Air fryers are surging in popularity and with the cost of living crisis and a struggle to make ends meet, shoppers are using Black Friday to snap up the most affordable household essentials.
Furthermore, we are becoming increasingly health-conscious, with many looking to ensure they consume only the recommended daily calorie intake. This has led to more and more innovations within the air fryer market as manufacturers try to create the perfect multi-functional kitchen tool.
We decided to compare their different abilities so, as consumers, we all have a much better insight into which air fryer will best suit our needs. We have spent a few weeks putting four of the best air fryers on the market through their paces.
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Gareth Butterfield put a top-spec Salter Dual Cook Pro and a range-topping Ninja Foodi Max to the test, while Stacey Dutton tried out the Proscenic T22 Air Fryer with 13 Presets and Shake Reminder and Beth Shufflebotham gave the Innoteck 16L air fryer oven a whirl. The air fryers all offered very individual findings and different experiences to share.
While they might look quite similar, the Salter Dual and Ninja twin-drawer devices vary quite a bit in price and functionality and, it turns out, usability. The 16L Innoteck version could be the larger version you need in your home rather than the nifty 5L Proscenic one - great for tech lovers with an app functioning touchscreen.
If you're looking to snap an air fryer up, some of these top brands are currently on offer in the latest Black Friday and cyber weekend sales. Here is what the three of us found.
Salter Dual Cook Pro vs Ninja
Salter Dual Cook Pro 8.2L - £142.99
The cheaper of the two on test, Salter's hero air fryer offers 12 functions and two 4.1 litre frying drawers, which can be used at different temperatures, and on two separate timers, which means you could have a roast chicken in one side, and some roast potatoes in the other side.
Computers take care of the timing, though, thanks to a clever sync and match system, which means your food will start and stop cooking at the optimum time on each side. The marvellous thing about air fryers is that they cook quickly and evenly, with barely any oil, or even no oil at all. The Salter made short work of chips, which I used as my benchmark during my testing, and after a few failed attempts, I got the formula just right. Crispy chips every time.
Chips will take around 20 minutes of frying time, depending on how thick you cut them, and some guides I read suggested you should par-boil them. But I quickly dropped this idea. The Salter's double drawers have a great capacity, so a meal for one is accommodated very easily, with plenty of room for the hot air to move around.
The touch-screen is responsive, and fairly easy to use, and it's quiet in its operation. There were a couple of foibles though. The drawers take quite a shove to pull open, so it's pretty much a two-handed affair and, while the metal trays in the bottom of each bay are dishwasher-friendly and can be removed very easily, they do fall out when you come to empty your food out, which is a bit annoying.
Overall though, the Salter performs brilliantly. It's a big machine, but it's keenly-priced, easy to get to grips with, comes with good instructions and a recipe book, and it has the loudest "beep" of the two. Which is handy for those of us with kitchens a fair walk away from the living room. A strong performance from the Salter.
Ninja Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone Air Fryer AF400UK - £229.99
Instantly the Ninja feels more expensive. And that's because it is. It's slightly shallower than the Salter, but a little wider and taller. The Salter certainly doesn't lack in quality, but the fluidity of the Ninja's drawer release catches and the fact the trays stay in the drawers sets it apart. At least on first impressions.
Rather than rely on an array of buttons, the Ninja comes with a rotary nob which sets up most of its six functions. It's easier than you'd think to use, and I actually started to prefer the nob over the Salter's array of buttons. It has a good weight to it, and feels very responsive.
The drawers are bigger, too. Nine and-a-half litres of cooking space overall with the Ninja - although it doesn't make all that much difference in the real world, to be honest. Just like the Salter, there's a sync and match setting and, equally as similar, it swallows up a small basket of chips with ease.
It does take a little longer to cook, for some reason, but I'd say there's a slight edge for the Ninja on evenness of cooking. Having said that, I'm consistently getting crispier chips with the Salter, so it's a tough call - and probably down to technique.
Disappointingly, the Ninja's beeper is pretty quiet, and it cuts off quickly. This will be a bonus if you're staying with it in the kitchen, but it's a bit of a pain if you're not, because you could miss the moment the timer finishes.
There's also a good set of instructions and a recipe book, which is just slightly better than the Salter one, but only slightly.
Which one is best?
It's a really tough call, this. The Salter is slightly easier to get crispy chips out of and has a few extra functions, although it all seems to do broadly the same thing, and it has a better beeper while being less expensive by quite a margin.
But with the Ninja, you can tell where that extra money is spent in the feel of its operation and although there's little to divide these two on the results of the food, the price difference will bother some. If you can afford it, go for the Ninja. I'd say it clinches it by a whisker. But, even if you can afford the premium, don't overlook the Salter. Its array of functions is hard to beat, and it does seem to have a slight edge on cooking times and crispiness of chips.
It's really down to which would suit you best in the end.
