The best air fryers

If you want to move away from your oven, the FlexDrawer is an excellent option. Uniquely, you can combine its two 5.2-litre cooking spaces into a 10.4-litre ‘megazone’ for large roasts and baking full-size cakes.

But you can also use the two cooking areas separately, just as you’d use any dual-zone air fryer. The FlexDrawer has all the functionality you’d expect, with match and sync functions to make dual-drawer cooking easy.

The FlexDrawer has seven cooking modes: max crisp (for frozen food), air fry, roast, bake, reheat (for leftovers), dehydrate (for jerky and dried fruit) and prove (for dough). It comes with a guide complete with recipes and a cooking chart, with times and temperatures for popular food, so it’s a good option if you’re new to air fryer cooking.

However, its controls and digital display are so intuitive and easy to use that you’re unlikely to need to resort to the manual.

It’s extremely powerful, so you’ll probably need to adjust your air fryer recipes down but once you do so, it’ll produce evenly cooked, crispy food.

Cosori is a fairly new brand and certainly not one of the best known. But if you’re looking for a medium sized air fryer, the 6QT/6L TurboBlaze is definitely one to consider. It has an easy to use and easy to read digital display and touchscreen controls and a single drawer cooking space.

One of the things we liked best about it is that its cooking functions aren’t defined by food types (fries, chicken) but by cooking methods. It has nine functions in all: including proving dough, yogurt making, warming food, dehydrating, plus four Turbo modes with a fast fan for much faster air frying, cooking from frozen, roasting and grilling. This means it’s a far more useful kitchen assistant than some of its competitors and can be used for more cooking tasks. It doesn’t have a manual mode, however, but you can adjust any cooking setting by time and temperature. Its temperature settings are wide as well: from 90°F/30°C to 450°F/230°C, which adds to its versatility.

It gives good results and it’s easy to clean as well. Its crisper plate and drawer and drawer are dishwasher-safe. Still, we didn’t love the fact that the pull-out drawer is button-operated – if you forget to push it, you’ll just drag the whole appliance towards you.

If you want a dual-drawer air fryer but can’t justify its countertop footprint, the Double Stack (DoubleStack in the US) is worth a look. It provides a lot of cooking capacity for the amount of space it takes up. Not only does it have two cooking drawers with an overall 9.5L/10QT capacity, but the cooking racks allow you to stack food in two layers in each drawer. If a common menu for you is chicken or fish and several types of vegetables, you’ll be able to do it all in the Double Stack without resorting to other cooking methods.

Like Ninja’s other dual-drawer air fryers, it has an easy-to-use control panel, with match and sync functions. It has has fewer modes than many other models – air fry, max crisp (for frozen food), bake, roast, reheat and dehydrate – but you can adjust them by time and temperature to cook almost anything you want.

But as its heat sources are at the backs of the drawers we found that it cooks some types of foods slightly unevenly. As there’s no shake alert, you’ll need to remember to step in midway and mix up potatoes or fries. Altogether though, it’s fast, efficient and makes crispy, crunchy food.

The ChefMaker is 5.7L/6QT, which means there’s just enough space for family-sized portions, although if you have a bigger family, you might be better off with a dual-drawer air fryer. It has an LCD display and some other great features, including three cooking modes. One of these is a Classic cooking mode that’ll give you conventional air fryer options: air fry, defrost, reheat, broil, roast, toast, bake, and dehydrate.

The other two modes are Chef and Probe, and that’s how you’ll manage superior steak cooking. Three features work together to improve on your average air fryer cooking, especially where meat is concerned: the steam tank, the probe and the app control. Together, they’ll allow you to choose precisely how you want your steak cooked, and it’ll come out exactly as you want it, still juicy from the steam.

The rest of the smart features are fairly limited, except for the fact you can access a wide variety of air fryer recipes, with step by step guides – making it an excellent choice for anyone seeking to broaden their cooking horizons.

It’s a more expensive option than many in this round-up, but you should be able to get it for £239/$239 now that the price has come down from launch. We felt that the drawer mechanism was a bit cheap for the price point, but otherwise we’d recommend.

If you want to save counter space, an air fryer multicooker is a great option. And the Tefal Multicook Actifry offers much more than most. Not only can it function as a steamer, slow cooker, rice cooker and mini oven, it can be your bread maker (albeit with more interaction) and an air fryer too. What’s more, you can cook two types of food at once, using different methods, one above the other, so you can cook entire dinners at once.

One useful feature is the paddle inside, which means you don’t need to pause cooking to turn, stir or shake food. It also comes with all the accessories you’ll need, and they’re all dishwasher safe – although you will need to wash the lid by hand.

It has a digital display, although we didn’t find it straightforward to use and you’ll probably keep the instructions to hand for a while. You may also need to experiment a little to perfect your favourite cooking your favourite recipes.

The best thing about this combination cooker is its versatility. It has 12 cooking functions: air fry, roast, broil, bake, dehydrate, slow cook, griddle, stew, steam, keep warm, grill and preheat. It’s fairly rare to get an air fryer that also steams and stews but this does both to a high standard.

There’s not enough space to cook an entire dinner for a larger family. However, it would be perfect for singles, couples or young families. You could cook a different type of meal in it every night and never have to resort to your oven.

