Even at this low price, you get a digital control panel with automatic programs. All of the accessories are dishwasher-safe but the aluminum baking pan and crumb tray may discolor. Gourmia also includes a recipe book with comprehensive cooking charts.
We eventually settled on a deep space where we could pull the oven out to use it. It comes with an oven rack, baking tray and airfryer basket, all of which must be thoroughly washed first. It’s super easy to set the appliance up, but it is fairly heavy at around 23 lbs, so you might need help lifting it on to the kitchen worktop. With a lot of accessories—a crisper basket, the baking dish, and a rotisserie spit— you’ll need to clear plenty of cabinet space to store everything.
Foods like frozen French fries and chicken nuggets cook up brown and crispy. However, with homemade recipes, you’ll see less even coloring and get a lighter crunch. The air fryer was wonderfully quiet during use and didn’t go louder than 54.8dB on our noise meter. There have been user reports of the US model becoming exceptionally hot during use, perhaps due to its stainless steel exterior, but the UK model didn’t suffer the same issues.
How well the toasters or toaster ovens produced a batch of even, medium-brown toast. How well the toasters or toaster ovens produced a range of light to dark toast. Predicted brand reliability ratings are based on estimated problem rates for newly purchased toaster ovens, not covered by an extended warranty or service contract, within the first four years of ownership. Its large nonstick sheet pan can cook chicken, beef, or shrimp and veggies for four in under 30 minutes. The Cosori offers a preheat option, but it can take as long as 8 minutes to come up to temperature. It also offers the choice of programming it to beep halfway through air frying as a reminder to shake or turn over food.
Meanwhile, the Instant Vortex Plus contains all the bells and whistles as far as air-fryers go. It cooks fast and has multiple features like cuisinart toaster costco roast, bake, broil, air fry, and dehydrate. The best feature about it is the rotisserie basket, so you don’t have to turn the food around.
The manual says that stirring is only necessary for larger amounts and since the fries were in a single layer, I left them for the full time. Though it comes with the extra dual-sided grill and griddle accessory, this nifty machine still has all the perks of our beloved air fryer toaster oven, like its large size and effective results. As far as speed goes, the Cuisinart Air Fryer was the fastest, finishing in 15 minutes from start to finish. The fries were crispy and evenly browned on top, but unevenly browned underneath and on the sides.
On test, we were impressed by all of the cooking settings we tried – the huge caveat being that cooking times and the temperature will likely need adjusting to achieve the best results. For non-meat dishes, we needed to set the temperature to about 25°F lower (roughly 10°C) than the recipe or Cuisinart’s own information booklet recommended. Helen McCue is a freelance contributor who trained as a Home Economist. Helen McCue is a freelance contributor who trained as a home economist. I also used the bake setting to bake up a small batch of my favorite granola recipe.
One slight quirk that we found while using the air fryer is that the front window can quickly become fogged up with condensation – and judging by online customer reviews, we’re not alone in seeing this. The manual does give passing mention to the fact that this can happen, but offers no suggestions on how to stop it. Having used windowed air fryers before, we know this is certainly possible; but we haven’t seen it occur as frequently as it did on the large glass pane of the Cuisinart Airfryer Toaster Oven.
We were pleased that there wasn’t any smoking during air frying and that the oven was easy to use overall. The Cosori Pro LE was able to fit the most food—six chicken wings in the Cosori versus four in the Philips. As for the cooking performance of the Cosori Pro LE, it wasn’t the best of our final contenders. French fries and chicken nuggets cooked using the standard time and temperature settings recommended on the packaging came out less browned than we’d like. And both batches cooked unevenly—none of the fries had a nice golden crisp to them, and a handful of the bunch were overly floppy and soggy.
The combination of the baking tray and air fryer basket allows the hot air to be circulated efficiently around food. This meant chips were evenly cooked without us needing to toss them, but they really stuck to the mesh, as did halloumi. One drawback is the Ninja’s interior size, but I suspect that’s also why it works as well as it does. The Ninja is short — about 6 inches and half the height of many of the others — so you’re somewhat limited in what you can put inside. It also makes things a bit clumsy when you’re loading food in and taking it out and it’s harder to see while it’s cooking. But it’s likely that same compact cooking cavity that’s responsible for the excellent power and precision control the Ninja affords.