The cooker emits a burning plastic odour which is concerning. The outside surface is very hot to touch and after cooking a first meal, the enamel blistered and came off the ceramic bowl.

After using it to cook a simple chunk of corned beef in water with some onions, lemon, cloves etc, setting it on LOW, it boiled everything within 3 hours and kept vigorously boiling away, overcooking and burning on the bottom. Luckily I was home to check it out and not left it whilst at work. Very disappointing because we specifically avoided the cheaper brands due to this problem in their reviews. Worked nothing like our old crock pot which was a true slow cooker and never boiled the food on low setting. Big waste of electricity if left on all day. Apparently, according to Sunbeam, we're the first to report this issue with Model HP5530 but I've since seen a similar bad review for the exact same model on Harvey Norman's website. Returned.