Air fryers offer an alternative and healthy way to crisp up your food without the need for half a bottle of oil. They are basically small ovens that use powerful – and normally pretty noisy – fans, along with a concentrated heat source to deliver a fried finish to your food, whether that be chips, chicken, wings or even veg.
Requiring very little oil, or none at all, and a touch of a couple of buttons to deliver crispy chips, crunchy onion bhajis or anything else you might otherwise fry, these air fryers are essentially the guilt-free way to eat chips and some will save you energy compared to using an electric oven too.
There are several options available, all with various features, and while Tefal, Ninja and Instant appear multiple times on our best air fryers list, there are others to consider as well. These are our picks of the best air fryers to buy.
Ninja / Pocket-lint
Ninja Foodi 8 Quart 6-in-1 Dual Zone Air Fryer
1. Best air fryer overall
The Ninja Foodi 8 Quart 6-in-1 Dual Zone air fryer isn’t the cheapest on our list, but we love it for its versatility and the ability to cook two different things independently. Chicken wings in one basket, fries in another, Yes please.
- Two independent zones
- Several cooking programmes
- Easy to clean
- Quite large
- Not the cheapest
Our best air fryer choice overall is the Ninja Foodi 8 Quart 6-in-1 Dual Zone for a couple of reasons. It’s not the smallest or the cheapest on this list, so you’ll need to make sure you have some worktop space, but we love it for its two independent cooking zones. These zones allow you to cook different foods using different programs that will be ready at the same time, thanks to the Smart Finish feature. There’s also a Match Cook feature though if you want to cook the same food at the same time, maximising the large capacity.
Like other Ninja Air Fryers, this model has six cooking functions: Air Fry, Max Crisp, Roast, Bake, Reheat & Dehydrate. It comes with two cooking drawers, two crisper plates and a recipe guide. Perhaps best of all though, the baskets are nice and easy to clean, while the plates are dishwasher safe. Win.
Ninja Air Fryer
2. Best compact air fryer
The Ninja Air Fryer comes in a couple of different capacites, but the smallest is nice and compact, whilst still offering a great design, easy to use controls and easy cleaning.
- Compact design
- Good functionality
- Easy to use controls
- Likely too small for families
The Ninja Air Fryer comes in a couple of different capacities, including the Ninja Max and Ninja Max XL, but we’ve picked the 4 Quarts capacity model as it’s got a good price, good performance and a more compact design than the Dual Zone model above. The beauty of having different capacities but the same design and features however, is that you can choose the best one for your home, depending on the number of people and your available cupboard space.
The Ninja Air Fryer offers four cooking functions: Crisp, Roast, Bake, Reheat and Dehydrate. Like the Dual Zone option, one of the best things we found with the Ninja Air Fryer was that the elements – including the basket, crisper plate, and multi-layer rack were dishwasher safe. The controls are nice and intuitive too, making this one easy to use air fryer that’s pretty neat looking too.
Instant / Pocket-lint
Instant Pot Vortex 6 (4-in-1)
3. Best air fryer for design
The Instant Pot Vortex has a great design and lovely large display for easy controls. It’s relatively compact too, whilst also offering dishwasher safe parts for easy cleaning.
- Lovely design
- Four cooking functions
- Easy to clean
- Capacity might be too small for families
- Less programmes than Ninja
We liked the Instant Pot Vortex for its modern design and easy-to-use controls. It offers four programs in one with Air Fry, Bake, Reheat and Roast functions and there is very little preheating time, which we liked seeing as we aren’t the most organised over here and if we want wings, we want them now. There’s a capacity that fits up to 1.8kg (2lbs) of chicken or 1kg (2lbs) of chips and there are one-touch programs so you can get those fries or cinnamon buns cooking in no time.
The smart dial control offers temperature adjustment up to 205-degrees celcius (400-degrees fahrenheit) and cooking time up to an hour, and it the design will look good on a worktop if you don’t have cupboard space. Like the Ninja options, the Instant Pot Vortex has dishwasher-safe basket and tray too for easy cleaning.
Instant Pot Duo Crisp Ultimate Lid 13-in-1
5. Best multi-function air fryer
The Ninja Air Fryer comes in a couple of different capacites, but the smallest is nice and compact, whilst still offering a great design, easy to use controls and easy cleaning.
- All-in-one device
- Large display for easy cooking
- Loads of cooking options
- Big and heavy
- Quite expensive
Instant makes our best air fryers list again, this time with the Instant Pot Duo Crisp Ultimate Lid 13-in-1 device. It’s pretty pricey compared to some others on our list, but it has some serious functionality. It’s not only an air fryer, but it is also a pressure cooker and slow cooker, plus it can sauté, steam, warm, roast, bake, broil, dehydrate, bread proof, create yogurt and it has a Sous Vide function too. It’s big and pretty heavy so you’ll need some cupboard space, but we like it because it reduces the need for several of these large counter-top appliances.
There’s a lovely big LCD panel on the front, which will display step-by-step cooking instructions for super simple cooking, and the Instant Pot app is excellent for finding recipes so you can make the most out of everything this device can do. As an all-in-one appliance, this one is an excellent choice.
