Verdict: 4 out of 5. The BLACK+DECKER RC1850-B5 is a 1.8 L (10-cup) rice cooker that cooks white rice perfectly with one switch — and it has done so in my kitchen for 2 years and more than 100 batches.
- Price: AED 113–165 in the UAE, SAR 136–164 in Saudi Arabia, QAR 119 in Qatar (about USD 31–45). Not sold in the US or UK.
- Tested by: Jackie, The Smart Kitchen Guide — owned since 2024, used weekly
- Best for: families of 2–6, students, meal preppers, anyone who wants white rice without settings
- Skip it if: you want a delay timer, brown-rice or sushi programmes, or a cooker for a 110–120 V country
- The one thing to know: the measuring cup is 180 ml, not a standard 240 ml cup — lose it and the water lines stop making sense
I bought this rice cooker myself two years ago. Nobody sent it, nobody paid for this review, and there are no affiliate links on this page. What follows is what the RC1850 does well, where it falls short, and whether it is worth the money in 2026 — with the same conclusions I reached in my two videos about it.
If this video helped you decide, please subscribe to The Smart Kitchen Guide on YouTube. Every new review is a product I have bought and used myself.
BLACK+DECKER RC1850 specifications
The RC1850-B5 is a 588–700 W, 1.8-litre rice cooker with a removable coated aluminium bowl, a glass lid and a single cook/warm lever, weighing 2.48 kg. It is the 220–240 V model sold in the Gulf, Egypt, East Africa and South Asia; it is not the same machine as the BLACK+DECKER 6-cup and 16-cup cookers sold in North America. Official figures below come from BLACK+DECKER’s instruction manual for the RC650/RC1050/RC1850/RC1860/RC2850 family and its UAE product page; the manual publishes no dimensions and no cooking times, so those columns are mine.
| Specification | Official | What I found |
|---|---|---|
| Model | RC1850-B5 (manual: RC1850 Type 1; the “-B5” is BLACK+DECKER’s code for the 220–240 V export version) | The rating plate on the base reads RC1850, Type 01, made in China, date code week 49 of 2022 |
| Capacity (uncooked rice) | 1.8 L | Ten 180 ml cups fill the pot to the 1.8 L line; that is about 7½ standard 240 ml cups |
| Cooked rice yield | “Each cup of uncooked rice normally gives two bowls of cooked rice” (manual) | 2 cups gave 4 cups cooked; 10 would give about 20 |
| Power | 588–700 W | 588–700 W on the rating plate |
| Voltage | 220–240 V, 50/60 Hz, earthed (class I) | Needs a 700 W-rated converter in the US, Canada and Japan |
| Dimensions (D × W × H) | Not published by BLACK+DECKER (Amazon.ae lists 31.4 × 27 × 25.1 cm) | 31.4 × 27 × 25.1 cm (12.4 × 10.6 × 9.9 in), measured with a tape |
| Weight | 2.48 kg (manual) | Light enough to move one-handed by the lid handle |
| Inner pot | Removable aluminium bowl; the manual refers to a non-stick coating but does not say what it is made of | Dark non-stick coating; shows wear and a few flakes after 2 years (see durability below) |
| Lid | Glass lid with cool-touch handle and steam vent | You can watch the rice without lifting it |
| Controls | One control lever, COOK and WARM indicator lights | No timer, no delay start, no presets, no off switch — WARM is on whenever it is plugged in |
| Water markings | “Easy-to-read water level indicator” | Cups 2–10 and litres 0.6–1.8, for white rice only — no brown-rice or porridge lines |
| Accessories | Measuring cup, rice spoon, steamer tray (manual: not for meat or poultry) | Cup is 180 ml; paddle and cup live inside the pot |
| Cord | Fixed cord; use only 3-core extension leads (manual) | Reaches a socket about a metre away |
| Dishwasher | “Do not wash any part of the appliance in a dishwasher” (manual) | I hand-wash the pot and lid; see cleaning below |
| Warranty | 24 months from purchase (manual; all Gulf retailers state 2 years) | Mine is now outside warranty and still working |
What’s in the box
You get the cooker body, the removable pot, the glass lid, a 180 ml measuring cup, a plastic rice paddle, a steam tray that sits on top of the pot, and a manual. Mine went missing within the first year, which is why the water-ratio table further down exists.
Can a 10-cup rice cooker handle a 2-cup batch? The test
Yes — two cups of rice in this 10-cup pot came out fluffy and evenly cooked in about 15–20 minutes, with no crust at the bottom. That was the point of my test: most days I am not cooking for twelve, so a big cooker is only useful if it also does small batches well.
The method is the same at any size. Rinse the rice until the water runs clear, add it to the pot with the supplied cup, and fill water to the line with the same number as the cups of rice you used. Lid on, plug in, press the lever down. The red Cook light comes on and there is nothing else to do.
