Instant Pot RIO Wide Plus Review

What the RIO name actually is

Start with the confusing part: RIO is the Duo, renamed. Instant Brands rebranded its core pressure-cooker line RIO, so the RIO Wide Plus is the descendant of the Duo you already know — the same 18/8 stainless tri-ply pot, the same manual steam toggle — carrying the nine-function set of the Duo Plus, sous vide and cake included. What is new on the Wide Plus is the shape: a 7.5-quart pot with a wider, shallower base than the tall 6-quart cookers. That one change is the whole reason to consider it.

The wide base is a real improvement

More of the pot bottom touches the heating element. Instant Brands describes a base wider than a 12-inch skillet and claims 35% more cooking capacity than a leading 8-quart multi-cooker — note that the 35% figure is about capacity measured against 8-quart pots, not a searing-area figure measured against a 6-quart one, and no published number compares the floors directly. What the width means in practice is that you can brown more meat in a single batch before you pressurize, and it browns more evenly, because you are not crowding cubes of beef into a narrow tall pot where half of them steam instead of sear. The sear-then-pressure workflow is where a lot of pressure-cooker flavor actually comes from, and a wide base makes that step less fiddly. For anyone who browns before every braise, this is a genuine ergonomic win, not a spec-sheet line.

7.5 quarts is a real capacity step

The Wide is also simply bigger. At 7.5 quarts it cooks for a larger household or a batch-cooking weekend — a bigger roast, a full pot of stock, double the beans — where the 6-quart pots start to feel tight. If you routinely cook for four or more, or you meal-prep in volume, the extra capacity is worth having, and it pairs with the wide base so the bigger batches also brown properly. That combination is why it held a place in our large multicooker roundup — where the pressure pick is now the 8-quart Duo Plus, since the Wide Plus can no longer be bought.

What you give up: width and watts

The trades are honest ones. A wider pot takes more counter than a tall 6-quart cooker for the same nine functions, so in a small kitchen the Wide Plus's whole advantage becomes a liability. And it draws 1,400 W rather than the standard Duo's 1,000 — the highest draw of any Instant Pot on this site, so it costs marginally more per minute to run. The difference is a few cents a cook, but it is real, and worth doing the arithmetic on if you cook most days. The nine functions do include sous vide, but it heats a still pot with no pump, so treat it as a way to try the technique rather than a circulator replacement — and there is no air fry here at any price.

Documentation and build

The Wide Plus keeps the Duo line's two structural strengths. The inner pot is 18/8 stainless with a tri-ply bottom — no coating to scratch off, so it outlives the nonstick pots in cookers a tier up. And Instant Brands publishes the 1,400-watt rating on its own RIO Wide Plus product page, so the running-cost figure on this site is traceable to the manufacturer rather than guessed — the whole point of how we rank.

What to buy instead

Update, October 2026: Amazon no longer has a buyable offer for the RIO Wide Plus. Its listing returns “Currently unavailable” with no price and no seller, and the 7-in-1 RIO Wide beside it is unavailable too, so the whole Wide line is off Amazon. Instant Brands still publishes the specification page we cite below, and the cooker is still in plenty of kitchens — but there is nothing here to click, so we have removed the buy button rather than send you to a dead page.

Who should skip it