Philips Premium Air fryer XXL
5. Best premium air fryer
The Philips Premium Air Fryer XXL has plenty going for it – except for its price. It’s our premium pick, but there’s a great design here, fat removing technology and easy and simple control and cleaning.
- Lovely design
- Fat removing feature
- Easy to clean
The Philips Premium Air Fryer XXL is by no means cheap (unless you can grab a deal on it), but it is probably one of the best looking air fryers on our list, whilst also offering the ability to capture excess fat and remove it from your food. You don’t need to preheat it, which is always a bonus and it has a decent-sized capacoty too at 7 Quarts, sitting between the two Ninja options on our list.
Like others, it has an accompanying app – the Philips Kitchen app – that offers hundreds of recipes and tips to make the most use of your air fryer. If the fat removal wasn’t enough to sway you, all the parts on this air fryer are also dishwasher friendly, offering nice and easy cleaning. Plus, there are five presets to make life even more simple.
Cosori Pro III Air Fryer
6. Best smart air fryer
The Cosori Pro III Air Fryer has a lovely modern design with a neat control panel and some great feautres, including temperature monitoring to make sure your food doesn’t get overdone.
- No preheating necessary
- Modern design
- Smart temperature control
- Quite big
- Plastic might get hot
The Cosori Pro III Air Fryer is super modern in its design, which is one of our favourite things about it and while we have picked the largest capacity at 6.8 Quarts for our best air fryer list, there are several other options available for those that don’t want or need as big. One of the other things we like about the Cosori Pro III Air Fryer is that you don’t need to preheat, saving time, which is always a plus in our book, but also that it will adapt the temperature to make sure you don’t overcook your food. Nothing worse than dry chicken.
There’s a lovely control panel that spans the width of the top of the Cosori Pro III Air Fryer too and you’ll find 12 quick functions that include Air Fry, Bake, Broil, Roast, Keep Warm, Reheat, Chicken, Steak, Seafood, Veggies, Fries, and Frozen so there’s plenty of versatility here. Another handy feature – though perhaps not one you will use that often – is that the Cosori Pro III Air Fryer links up to the VeSync app so you can control it remotely, and this means you can also use Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant too. Hey Google, get my wings cooking.
Tefal / Pocket-lint
Tefal FZ773840 Actifry Genius+ Air Fryer
7. Best air fryer for simplicity
The Tefal ActiFry Air Fryer has automatic programs to take care of temperature, cooking and stirring time, making cooking a breeze. It’s not the prettiest option on our list, but it does deliver good performance and evenly crisped fries. as well as simple operation.
- Easy operation
- Good performance
- Easy to clean
- See through lid gets dirty over time
- Plastic basket not super durable
This Tefal Actifry air fryer has automatic programs to take care of temperature, cooking and stirring time, making cooking a breeze for various different meals, like fries and wings. It works in a slightly different way to other air fryers, featuring a stirring paddle in the centre of the plastic basket, which delivers very evenly crisped chips and it’s great for wings too. You need to use particular modes that don’t use the spinner for things like battered onion rings though as otherwise the spinner pulls the batter off.
Over time, we have found that the plastic basket has some elements that aren’t super durable and the see-through lid has become greasy inside, like an oven door, but the performance of this air fryer is still excellent and the 1.2kg removable bowl is dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.
What to consider when buying an air fryer
There are a number of considerations to take into account when buying an air fryer. Firstly, consider how many people you are typically cooking for. If you are a family of four or more, then you’ll want to be looking at some of the larger capacity options rather than the smaller and more compact options.
You also need to consider the space you have in your kitchen cupboards, or on the side. This might make a difference to which model you choose as if you have to have it on your kitchen side, you might not want an overly bulky option, or you may want one of the more streamlined designs.
There are also basket air fryers and bowl air fryers. The bowl options typically have windows to allow you to check on your food, but they aren’t as heathly as the basket models because the food remains in contact with the cooking juices. Basket air fryers on the other hand remove the juices from the food, but you normally need to open them to check on your food, which can let cold air in and slow down cooking time.
What can you cook in an air fryer?
There are a number of foods you can cook in an air fryer. The obvious options are the foods you might normally deep fry, such as fries, chicken wings and roast potatoes but there are plenty of other foods you can cook too.
Many air fryer models come with an app offering recipe inspiration so you can get the most out of your kitchen gadget, but you can also cook most things you would cook in a traditional fan oven as they use the same principal.
That means you can put frozen foods like mini pizzas in an air fryer or seafood. Where we have found air fryers struggle is battered foods, like onion rings – especially in the bowl air fryers. They also aren’t brilliant with light foods, like lettuce leaves. Otherwise though, air fryers are exceptional kitchen gadgets.
Is air-fried food healthier?
The answer to this depends on what you put into the air fryer in the first place, but in theory air-fried foods are healthier than fried foods as they require significantly less oil.
It depends on the air fryer model you opt for as to how much oil is recommended but most claim you will upwards of 75 per cent less oil than traditional frying methods.
There will be some foods that you won’t any oil for when cooked in an air fryer, like chicken wings, and some chips – or fries – like McCain’s Naked Chips, but other foods you will need to add a little bit of oil.