When the water is absorbed the lever pops up, the orange Warm light takes over and the cooker holds the rice hot. Two things the manual makes clear: the Warm light is on from the moment you plug the cooker in (there is no off switch — unplug it when you are done), and BLACK+DECKER gives no maximum keep-warm time. I would not leave it on Warm for more than a couple of hours; after that the bottom layer starts to dry. For a full 10-cup pot, expect closer to 30 minutes of cooking. These timings are mine — the manual does not publish any.
How much rice does the RC1850 make, and for how many people?
| Dry rice (180 ml cups) | Cooked rice (approx.) | Feeds | Cooking time (my timings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 cups | 4 cups | 2–3 people | 15–20 min |
| 3–4 cups | 6–8 cups | 4–5 people | about 20–25 min |
| 8 cups | 16 cups | 6 people with rice as the main event | about 30 min |
| 10 cups (max) | 20 cups | 10–12 people as a side dish | about 30 min |
For meal prep I cook 4–5 cups on Sunday and portion two cups of cooked rice into each container: five lunches, one wash-up.
How has the RC1850 held up after 2 years?
The heating element and the switch have not missed a batch in two years, but the non-stick coating has not stayed perfect: it shows wear and a few flakes. I want to be honest about why. Several people in my house use this cooker, and abrasive cleaners have been used on the pot more than once. That is exactly what the manual tells you not to do, and it is the main reason the coating looks the way it does. I still cook in it every week and the rice still does not stick.
My experience is not everyone’s. On Amazon.ae the RC1850 has 96 ratings averaging 3.5 out of 5 (checked 29 September 2026): 49% five-star, but 27% one-star, and the one-star reviews are almost all about the same thing — a unit that stopped switching on after a few weeks or months, often after the return window but inside the 2-year warranty. The same model scores 4.0 from 95 ratings on Amazon.sa and 4.5 from 94 on Noon Saudi Arabia, so the picture varies by marketplace, but the complaint does not. Coating wear, my only problem, is barely mentioned by other owners. So the honest picture is a machine that either works for years, as mine has, or fails early — and a low price that makes the gamble easier to take than it would be on a cooker costing four times as much.
BLACK+DECKER RC1850 pros and cons
Pros
- Unbeatable capacity for the money. 10 cups of dry rice for the price most brands charge for a 6-cup cooker.
- One lever, nothing to learn. Cook or Warm. Anyone in the house can use it without asking.
- Glass lid. You see the rice cooking without lifting the lid and losing steam.
- Small batches work. 2 cups in a 10-cup pot came out as fluffy as a full load.
- Two-minute clean-up. The pot lifts out; a short soak and a soft sponge is all it needs.
- Compact for its capacity. Under 26 cm tall, so it lives under the wall cabinets or on a shelf.
- Steam tray included. Vegetables or dumplings steam on top while the rice cooks.
Cons
- No timer, no delay start. It is plug-in-and-press; you cannot have rice waiting when you get home.
- White rice only, officially. The pot has no markings for brown rice, so brown, basmati and sushi rice mean experimenting with water.
- Non-standard 180 ml cup. Lose it and the water lines no longer match — keep it inside the pot.
- Non-stick needs care. Abrasive pads or metal spoons will damage it; mine shows it.
- Durability is a coin toss for some buyers. A quarter of the Amazon.ae ratings are one star, mostly early failures.
- 220–240 V only. Not for North America without a converter.
Is the BLACK+DECKER RC1850 worth the price?
Yes, if you want a large white-rice cooker and nothing else. In the Gulf it sells for the equivalent of about USD 31–45, roughly a third of the cheapest fuzzy-logic cooker of the same size (the Tefal RK736B is AED 499 on Amazon.ae), and the rice is not a third as good — it is the same white rice. What you give up is the timer, the rice-type programmes and, judging by the ratings, some certainty about longevity.
| Market | Retailer | Price (29 Sep 2026) | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | Noon | SAR 136 | In stock |
| Saudi Arabia | Shaker (BLACK+DECKER’s distributor) | SAR 164.45 incl. VAT | In stock |
| UAE | Union Coop | AED 119 | Out of stock |
| UAE | Amazon.ae | No listed offer today; the near-identical RC1860-B5 is AED 113.52 | RC1860 in stock |
| Qatar | Lulu Hypermarket | QAR 119 | In stock |
| Kuwait | Xcite | KD 12.900 | Out of stock |
| Egypt | Amazon.eg | EGP 2,800 | Last units |
| Kenya | Hotpoint (RC1860-B5 only) | KES 8,495 | In stock |
| USA, UK, India, Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan | — | Not sold | BLACK+DECKER sells different rice cookers in North America |
Prices are read from the retailers’ own pages and change often; there are no shopping links on this page, so check your local retailer. If the RC1850 is out of stock where you are, the RC1860-B5 has identical technical data in the manual (220–240 V, 588–700 W, 1.8 L, 2.48 kg) — BLACK+DECKER’s copy calls the RC1860’s bowl “non-stick” and the RC1850’s simply “aluminium”, but retailers list both as non-stick and my RC1850’s bowl clearly has a coating.
