"Fuzzy" rice cookers have been around for decades, I (and my parents, and pretty much everyone I know) have always regarded it as a marketing slogan.

That's not to say high-end rice cookers aren't worth it, there's a world of difference between a $100 and $500 rice cooker. Not sure how best to explain this, but rice from a cheap cooker looks and feels like a dense, gooey chunk, whereas rice from a high-end cooker forms a complex, airy 3D structure with a distinctive sheen; individual grains still retain their shape, and there's ample space between them resulting in a well-defined but light texture.