Innoteck 16L air fryer oven
I'm no Nigella Lawson in the kitchen and I won't make a secret of that. My signature dish is a version of spaghetti carbonara with chorizo, and it's about as much as my cooking skills allow. But, I recently acquired an air fryer which seems to quickly be becoming the must-have kitchen gadget. Air fryers are countertop convection ovens best known for cooking food quickly and with less fat or oil.
They're designed to simulate deep frying, without the need of a deep fryer, too. My air fryer, the Innoteck 16L air fryer oven, claimed to be able to cook a whole rotisserie chicken. I admit, I was pretty sceptical about that. The £149.99 piece of kit is extremely heavy, so it's likely to be the kind of gadget you'll want to make a permanent space for, unlike the Ninja Ice Cream maker, which can be stored away in the pantry. It's also currently on offer at Amazon with £20 knocked off the RRP.
The 'extra large' air fryer is around two thirds oven space, and one third screen which offers 10 auto programmes that include pizza, rotisserie and dehydrating. As it was Sunday, I'd popped to Aldi and picked up a whole chicken, Yorkshire puddings, potatoes, carrots, broccoli - you know, all the important stuff.
Setting up the Innoteck airfryer was really easy, it's just a couple of trays, plug in and go. It also comes with a rotating basket, rotisserie split, retrieval tool, drip tray, silicone glove and brush. After adding the chicken to my rotisserie split, I placed it into the air fryer and set it running for 35 minutes.
Personally, I didn't think the chicken was going to fit, but it did. One of the thighs did struggle to turn in the oven, but this was totally my fault for not having the chicken perfectly centred, but it's something to remember for next time.
One feature I do like is that the air fryer beeps when it's done, and switches off, much like a microwave really. It makes it almost impossible to forget you've left something in the oven while Coronation Street is on. Usually the average roasting time of a chicken is anywhere between one hour to an hour and 40 minutes, meaning the air fryer pretty much halved the time.
Having taken the chicken out and keeping it warm in foil, I added my roast potatoes, carrots, broccoli and Yorkshire puds, and in no time, my whole roast was complete. Some of the stand out things for me were that the skin on the chicken was perfectly crisp, and cutting in to check it was cooked through, it was perfectly done throughout, and hadn't dried out.
The roast potatoes were some of the best I've ever had, and having honey-glazed the carrots, they came out fantastic. We usually microwave our veg for ease and speed when stuck for time, but it's well worth putting them in the air fryer because the quality is so much better.
I appreciate that this nearly £150 gadget is an investment piece, and it does demand space in your kitchen, but over the last few weeks, we've been using it more than our regular oven. I really do think the price is justifiable purely for its ability to create perfect roast potatoes every single time.
It cooks food in, on average, a third of the time, and is far healthier than cooking with oils and fats. Some of my favourite things to make in it so far are paprika potato wedges, and mozzarella chicken wraps, perfect for work from home lunches or stress-free teas. It's really easy to clean, and I can't wait to try out more recipes and features on the fryer. I'm especially excited to give fruit dehydrating a go. You can buy the airfryer from Amazon here.
Proscenic T22 Air Fryer with 13 Presets & Shake Reminder
I can't tell you how satisfying it was to plug in this air fryer and get straight to downloading the app. This is because, although I like to think I am a great cook, I'm awful at navigating new gadgets and many things which are DIY or high tech in my home, I'm usually awful at setting up anything like this.
But this Proscenic air fryer is one of the simplest gadgets to get started. Once the app is downloaded and you register to get a new Proscenic account, it's so self explanatory. Not only are you given a whole host of recipes to cook, the app can control and schedule when to cook, create and share recipes, and it even alerts you when you need to shake the food.
It offers 13 pre-sets. I got straight to trying out the fries pre-set for mine and my son's lunch.
Once you've chosen what to cook, you can start by a simple button press. For the cut price of just £90.30 (£129.99 RRP) I think this kitchen gadget is an absolutely incredible investment for a small family (like me and my son) and it's so easy to navigate.
I lightly sprayed some potato wedges and added sea salt and paprika to add to our lunch and they were so tasty - and took just 20 minutes. The air fryer's LED touch screen really does give off those high tech vibes without it feeling too overwhelming to learn to use.
I can't fault the whole process. Gorgeous fluffy wedges, reduced oil use, quick and easy navigation, stop and start buttons, phone notifications throughout to make the process so much more satisfying; the list goes on. Another great reason to choose this air fryer is if you have a small kitchen and don't feel like you have the room, this model doesn't take up too much space at all.
I've managed to keep it on my kitchen counter with the recommended space at the back, while still having plenty of room to prep and get to work on my kitchen top in front of it. Overall, what a fantastic addition to my kitchen - I genuinely ran into the living room to my little boy like a child once it got to work, and got equally excited when it bleeped once it finished cooking with an app notification saying: "Your food is ready". Brilliant!
You can pick up this exact model from Amazon here.
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