Put differently: if it dies after two years, it has cost me well under a dollar a week. If it lasts five, as many owners report, it is one of the cheapest appliances per meal in my kitchen.
Who should buy the RC1850 — and who should skip it?
Buy it if
- You cook white rice several times a week for 2–6 people
- You are a student, a busy parent or a Sunday meal-prepper who wants one button and two minutes of washing-up
- You want 10-cup capacity for guests without paying for features you will not use
- You live in a 220–240 V country
Skip it if
- You want sushi-grade precision, fuzzy logic or presets for jasmine, basmati and brown rice
- You want a delay timer, an app or a digital display
- You cook for 8 or more people with rice at every meal — 10 cups is a lot, but not that much
- You want a guarantee it will last five years; the ratings say some units do not
- You are in North America or the UK — it is a 220–240 V model and not sold there
How to use the BLACK+DECKER RC1850: water ratio, cup size and times
Use the supplied 180 ml cup for the rice, then fill water to the line inside the pot that matches the number of cups. That is the whole ratio system — the lines already include the extra water for absorption, so you do not measure water separately.
- Measure the rice with the 180 ml cup and rinse it until the water runs clear.
- Put the rice in the pot and add water up to the matching cup line (2 cups of rice → the “2” line). Add a pinch of salt if you like.
- Wipe the outside of the pot dry, seat it in the cooker and put the glass lid on.
- Plug in and press the lever down. The red Cook light comes on.
- When the lever clicks up and the Warm light comes on, leave the lid on for 5–10 minutes, then fluff with the paddle.
BLACK+DECKER RC1850 rice-to-water ratio (from the manual)
The manual’s own table for the RC1850 uses the supplied cup for both rice and water, and the ratio tapers as the batch grows — 2:1 for a single cup, close to 1:1 at ten cups. This is the table to use if you have lost the cup: any cup works as long as you measure rice and water with the same one.
| Rice (cups) | Water (cups) | Cooked rice (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 2 bowls |
| 2 | 3 | 4 bowls |
| 3 | 3½ | 6 bowls |
| 4 | 5 | 8 bowls |
| 6 | 7 | 12 bowls |
| 8 | 9 | 16 bowls |
| 10 (max) | 11 | 20 bowls |
Source: BLACK+DECKER instruction manual RC650/RC1050/RC1850/RC1860/RC2850 (Type 1), page 6. A standard 240 ml US cup of rice is 1⅓ RC1850 cups, so two US cups of rice equals the “3 cups” row. The table is for white rice; for other types, this is what has worked for me:
| Rice type | Water per 180 ml cup of rice | Note |
|---|---|---|
| White long grain, jasmine | Fill to the matching pot line | What the cooker is designed for |
| Basmati | Matching line, minus a splash | Rinse and soak 15 min for separate grains |
| Brown rice | About 1 cup more water than the line, or 2 cups water per cup of rice | No official markings; expect 35–45 min and one trial run |
| Sushi / short grain | Slightly under the line | The cooker cannot hold a lower temperature, so results vary |
Cleaning and storing the RC1850
Unplug the cooker and let it cool, lift the pot out and soak it in warm soapy water for about 10 minutes; a soft sponge then removes even dried-on rice. Never use metal scouring pads, abrasive powders or metal utensils on the non-stick, and never put the base in water — the manual says exactly this, which is why the abrasive cleaning my pot has suffered is on us, not on BLACK+DECKER. One correction to my video: I said the paddle and cup can go on the top rack of a dishwasher. The manual says “do not wash any part of the appliance in a dishwasher”, and at least one owner reports a discoloured pot after a dishwasher cycle, so hand-wash everything if you want to keep the 2-year warranty simple.
For storage, the cooker takes about the space of a Dutch oven. At 25 cm tall it fits under most wall cabinets, so I keep it on the counter; on a shelf it stacks with the cup and paddle inside the pot. The glass lid is the one part I treat carefully.
Alternatives to the BLACK+DECKER RC1850
Nothing at the RC1850’s price adds a timer or a brown-rice programme; the same-price alternatives add a detachable cord, a stainless body or a sealed lid instead. The first real step up in features is the Xiaomi 3 L smart cooker at about AED 169, and fuzzy logic starts at around AED 499. Prices are Amazon.ae, 29 September 2026.