It has a high-quality build, is easy to use and easy to clean afterwards. Altogether, it’s an impressive appliance. But the accompanying instructions are flimsy and you’ll need to spend a little time figuring out the best times and temperatures for your favourite dishes.

If you’re in the US, you can buy this appliance under the Breville brand name. In the UK, it’s Sage.

It’s a microwave-sized and shaped countertop air fryer oven with ten separate cooking functions: toast (6 slices), crumpet, grill, bake, roast, warm, pizza, air fry, reheat and slow cook. We tested a bright, brushed stainless-steel silver model, but there are plenty of other colour options: there’s a choice of eleven in the US. The oven is well made and and will look great on your kitchen counter, unlike many plasticky rivals.

It has an LCD display and button and dial controls. Inside the oven are three shelf height options. Along with the oven, you’ll get a set of high quality accessories: a 30cm/12in pizza pan, a wire shelf, a grilling rack, a roasting pan, an air-frying basket, and crumb tray.

But it’s when cooking that this appliance really shines, producing crispy and flavourful food. This may be down to the ElementIQ system, which uses a smart algorithm and sensors to control the temperature perfectly and evenly. You’re paying more for its high quality build and performance but we think it’s well worth it.

If your budget won’t stretch to a Ninja, this Sharp dual-drawer air fryer is an excellent alternative. It has many of the same features, including the ability to match and sync cooking across both drawers. It’s more compact than most Ninja dual-zone models as well, but it does have a slightly lower cooking capacity.

The controls can be slightly confusing until you get comfortable with them, which isn’t helped by the fact that the accompanying manual is thin, so be prepared for a bit of experimentation at first. You can choose to cook by food type (including fries, beef, vegetable, whole chicken, bacon, fish, potato, pizza, chicken nuggets, prawns, snacks, and toasted sandwich) or by cooking mode (air fry, bake, roast, cook from frozen, dehydrate, keep warm, pre-heat, or reheat).

Once you’ve figured out how you prefer to use it, you’ll find that cooking is fast and produces great results. It’s easy to clean as well.

The Ninja Speedi is a huge appliance but if you invest in one, you can say goodbye to all your other countertop cookers. Its ten cooking functions mean it can do almost anything – and often at the same time, such as steam cooking and air frying. Its USP is its ‘Speedi Meals’ setting, which allows you to cook rice or pasta and vegetables on the bottom while air frying above. It genuinely means you can cook an entire meal in 15 minutes flat and its 6QT/ 5.7 litre capacity means that’s a meal for an entire family. People use the phrase game-changer too often – but in this case it’s true.

Still, as it’s 1,760W, you’ll find that it’s not as cheap to cook certain foods that take a bit longer, like baked potatoes, as it is in a more compact air fryer. It’s much more economical to use for quick cooking. Plus, you’ll want to discourage kids from touching it as its heavy lid does not lock in place in its open setting.

This is a traditional air fryer, with a deep, pull-out cooking drawer. It’s capacious too, at 5.7 litres/6 QT. It’s not particularly heavy, but it is still designed to have a permanent space on your countertop. It’s controlled via a digital touchscreen on top of the appliance.

There are six programmes to choose from: air fry, bake, grill, dehydrate, reheat and roast. But there are no pre-sets, so there’s no guidance as to the time and temperature you should use when cooking. This won’t be a problem for people accustomed to air fryer cooking but novices might have to do a bit of online research and be prepared to experiment at first.

There are some excellent features to recommend it over rival products: there’s a window to allow you to see how your cooking is getting on without opening the door, and the OdourErase technology really works. But if you’re buying specifically for these features, make sure you get the right model as Instant makes a number of similar models, with none, one, or both of them.

This air fryer oven is the largest we’ve tested, with a whopping 26QT/ 24-litre capacity. It’s also one of the rare air fryers made from stainless steel (along with other food-grade metals), which means it looks a lot better on your kitchen counter than many of its rivals. But you will need plenty of room to house it.

But if more cooking space is what you’re after, this HySapientia model delivers. And it’s cheaper to run than you may think, especially if you’re cooking for a larger group. You can cook an entire family meal in it, and it’ll cost much less than in a traditional oven. It produces very crispy food as well – perhaps because there’s plenty of room for hot air to circulate. It comes with plenty of cooking accessories, including a rotisserie spit, making it a versatile option.

However, its huge size means you’re heating up much more space than you need to if you just want to cook a couple of fish fingers for the kids. And we didn’t love its control panel. It’s largely dial-operated, where a touchscreen would be preferable, and makes a lot of annoying beeps as you choose your settings.

This Xiaomi air fryer has a really attractive, minimalist design that would look good in most kitchens. Still, it doesn’t have the most robust build (the drawer can get stuck when you’re putting it back in). And, as it’s on the small side (3.5 litres), it’s really only suitable for a household of 1-2 people.

The sole control beyond an On/Off switch is an innovative dial which houses a digital screen. There’s a top level menu of food options, including the expected fries, chicken wings and fish, but also steak and cake. There are eight pre set programmes in all. You can also set the time and temperature yourself, using the dial – or perform any of these actions via the app.

Because clearly, one of the key reasons to buy this model is its app control. Download the Xiaomi Home app and you can create custom recipes, monitor your cooking and pause or end the cooking programme remotely. It’ll also alert you when your food is done or needs to be turned over. There’s also a database of recipes you can try, with automatic cooking programmes and step-by-step instructions.