In subsequent years of testing, we cooked frozen french fries, chicken tenders, and fish sticks, as well as fresh chicken wings. Air fryers have become a staple in many homes, thanks to their ability to create crispy crunchy foods without lots of fat. When kitchen space is at a premium, an air fryer toaster oven combo may be the best way to add capabilities and get the most out of your kitchen workspace. This under-$125 model impressed us during testing, especially when it came to air frying. It has a basic control panel with three knobs that are easy to operate and a small footprint that’s still large enough to fit a 12-inch frozen pizza. In our tests, it was one of the few that was able to bake an evenly melted pizza in addition to making evenly colored toast.
This can require a little trial and error, but if you spend the time to get to know your machine and how it tends to cook, this issue may not bother you. Finally, compared with washing a baking pan, some air fryer baskets are a pain to clean. Some claim to be dishwasher safe, but most have a nonstick coating that can be damaged by the dishwasher and will eventually wear off no matter how well you treat it. The Cosori Pro LE Air Fryer was the best model we tested for around $100. Its large, square-shaped 5-quart basket fits more food than the Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/56, but it doesn’t cook as quickly or evenly. The Pro LE’s many preprogrammed settings also weren’t as accurate as those of the Premium Airfryer—we preferred using the manual controls for selecting the time and temperature.
In addition to the matte black design with rose-gold colored knobs, it also comes in white and stainless steel. Aesthetics aside, this air fryer toaster oven performed well in our tests. Air fried wings took 20 minutes to crisp evenly, released from the air fryer basket easily and stayed juicy. We were pleased that there wasn’t any smoking during air frying and that the oven was easy to use overall.
And the finger holes for lifting the tray are wide enough to allow french fries to fall through to the bottom. Beyond cooking all those foods, we did some tests focused on how reliable and easy to use each model was. We stuck an air probe thermometer inside each oven to see how well they maintained a set temperature. We also used all of the controls to see how easy they were to navigate and how accurate the cooking guidelines were for preparing common foods such as french fries and chicken nuggets.
When you’re all done, the nonstick interiors make cleanup easy for our air fryer toaster ovens. Adding an air fry function gives you capabilities of a toaster oven and air fryer in one appliance, often with additional features as well. Some models can roast on a rotisserie, slow cook, or dehydrate, making them even more useful. The digital controls are intuitive to program and there’s a bright oven light, but I do have one major quibble.
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 (video), since they don’t require handling a hot tray, or bending over to open or close an oven door. Some smart models, like the Cosori Pro Smart Air Fryer, even come with apps that pair with your phone to make the appliance accessible via voice controls (video), though we haven’t tested those features yet. An Air fryer is a kitchen appliance that cooks by circulating hot air around food. They do a fantastic job cooking up frozen foods that are meant to taste deep-fried.
Once a cooking mode is selected, the Ninja automatically goes into a short preheat mode and beeps when it’s time to place food in the oven. Unlike most air fryers, the 7-quart Gourmia GAF798 Digital Air Fryer required preheating (probably due to its large size). Annoyingly, however, if you want to add a few minutes to the cooking time after the initial set time runs out, the appliance automatically kicks into preheat mode again, even though the air fryer is already hot. In addition, instead of a basket, this model uses a tray at the bottom of the bucket, which occasionally falls out when you invert the bucket.
But even if you decide to set the machine manually, you can still press the “shake” button to activate the reminder. The beeping is much louder on the Cosori Pro LE than on the Premium Airfryer, and you have no way to lower the volume or turn it off, so some people may find the sound annoying. That said, the beeping is loud enough to be heard from far away, which is handy if you’re in another room. Like the Premium Airfryer, this Cosori model is about as loud as a hair dryer while the convection fan is running. If you’re simply in the market for an air fryer toaster oven, but don’t have a preference on brand, we’ve tested many air fryer toaster ovens on the market to find the best ones.
In our air fryer toaster oven test, the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro made mostly even toast and a gorgeous, golden cake. The air fryer setting took longer to crisp wings than other air fryer toaster ovens we tested, but the results were similar to the results we saw in the Smart Oven Air that consumers love. It was amongst the easiest to use with an intuitive control panel; plus, the ability to follow along on the app. It even can be controlled with Alexa if you want to adjust your cook time or temperature.
You can air fry french fries, crispy chicken wings, mozzarella sticks and more. Air frying gives you the crunchy texture of fried foods without the extra grease and fat. Most fryers are easy to clean, have cuisinart air fryer oven dishwasher-safe containers and occupy less space than convection ovens. An Air fryer can function like convection ovens, deep-fat fryers, and multi-cookers; they combine benefits of multiple appliances.