BLACK+DECKER’s own range
| Model | Capacity | Power | How it differs from the RC1850 |
|---|---|---|---|
| RC650-B5 | 0.65 L (about 3½ cups) | 294–350 W | No steamer tray; about AED 75. For one or two people |
| RC1050-B5 | 1 L | 336–400 W | About AED 105; the best-rated of the family on Amazon.ae (4.4 from 468 ratings) |
| RC1860-B5 | 1.8 L | 588–700 W | Identical technical data; marketed as the non-stick version, slightly different body; AED 113.52 and in stock in the UAE; 3.7 from 736 ratings |
| RC2850-B5 | 2.8 L | 924–1100 W | For 8+ people; 3.9 kg |
| RC4500 | 4.5 L | not stated | Stainless-steel lid instead of glass |
Other 1.8 L rice cookers in the same price band
| Model | Price (Amazon.ae) | Power | What it has that the RC1850 lacks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russell Hobbs 19750 | AED 96.90 | 700 W | Glass lid and steamer like the RC1850, but 13,747 ratings at 4.0 — the most-reviewed 1.8 L cooker in the UAE |
| Kenwood RCM18.000WH | AED 99 | 700 W | Detachable power cord, steamer basket; 1-year warranty |
| Nikai NR672N1 | AED 109 | 700 W | Detachable cord, metal lid, coating stated as Teflon; 2-year warranty |
| Hitachi RZ-S18MNW | AED 134 | 800–950 W | Airtight lid, keep-warm rated up to 12 hours |
| Geepas GRC4330 | AED 139 | 762 W | Stainless-steel body and lid; 2-year warranty |
| Philips HD3008/30 | AED 148.82 | not listed | Sealed aluminium lid, 4-layer pot, boil-dry and overheat protection; 2-year warranty |
| Xiaomi Smart Rice Cooker 3 L | AED 169 | — | 24-hour delay timer, 8 modes including brown rice — the cheapest cooker with the features the RC1850 lacks |
BLACK+DECKER RC1850 FAQ
Is BLACK+DECKER a good rice cooker brand?
For simple, one-switch cookers, yes: BLACK+DECKER’s rice cookers are inexpensive and cook white rice well, and mine has run for two years without a fault. The brand does not compete with Zojirushi, Tiger or Cuckoo on fuzzy-logic cooking, and its reviews show more early failures than the premium brands.
How long does the BLACK+DECKER RC1850 take to cook rice?
About 15–20 minutes for 2 cups of white rice and about 30 minutes for a full 10-cup pot, in my timings. The cooker switches itself to Warm when the water has been absorbed; leave the lid on for another 5–10 minutes before fluffing.
What size is the BLACK+DECKER rice cooker measuring cup?
180 ml, embossed “Cup / Taza” on the base of the cup. That is three-quarters of a standard 240 ml US cup. The water lines inside the pot are calibrated for this cup, which is why the pot’s “10 cups” equals 1.8 litres.
Can the RC1850 cook brown rice?
It can, but there are no brown-rice water lines and no brown-rice setting, so you have to work out the water yourself — roughly 2 cups of water per cup of brown rice and a test batch or two. It cooks the same way as white rice, just longer.
Does the BLACK+DECKER RC1850 have a timer or delay start?
No. The RC1850 has one lever for Cook and an automatic Keep Warm; there is no timer, delay start, display or app. If you need rice ready when you get home, you need a digital cooker.
Should I get a 1 L or a 1.8 L BLACK+DECKER rice cooker?
Get the 1.8 L RC1850 if you ever cook for more than four people or meal-prep for the week; my test shows it cooks 2 cups as well as 10. The 1 L RC1050-B5 (336–400 W, about AED 105) saves little money and only a few centimetres of counter, though it is the best-rated cooker in BLACK+DECKER’s range on Amazon.ae.
Is the BLACK+DECKER RC1850 pot dishwasher safe?
No. The manual states that no part of the appliance should be washed in a dishwasher, and Amazon lists it as hand-wash only. The pot cleans in a 10-minute soak with a soft sponge, so the rule costs you very little.
Does the RC1850 work in the United States?
Not without a voltage converter rated for 700 W or more: the RC1850-B5 is a 220–240 V, 50/60 Hz appliance, and it is not sold in the US, Canada or the UK. In North America BLACK+DECKER sells different 120 V rice cookers (the RC503, RC506 and RC516 series), which are different products with different pots and cups.
Watch the full test: cooking, cleaning and storage
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How this review was made
I am Jackie, the reviewer behind The Smart Kitchen Guide. I bought the BLACK+DECKER RC1850-B5 with my own money in 2024 and have used it weekly since — over 100 batches. The measurements and timings above are mine; the official specifications come from BLACK+DECKER’s UAE product page and the instruction manual (PDF); customer ratings, prices and alternatives were read from the retailers’ pages on 29 September 2026. This page contains no affiliate links and no sponsored content. Last updated 30 September 2026.
