The Best Air Fryers

Despite their name, air fryers don’t fry your food. They’re essentially small convection ovens with powerful fans that circulate hot air around food to approximate the crisp and juicy results of deep frying. They require less oil—mere tablespoons, as opposed to quarts—and are less messy than deep frying. Air fryers are also marketed as a smaller and more convenient alternative to conventional ovens; they generally cook food quicker, shaving off 5 to 10 minutes from most recipes. They need to be preheated for only a few minutes, if at all, and they won’t heat up your entire kitchen. Even people who already have a convection oven may appreciate the speed, convenience, and extra cooking space that these appliances offer. Throughout years of testing air fryers, we’ve concluded that even the best models can’t achieve the perfect golden crispiness that deep frying offers, but some come impressively close. With a little finessing, some of our favorite oven and deep-fry recipes can work quite well in an air fryer.

We tested three styles of air fryers: drawer-style models with baskets that pull out from the front; flip-top models with lids that lift up from the top to reveal the baskets inside; and bigger, cube-shaped models with doors that swing open in the front and multiple racks inside like an oven. The oven-style models often include revolving rotisserie baskets or propeller-shaped auto-stir attachments, both of which automatically rotate to toss food around, supposedly for more-even heating and crisping.  After testing air fryers with all sorts of innovations, we really liked a few newer models. Their large capacities, speedy cooking times, and simple controls impressed us.

• Drawer-Style Models: No matter the size or capacity of the air fryers we tested, the best results came from those with drawer-style frying baskets. Each had a single large handle that allowed us to easily maneuver the basket and shake it to redistribute food midway through cooking. This kept our hands away from the air fryers’ heating elements and gave us a place to hold the basket without using oven mitts. The baskets sat inside plastic or metal trays, which caught crumbs and debris for easy cleanup.

• Wide Cooking Spaces: Just because an air fryer claims to have a larger capacity doesn’t mean that it has more usable cooking space. Since air-fried food cooks best in one layer, the width of an air fryer’s cooking surface mattered more than the height of its cooking space. We preferred one wide cooking surface to multiple racks for this reason. Our favorite models had cooking surfaces that measured more than 10 inches by 10 inches, offering enough room to accommodate recipes that serve up to four people.

• Simple, Responsive Controls: Our top-performing models required only a couple pushes of a few buttons or turns of a single knob to operate. While we did like a few of the analog models, our favorites had digital controls, since we were less likely to accidentally knock digital controls when adding or removing food. Digital models were also more precise.

• Nonstick Interiors: Frying baskets and crumb-catching trays with nonstick coatings were easy to clean, even when they were covered in cooked-on cheese or sticky sauces. Because air fryers generally can’t heat to more than 400 degrees, there’s no risk of the nonstick coatings getting hot enough to release fumes.

• Auto-Pause Timers: For the best results when cooking in an air fryer, you need to remove the basket or racks and shake, flip, or turn food as it cooks. We preferred models whose timers automatically paused when we opened the doors or lids and resumed when we closed them. This saved us from having to push another button to continue cooking, which was easy to forget.

• Automatic Shutoff: The best models in our lineup also shut off automatically at the end of the programmed cooking cycle, ensuring that food didn’t overcook if it lingered in the machine for a few extra minutes. Another perk: We didn’t have to remember to turn off the models.

Nice to Have

• Viewing Windows: A few models included clear plastic windows on their fronts, allowing us to monitor cooking without having to open drawers or doors and lose precious heat. The windows weren’t essential, but they were helpful.

• Air-Fryer Ovens: All the oven-style models we tested were difficult to use and produced lackluster results. They had bigger footprints but couldn't actually fit much more food inside. Having multiple levels of racks didn't work well in any of the air fryers we tested. The upper rack blocked heat from reaching the lower rack, resulting in unevenly cooked food. Despite our efforts to manage this uneven heating by switching and rotating the racks, the food never finished cooking at the same time. And because the cooking racks and baskets didn't have handles, we had to use oven mitts. Crumbs and drips fell through the perforations in the racks and onto the floor of the ovens or, more frustratingly, onto our kitchen floor. They were also a pain to clean; crumbs stuck to their bases and hinges and were impossible to remove.

• Flip-Top Models: Most air fryers with flip-tops had heating elements in their lids that were completely exposed when the unit was open—and their heavy lids threatened to drop those heating elements right onto our hands. We also found some flip-top models to be inconveniently large. When we flipped them open, they wouldn’t fit under our cabinets.

• Rotisserie and Auto-Stir Attachments: A few models came with rotisserie baskets (barrel-shaped mesh cages) or frying baskets with propeller-shaped auto-stir attachments. Both accessories were designed to agitate the food, thus eliminating the need for manually shaking the baskets midcook, a common air-fryer requirement. But they were fussy to use and didn't make better food (and in some cases, they made things worse, mangling foods such as french fries beyond recognition).

• Sharp-Edged Baskets and Racks: A few models had wire cooking racks and/or baskets with sharp edges that trapped sticky foods, shredded our sponges, and ensnared the bristles of our scrub brushes.

• Preheating: Unlike conventional ovens, many air fryers don’t require preheating. Just pop in the food and press a few buttons. However, a few newer models we tested—including our winner—do recommend preheating. Our favorites took only about 2 minutes to reach 400 degrees, but one model required a separate, less convenient preheating cycle that took up to 5 minutes. We found this model’s separate preheating program frustrating because it wasted valuable time, and it required us to then select an additional cooking cycle. The automatic preheating cycles of our favorite models were speedier, and they ensured that the frying baskets were hot when the food touched them, allowing for faster and more-even cooking. One important note: None of the recipes we developed for our cookbook Air Fryer Perfection calls for preheating, but they'll still work well in a model that uses a preheat cycle.

• Smart Technology: A couple of the models we tested are compatible with mobile apps and digital assistants such as Google Home or Amazon Alexa. You can use the app or assistant to control your air fryer from a distance, including directing it to preheat, pause, or stop cooking. The apps also include recipe presets, though we prefer to use our own recipes or custom heat settings and cooking durations. We found these innovations moderately convenient but not always reliable; the machines were at times unreachable by any voice command. Such breakdowns in communication were rare and easily fixed but frustrating nonetheless. The less expensive of these WiFi-enabled machines performed adequately and is only $10 more than its otherwise identical predecessor. It may be worth springing for if you think wirelessly controlling an air fryer would be helpful for you, and you’re okay with rare minor glitches.  

• Models with Glass Drawers: Recently, we’ve tested a few air fryers that have glass drawers. These models claim to be healthier than other air fryers, since they use less or no plastic and some eschew nonstick coatings that could emit harmful chemicals at high temperatures. While it’s hard to evaluate health claims, we found the performance of these models to be mixed—they performed decently at certain tasks but less well at others. More important, these glass-drawer models were harder to use. First, the glass drawers were heavy and hard to lift, especially when we flipped food halfway through or had to clean them. The exposed glass can get really hot, a potential safety issue. We think glass is a promising option for cooks who want to avoid plastic or nonstick coatings and can handle the heavier weight of the drawers. But we think these models have a long way to go before they can perform as well as the other models we’ve tested.