Swan advise, for interest and with respect to a very recently purchased slow cooker, that the cooking temps on hi and low are as follows:
It depends what is being cooked but typically it’s average 95C on HI and 75C on LO and anywhere in between on AUTO/KEEP WARM
I'm not quite quite sure why it depends on what's being cooked, unless a higher water content gets to a higher temperature. Anyhoo. Wonder what that equates to for you guys who are on the older slow cookers as having had an older one once, I'm quite sure it wasn't as hot as this one I've got now? I'm just going to have to fiddle around with my cooking times as I do find even the low setting really gets quite hot.
I do agree that the slow cookers would be a lot better if between the inner cooking pot and the metal outer there was proper wall of insulation built in so that the cooker would not need to activate so often during the cooking time - that would be a very good improvement.
I suppose if you went by the beanbag method of cooking using residual heat (sorry, can't remember the proper name for these things which you can shove your pot into so that it cooks without the need for further heating). You could maybe (using your handy separate timer) set the slow cooker to come on at say 6am on hi, get the heat into it, then take the inner pot out and put it into the beanbag thingy ready for when you come home at the end of the day. Although I am still stuck living in a house, I am very very keen to reduce my electrical consumption as much as I possibly can.
However, the residual heat cooking idea is very much plan b. Plan a is to get to grips with using the slow cooker using the separate timer so that the food isn't destroyed due to really excessive heat over way, way too many hours.