Best air fryer 2023: quick and healthy cooking tested by experts

Air fryers are a household essential for quick and healthy meals. They're miniature convection ovens which whip up crispy, delicious results without any added oil. These energy-efficient appliances will also save you from turning on your oven every time you want to cook, saving a small fortune on your energy bills.

But while I love them, air fryers come in a variety of shapes and sizes and have lots of different features. It can be tricky to see through marketing gimmicks and jargon and work out which model is best. 

That's why we've put the best air fryers to the test, pitting them against each other to find the very best. Just as we've done with the best toaster ovens, we trialled dozens of recipes, testing every step of cooking, including cleaning up after your meal. 

My reviews show that the best air fryer is the Instant Vortex Plus 6-in 1, and though Instant feature heavily in my list, I've also assessed top air fryers from Ninja, Philips, Cosori and more. I've found the fastest, best value, and easiest-to-use air fryers you can buy. 

Millie Fender

Most of the air fryers in this guide to the best air fryers were tested by our resident testing genius and Head of Reviews, Millie Fender. Millie tested these air fryers for weeks in her kitchen at home as well as our dedicated test kitchen, so she can directly compare taste, user experience, cooking times, and ease of cleaning.

The Quick List

Best air fryers 2023

Best air fryer you can buy

This is the best air fryer in the world. The Instant Pot Vortex Plus 6-Quart 6-in-1 Air Fryer made the best homemade fries of any air fryer I tested. They had a fluffy interior and crispy exterior, with evenly browned edges and consistent cooking throughout.

Because there is a removable air fry insert, you can also use the Instant Pot Vortex Plus 6-Quart 6-in-1 Air Fryer to reheat foods like rice and pasta, which would usually fall through the slots in the air fryer tray.

The six-quart capacity is perfect for families, and it will easily cook for 5 or 6 people. My bacon was rendered perfectly, and the innovative OdorErase technology isn't just a gimmick — it hugely reduced unwanted smells in the kitchen. This is also one of the quietest air fryers I've tried, and I found that the control panel is sleek and attractive, though be prepared to wipe away finger smudges. The only real issue is that you have to clean it by hand. 

My Instant Vortex Plus 6-in-1 Air Fryer with ClearCook and OdorErase review has more details.

Best large air fryer

With an 8-quart capacity that's split across two drawers, this Instant Vortex Plus Dual Basket Air Fryer is perfect for families and those who want to cook a whole meal in one appliance. The fries I made in this air fryer were amazing, and they were already starting to brown after just 10 minutes of cooking. We had to shake them up to get an even finish, but they were some of the crispiest fries we've made, and only took 22 minutes. In the other basket, I made breaded fish, which also came out deliciously crisp. 

The two baskets are 4 quarts each, which is perfect for cooking an entire meal for two people or a batch of fries or roasted vegetables for an entire family split across the two baskets. Of course, if you're only cooking something small for a lunchtime salad topper, you can just use one drawer at a time. Choose SyncFinish mode to cook your meal at two different times, modes or temperatures, but to finish at the same time. SyncCook will take the settings you've applied to one drawer and copy them across to the second drawer. Both are easy to use, and the touch controls will make adjusting your timings mid-cook easy.

The only important thing to bear in mind with this air fryer is that it takes up a lot of space on a countertop. It's more than a square foot, so you might not be easy to store. Like the smaller 6-quart version above, cleaning obsessives will find that this air fryer smudges easily. 

My Instant Vortex Plus Dual Basket Air Fryer review has more information.

Best multicooker air fryer

The Instant Pot Pro Crisp beat its predecessor to go straight in at #1 in our picks of the best Instant Pots. It truly does it all, with 11 different functions. Unlike some other Instant Pots, this appliance has a single lid for every function, halving the space you need for storage and making this appliance incredibly easy to use. 

It certainly impressed home economics expert Helen McCue. She was particularly pleased with the air fryer mode, which crisped perfect rashers of bacon in just seven minutes. She also found that this Instant Pot helped to create one of the best mac 'n' cheeses she ever cooked. Even better, the different functions meant she could do it all in one pot, hugely cutting down on cleaning afterwards. 

