Some people also find it easier to use an air fryer basket with a handle rather than pull a hot pan from an oven. But if you’re short on time or space, are cooking only a few servings, and favor crispy food, a pod-shaped air fryer might be right for you. And while those are great, they aren’t the only air-frying appliances on the market right now.
Breville’s user interface is a major benefit over the other air fryers. You can clearly see all the 13 functions it offers on its large LCD. You can easily navigate through the menu and select time and temperature with the large stainless steel dials. Breville also makes it easy to start cooking without a manual by printing suggested oven rack positions right on the glass oven door. This is convenient when you go to make a pizza or dehydrate banana chips – you’ll know the optimal position in the oven where the food will cook most optimally. The Breville Air Fryer also has a dedicated oven light button so you can see the progress of your cooking food without opening the oven door.
With a bevy of hybrid convection-air fryer ovens available, I wanted to see how some of the most popular models performed in some real-world testing. I secured six models from brands at various prices, starting with a $144 Crux model and working up to Breville’s very big and very fancy Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro, which retails for around $400. Four 4-ounce hamburgers took twice as long to cook on the cuisinart choppers convection broil setting as they took to cook in almost every other air frying appliance we tested. However, they did come out browned and juicy with a perfect medium doneness, which made them worth the wait. Cuisinart gives a very practical assessment of the oven’s capacity, stating that it can accommodate 3 pounds, toast 4 slices of bread, roast a 4-pound chicken, or bake a 12-inch pizza.
They also make cooking kind of fun—pop open a drawer, pour in some food, toss it halfway through, and it’s done before you know it. For that reason, we think they’re a great tool to get uninitiated chefs interested in cooking for themselves. Pod-shaped air fryers can also be an invaluable cooking alternative for people with certain disabilities , since they don’t require handling a hot tray, or bending over to open or close an oven door.
Or, you may make two small portions of frozen chicken nuggets for the kids between activities. It isn’t uncommon now to find air fryers with multiple preset programs and other additional cooking features. We haven’t tested any Insignia air fryers for this guide, so the recall doesn’t affect our picks. For our original guide in 2017, we ran cuisinart toaster costco the air fryers through a series of tests, cooking frozen and hand-cut french fries, frozen finger foods, and pork chops. In subsequent years of testing, we cooked frozen french fries, chicken tenders, and fish sticks, as well as fresh chicken wings. Most of these ovens come standard with a baking tray, wire racks and mesh air fry basket.