, cooling off, high heat, cooling off, etc. I'm sticking with a non-programmable design to reduce the possibility of a premature failure.