There's also a stress-free pressure cooking function, which takes all the worry out of cooking by releasing steam automatically. That's great for curries and Chinese dishes. It has 13 functions in one appliance, so you can cook everything from whole roast chickens to curry or mashed potatoes. The only problem Helen found is that the stainless steel pot isn't non-stick, so you might need to put a little extra effort into cleaning to get it back to looking its best. 

Helen's full Instant Pot Duo Crisp with Ultimate Lid review has all the detail.

Fastest air fryer

The Ninja Foodi 6-in-1 XL 2-Basket Air Fryer is the fastest air fryer I've tested. A high 450°F temperature limit means it made the quickest bacon and frozen chicken in my tests. There are six modes: air broil, air fry, roast, reheat, dehydrate and bake. I found that the air fry mode is great, especially when you use the removable crisper plates, and you can use one in one drawer to air fry chicken while baking or roasting vegetables in the other drawer to make fast fajitas. 

That's because you can sync the two drawers, so every element of your meal will finish together. You can choose between smart finish, which allows you to cook at two different modes simultaneously with them finishing at the same time, or match cook, where the settings in drawer 1 are automatically applied to drawer 2. 

Unlike other air fryers you can place both drawers and the crisper insert into the dishwasher, so not only is it easy to use, but it's easy to clean, too. However, there's no pre-heat function, so it lost marks for precision. It also takes a little getting used to, as it's easy to confuse the 'match' and 'smart finish' functions. 

My Ninja Foodi DZ401 6-in-1 XL 2-Basket Air Fryer review covers all the detail.

Best value air fryer

We were sceptical when Drew Barrymore came out with her own line of appliances and we were first in line to review them. The Beautiful 6-Quart Digital Air Fryer looked just as good in person as it did online, with a sage green finish (it also comes in black, white, blue, and other shades) and a matte exterior that resists scuff marks. 

The six-quart basket is great for families, but it also worked well on smaller servings of snacks. In her tests, expert tester Camryn Rabideau baked bagels, made French fries, and dehydrated slices of apple, and everything came out well-cooked and evenly crisped. What's more, I've never seen it cost more than $90. For the price, this is a brilliant and stylish pick. 

The Beautiful 6-Quart Digital Air Fryer has modes for dehydrating, roasting, air frying, and reheating food. It's got a smart touchscreen control panel that increases the temperature in 5-degree increments up to 400°F.  

While Camryn found that the materials felt a little cheap, you should bear in mind that this is true of most air fryers, as they're largely made of plastic. However, Camryn also found that you have to press the buttons right in the center for the air fryer to work, which can be a little frustrating.

Camryn's Beautiful 6-Quart Digital Air Fryer review has more details.

Best air fryer for ease of use

This air fryer has better preset functions than any other. Our homemade fries came out very crispy and evenly cooked, and they finished about 10 minutes ahead of when we'd usually expect them to be ready. The bacon was cooked in just five minutes, and the vegetables came out with the crispiest finish of all the air fryers I tested. That's thanks to a handy 'starfish' base that makes sure the air circulates around the entire basket for evenly cooked results.

The preset functions on this air fryer were a little confusing at first, and they all have specific timings. That's tricky if you're cooking very different sizes of cuts of meat in one mode. However, once you've mastered this you hardly need to think about what you're cooking. The presets take care of everything and turn out perfect food every time.

Smaller households or those with less kitchen space to spare will love the Philips Essential Airfryer XL, but it is expensive for its capacity and the controls are a little cluttered. This option seriously impressed me with its cooking ability, but I found that it was one of the noisier options, registering 72dB. 

My Philips Essential Air Fryer XL review has more information.

Best toaster oven with air fryer

Toaster ovens and air fryers work using similar physics, so it's no surprise that our pick for the best toaster oven is also one of the best air fryers. KitchenAid's Digital Countertop Oven pretty much does it all — dehydrate, proof, bagel, toast, bake, broil, keep warm and, of course, air fry.

