Also out of curiosity, as I don't see myself as a potential convert any time soon, I assume it is for plain boiled/steamed and is useless at a pilau/pilaf etc?
I did a mèn fàn (焖饭) style one-pot dish last week in mine: rice and water in the pot as per usual, then chopped veg, a couple of large tomatoes, some diced meat etc layered on top. Set it off to do it's thing, come back when it's done, stir it and serve.
Have also used it for hot pot. Lid up, slow cook mode, chuck ingredients into a soup base and fish them out when they're cooked. Bean noodles that time, rather than rice.
I've not done pilau before, but sautéing onions in the Panda's pot before adding the rice and water in would be fair game - just need to adjust your water measuring strategy as the lines on the side of the pot won't be quite right with the extra onions in. [I think others have said in another thread that they keep the rice cooker for plain rice only because they can detect the flavour carrying over into subsequent meals, but I've not had that issue, even after several hours of slowcooking barbecue pork. YMMV.]
I occasionally add stock or bouillon powder into the water for something a bit more than just boiled rice.
My gluten free bread-making experiments in it were a bit of a failure, but there have been some good cakes. I guess the Instant Pot has kind of superseded rice-cooker dorm cooking hacks, but there are still a fair few recipes out there on YouTube etc. The rice cooker is still my go-to for a few things, even though I've got the Ninja Foodi now too.
You don't need to attend to it, and it keeps the rice warm. So it ceases to be something you need to manage whilst preparing other elements of the meal.
I wouldn't cook rice any other way,
Seconded!