Seventeen minutes just to get the sauté function ready
In the ongoing negotiation between convenience and compromise, the Instant Pot Rio Mini enters as a small but earnest contender — a pastel-colored multi-cooker designed for those who cook in smaller quantities and tighter spaces. Priced at $89, it offers genuine culinary capability without demanding much counter real estate or financial sacrifice. Yet even the most modest tools carry their own hidden costs, and here that cost is measured not in dollars but in minutes — seventeen of them, every time you want to cook.
- The Rio Mini shrinks the Instant Pot footprint by three inches in every direction, making it the most compact model yet — a real draw for solo cooks and couples with limited kitchen space.
- A 17-minute preheat time haunts nearly every cooking session, turning what should be a convenience appliance into a patience test that compounds across weeks of use.
- Missing design details — no handles on the inner pot, a 120-decibel steam release, and cryptic icon buttons on the U.K. model — add small but persistent friction to daily cooking.
- Where it counts most, the cooking results are genuinely strong: chickpeas, soups, and steamed vegetables all emerge well-prepared, proving the core technology is sound.
- At $89, the Rio Mini holds its value for occasional cooks, but the pricier Pro model's 7-minute preheat quietly reframes the budget choice as a trade of money for time.
The Instant Pot Rio Mini arrives in pastel pink, white, and black — a deliberate aesthetic break from the utilitarian appliances that have long crowded kitchen counters. At $89 in the U.S. and £79 in the U.K., it's the smallest Instant Pot yet, trimmed by three inches in height and width while retaining all seven cooking modes. For singles and couples, the pitch is simple: real multi-cooker capability without the bulk or the price.
The most persistent frustration surfaces immediately in use. Preheat times run seventeen minutes for sauté and fourteen for pressure cooking — a longstanding Instant Pot limitation that the pricier Pro model resolves in roughly seven minutes. Across a month of regular cooking, that gap adds up to hours. The design carries other small disappointments: the inner pot has no handles, the steam release peaks at 120 decibels, and the U.K. version replaces clear text labels with icons that demand memorization.
The cooking itself, however, is where the Rio Mini earns its keep. Dried chickpeas came out perfectly soft without soaking. A butternut squash and coconut soup was silky and aromatic. Steamed potatoes were genuinely delicious. The egg function struggles — that long preheat overcooks yolks reliably — and the yogurt setting works but demands eleven hours of patience. These are real trade-offs, not dealbreakers.
For occasional cooks in small households, the Rio Mini represents honest value: capable, compact, and easy to maintain. But for anyone reaching for it several times a week, the math shifts. The time spent waiting for the pot to warm up quietly accumulates, and the Pro model's faster preheat begins to look less like a luxury and more like a reasonable investment in one's own time.
The Instant Pot Rio Mini arrives in pastel pink, white, and black—a deliberate departure from the utilitarian black boxes that have dominated the pressure cooker market for years. At $89 in the U.S. and £79 in the U.K., it's the smallest Instant Pot yet tested, shaved down by three inches in both height and width compared to the standard Rio model, while somehow retaining all seven cooking modes. For someone living alone or cooking for two, the appeal is immediate: a capable multi-cooker that doesn't demand counter real estate and won't break the bank.
But capability and appeal are not the same thing. The Rio Mini's most glaring flaw emerges the moment you try to use it. The preheat time is punishing—seventeen minutes just to get the sauté function ready, fourteen minutes before pressure cooking can begin. This isn't a Rio Mini problem specifically; it's an Instant Pot problem that has persisted for years. The pricier Pro model cuts this down to seven minutes, a difference that compounds across dozens of cooking sessions. When you're trying to make a quick weeknight dinner, watching your appliance warm up for nearly a quarter hour feels less like convenience and more like a tax on your time.
The design choices reveal other compromises. The inner pot lacks handles—a baffling omission when every other 2025 Instant Pot model includes them. The steam release is loud, peaking at 120 decibels for thirty seconds, loud enough that you might want to cover your ears and wipe down nearby walls afterward. The U.K. version uses cryptic icon buttons instead of text labels, forcing users to memorize a visual language that the U.S. version simply spells out. These aren't catastrophic flaws, but they're the kind of small frustrations that accumulate.
Where the Rio Mini actually shines is in the cooking itself. Pressure cooking two cups of dried chickpeas without soaking produced perfectly soft, fluffy results in forty minutes of actual cooking time—the kind of outcome that makes dried legumes worth the effort. A butternut squash and coconut soup emerged silky and aromatic, the slow-cook function doing exactly what it promises. Steamed potatoes were flawless: soft inside, snappy skin, genuinely delicious. The egg function, by contrast, overcooks dramatically due to that relentless preheat time, turning what should be jammy yolks into hard-boiled disappointments.
The yogurt setting works as advertised—the machine boils milk and holds it at the right temperature for twelve hours—but the entire process, including cooling and preheating, takes eleven hours. It's technically the easiest way to make yogurt at home, but only if you have the patience for it.
For small households on a budget, the Rio Mini delivers genuine value. It cooks as well as more expensive models. It fits on a countertop or in a pantry. The pastel colors are genuinely striking, and maintenance is straightforward—everything dishwasher safe, standard one-year warranty. But the seventeen-minute preheat time is a real cost, one that compounds if you cook frequently. The Pro model's seven-minute preheat might seem like a luxury until you realize you'll save roughly two hours per month just waiting for the pot to warm up. For occasional cooks, the Rio Mini makes sense. For anyone using an Instant Pot multiple times a week, the extra expense of the Pro model starts to look like an investment in your own time.
Notable Quotes
The preheat time is my biggest annoyance with Instant Pots as a whole, and I can't wait for this to be fixed in later models.— Reviewer
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the preheat time matter so much? Isn't it just sitting there while you prep ingredients?
Because you can't actually use the sauté function until it's done preheating. You're stuck watching it heat to 370 degrees when you might only need 300. It's dead time.
So the cooking itself—the actual pressure cooking—works fine?
Perfectly fine. Chickpeas came out ideal. Potatoes were excellent. It's not the cooking that's the problem. It's the waiting.
What about the missing handles on the inner pot? How much does that actually matter?
More than you'd think. You're pulling a hot pot out of a pressurized chamber. Handles make that safer and easier. It's a weird thing to cut from a $89 appliance.
Is this still worth buying if you only cook once or twice a week?
Absolutely. You're saving $60 compared to the Pro, and you're not using it enough for the preheat time to become maddening. It's the people cooking four or five times a week who should probably spend the extra money.
What surprised you most about testing it?
How good the slow-cook function was. That butternut squash soup felt like the appliance doing exactly what it was designed for. And how loud the steam release is—genuinely startling.
Would you buy one?
Not for myself. I'd buy the Pro and accept the cost. But I'd absolutely recommend it to someone in a small apartment who cooks occasionally and wants something that looks nice on the counter.