The air frying function is the best of the bunch. Our tests found a generously-sized air frying basket. Even better, it's made of a wire mesh that lets hot air circulate, which meant perfect results for fries, tater tots and fried chicken. It was especially great with turkey bacon, making well-rendered bacon with no grease. 

But ironically, this toaster oven is poor at toasting, making uneven slices of toast and quickly burning it when on the highest setting. We found that the exterior becomes hot to touch when cooking, which isn't great if you're teaching your kids to cook. The alert for the timer is quiet, so you might not hear it if you're hard of hearing or even if you're just playing music or chatting as you cook. Finally, while the air fryer basket is really effective, it will drop crumbs from fried chicken and florets of broccoli. You can fix that by lining it with a sheet of foil, but that's an ongoing cost and defeats the point of the mesh.

Jaclyn's full KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven with Air Fry review covers further details. 

Best slimline air fryer

Air fryers are big business, and as manufacturers compete to stuff their air fryers with bonus features they're starting to take up more and more room on countertops. Enter the Instant Vortex Slim, an air fryer with a good 6 quart capacity in a slimline shape. Instant claim that it's 20% smaller than the Instant Vortex 6-in-1, our current no.1, and the math measured up on test. 

We found that it made delicious, well-rendered crispy bacon, a surprising amount of delicious French fries for the capacity, and demonstrated a great reheat function, quickly reheating six quarts of fries. It's a fair price, too. 

However, we found that it's pretty average when roasting vegetables and tackling frozen food like fish sticks and chicken nuggets. What's more, the settings are all very similar. When we put them through their paces, we found there's not much difference between 'air fry', 'bake', and 'roast', so it's not as versatile as it appears. As with lots of Instant products,  you must access the product manual through a QR code, which is fine but might be a hassle if you don't have a smartphone. 

There's more detail in our full Instant Vortex Slim Air Fryer review.

Best basic air fryer

This is a basic air fryer that nails all of the essentials. The name is no surprise — this simple and inexpensive air fryer is a good choice if you're living in an apartment or have a small kitchen. Despite only one function (air fry, unsurprisingly) it aced our taste test. Our tester Alex found that this air fryer produced 'among the best-cooked asparagus I've ever had in my life'. It was crisp on the outside and soft and juicy in the middle, and it was a similar story with French fries. 

It's the smallest air fryer on this list, so it's easy to store. The small capacity also means that it's incredibly quick, one of the fastest air fryers on the list, second only to the Ninja Foodi 6-in-1. 

This air fryer is so efficient that it's easy to overcook your food, and because there's no presets or transparent window, it can be hard to judge when your meal is ready. 30 seconds in-between checking the basket is enough to overcook your food. Only having one function despite a similar price to Drew Barrymore's Beautiful air fryer above is another drawback, as is the small capacity. It's great for singletons and couples but won't work for big families. 

All the detail is in Alex's full Instant Essentials review.

Best smart air fryer

This ingenious air fryer has a handy app and Alexa connectivity, so you can chose from more than 100 preset recipes and control it with your voice. The app lets you control the time and temperature from your phone, and get notifications about how your food is cooking. You can even scan products' barcodes to learn exactly how to cook them, saving time and effort.

It has a dual heating system which I hadn't seen before - one heating element above your food and one below, which Cosori claims stops you from having to turn over ingredients as they cook. At first, I was worried that the heating element in the base might scorch my countertop, but I found that the exterior keeps cool, and it was safe to use even on wooden countertops.

Unlike other Cosori products, it feels incredibly sturdy, and it's easy to control. If you don't want to use the app, there's a choice of 12 inbuilt cooking presets that take the pressure out of cooking a wide range of dishes. Cosori fryers are often on sale on Amazon too, so they come at a great price. However, bear in mind that this air fryer is very noisy. I also found that this machine doesn't cook as quickly as other air fryers, which is surprising given the dual heating elements.

There's more detail in my full Cosori Dual Blaze Air Fryer review.

Best compact air fryer

Despite being one of Ninja's smaller air fryers, the Max XL really impressed me when I put it to the test. For a start, it's lightweight and easy to move around the kitchen, and its small frame won't dominate the kitchen counter. 

