Hamilton Beach 33564 IntelliTime Slow Cooker, 6-Quart

Even though slow cookers have been around since the 70s, I have never seen a need to have one. I even turned down a free one. Of course, now that I have retired and am not away from the house for ten hours, I bought the Hamilton Beach 33564 IntelliTime Slow Cooker after much research. I wish I had bought one before this, as I find it extremely useful. Of course, if I had bought one back in the 70s, it wouldn't have had these great features. The features that I particularly like:1. The flexibility of the time and temperature settings. I can set it for the time that I want the dish finished, i.e., 8 hours, 4 hours, or I can use the temperature settings, i.e., low, medium. An example of how these can work is to prepare the dish using the using the IntelliTime of, say, 8 hours, then pack it off to a pot luck. If the location is just a short distance, plug it in and set it to warm. If it's a long distance, plug it in, set it on high to warm it back up, and then set it to warm to hold the temperature.2. The holder for the lid gives you somewhere to rest that condensation-coated lid while you add additional ingredients. The condensation drips back into the pot instead of all over the counter. I do turn the slow cooker sideways after making my temperature selection so that the lid holder is on my right and more convenient to use. I don't see a way to design around this because the handles are where the convenient place is.3. The lid holder can be turned to be used as a cord holder, or an additional turn and you can take it off and store it inside the insert.4. The handles flip down so that less space is needed to store the slow cooker.5. The combination of size and shape makes it suitable for almost every substantial dish. (I have a 1.5-quart slow cooker for any little dish.)6. It is very attractive.The only problem I have had with it was that I couldn't figure out how to use the dial to make my settings. I really struggled with this, as have a few other reviewers. Only after extensive fiddling would I "accidentally" get the temperature set. I even considered returning it. When I finally figured it out, it seemed so obvious that I felt like an idiot. And yet, the next time I used it, I couldn't remember how to do it and had to figure it out again. Even now, I am not sure how to do it. I think that my problem was that I was pushing the dial in while turning it. Well, I'll find out if that was it next time I use it. I am glad that it was just me and not the slow cooker because I really like its features and how it performs.

Well, I can't say I enjoy leaving a review for a product I didn't use, but this is a review on craftsmanship. I'm a slow-cook only bachelor that uses his crock pot twice a week. My parents needed a slow-cooker, so I gave them theirs back with intent to buy a new one. I did a ton of research and the Intellitime feature seemed to be the best option. I like the idea of a time based warm up time, so your food isn't over cooked or mushy.After putting it all together, I noticed the lid wouldn't sit flush, leaving a wobbly gap. Most likely a problem with the ceramic bowl. The handles felt cheap as well and I imagined them breaking off soon. Amazon was great in the return process, except my replacement wasn't shipping for 3 weeks. I did a little more hunting and found that there's an updated model with the same Intellitime feature. Ordered a new one through Walmart and will review the new model.

I bought and returned a number of slow cookers before settling on this one. I believe government regulators have mandated higher cooking temperatures (even on the "low" setting) in these units in recent years (to reduce the risk of food poisoning in uncooked food), but this has the unintended effect of overcooking the food if left on an all day cook cycle. The IntelliTime feature adds "intelligence" into the cooking cycle to avoid overcooking the food and we have found generally works as intended for most recipes. My unit came with a slightly loose wire on the connector to the circuit board that needed to be fixed, but that was easy to diagnose and correct. I also added some labels on the front to remind me how to turn it on and off (press the large knob on front once to turn on, press and hold the knob to turn off) since we do not use it often and do not always remember this. We also like the folding handles and prop/bracket to hold the hot lid when serving.

I am not impressed with the Intelitime functionality. We cooked a roast which came out over cooked.This is a large cooker and if the pot is not full your food will cook too fast. Evidently Intellitime is programmed to use HIGH heat. If you want to use LOW heat you have to switch to manual mode. In manual mode there is no timer so it works just like an old school cooker. I would not buy again. I need a cooker that lets me program temp AND time. This is a poor design.

She says that the sides get much hotter than the bottom. After removing the ceramic bowl and checking the aluminum surrounding it with an IR thermometer I found that the unit itself is the same temp all over. Once you put the ceramic bowl back in it takes a lot of time for it to evenly spread the heat around. This is most likely due to the sides being closer or touching the bowl and the bottom being further away from the heat source. We found it cooks faster if it has more water in it (up the sides). In all, better than the new crock pot that failed us but not anything like the slow cookers of yore! We do very much like the lid stand.