The 5.5-quart capacity is smaller than some, but it's perfectly sized to make two portions of homemade fries or a platter of snacks for easy entertaining. Everything I made at higher temperatures crisped up beautifully, from bacon to roasted vegetables, and the cooking time sped up significantly because of the circular, more compact basket. The control unit has modes for max crisp, air frying, roasting, baking, reheating, air broiling, and dehydrating, and there are also easy controls for temperature and timing to toggle as your food cooks. There is also a pause button, which I really like.

However, unlike air fryers from Instant which will pre-heat before telling you to add your food, this one has a countdown timer from the beginning. I also found that it wasn't as strong when cooking at lower temperatures. 

My full Ninja Max XL Air Fryer review has more info. 

Best air fryer for small households

This is an affordable, energy-efficient option for small households. On test, we were impressed with how well it covered the basics of air frying. It’s compact, lightweight, and looks good on the countertop. We could tried everything from asparagus and fries to an entire chicken and were pleased with the results. 

It was quick and the viewing window at the front was a really helpful addition for keeping an eye on the food whilst it was crisping up without having to continually open up the drawer. The air fryer is programmed with eight different functions and there are touchscreen controls, so you can manually adjust the time and temperature too. It turns itself off at the end of your session and is easy to clean.

Coming from a French company, some presets are set up for very specific French classics that won't work for every kitchen. Unless you eat nothing but flan pâtissier,  that 'egg tart' function is a little useless. 

There's more information in our full Paris Rhone 5.3 quart air fryer review. 

How I tested air fryers

There's more detail in our explanation of how we test air fryers, but when testing, I took into account the following factors:

Noise: The noise of an air fryer can impact your ability to use it. Perhaps you like to cook while listening to the TV, or you live in a smaller home and the noise of an air fryer running would distract you as you work. If an air fryer is noisy, I make a note of it. 

Speed: Air fryers promise to speed up cooking times, so when testing them I used standardized recipes to see how long they will take to cook classic recipes. While potato fries would typically take around 25 minutes in the air fryer, the speediest air fryers we tested have taken as little as 12 minutes to make crisp, evenly-cooked fries. 

Looks: It's going on your kitchen counters, so it has to look the part. You might not mind a less attractive air fryer as much as some other users, but any bulky features or unattractive elements such as smudging or busy display panels were noted during testing. 

Cleaning: Cleaning an air fryer should be easy. Most have baskets that can go in the dishwasher, and it's rare to find one without a non-stick interior. If I ran into any difficulties cleaning, I marked it down. 

Some of the air fryers in our guide have been reviewed on other Future Homes websites, but they have all been reviewed by me, so I can still bring you all my inside knowledge even if you can't click through to read the full review on Homes & Gardens. 

For more insight, our review guidelines explain more about our product review process.

Meet our expert testers

Meet our professional testers. All our reviews are carried out by our dedicated in-house writers and experienced freelancers. We've tested dozens of products over the years and we insist on first-hand experience of the products we feature.

Millie Fender

Most of the air fryers in this guide to the best air fryers were tested by our resident testing genius and Head of Reviews, Millie Fender. Millie tested these air fryers for weeks in her kitchen at home as well as our dedicated test kitchen, so she can directly compare taste, user experience, cooking times, and ease of cleaning.

Helen McCue

Helen is trained in Home Economics, and has focused on food and cooking throughout her 20-year career. She is a freelance writer specializing in home appliance reviews, and most at home when trying out the latest kitchen gadgets.

Camryn Rabideau

Camryn has been reviewing kitchen appliances for years, and she has reviewed everything from bread makers to juicers for Homes & Gardens. 

Camryn reviewed the Beautiful 6-Quart Digital Air Fryer from her home in Rhode Island, finding 'a great entry-level air fryer for anyone who wants a more attractive appliance'. 

Jaclyn Turner

Our former Ecommerce Editor, Jaclyn has tested dozens of top kitchen appliances to help you find the very best.

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