- best buy
- Cooking chips until golden brown
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Compared with deep-fat fryers, air fryers are a more healthy way to cook as they use hot air and less cooking oil – or sometimes no oil at all.
Air fryers blast hot air around a small cooking chamber. Their compact cooking space and fast circulation of hot air allows you to make crispy, golden-brown food more quickly than using an oven.
Our expert air fryer testing and buying advice will help you choose the best air fryer for you.
Find the best air fryer for you with our independent air fryer reviews.
Here, we've selected some of the best air fryers from our rigorous air fryer tests, which include a chip taste test by our experts.
Only logged-in Which? members can view our recommendations in the table below. Not yet a member? Join Which? and get exclusive access to all our reviews.
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Read more about the most popular air fryer brands.
The smallest air fryers we've tested can hold up to 800g of food – about four portions of chips and roughly equivalent to the amount of food you can fit on two baking trays in an oven.
If you typically only cook for four people or fewer, any of the air fryers we've tested should be big enough. But if you want the option of using the air fryer to cook for more people – or you just have a particularly hungry household – air fryers such as the Tefal Actifry 2 in 1 or Tefal Actifry Express XL can fit almost twice as much (1.5kg).
Not ready to give up on frying just yet? Read our expert guide to the best non-stick frying pans.
This list of buying questions will help you narrow down your options and ensure you get the best air fryer for your needs:
This is the most common type of air fryer. They have a cooking bowl or basket with a handle, so you can shake your food during cooking. This helps ensure the food cooks evenly and makes it easy to lift out of the air fryer once it's ready.
Sometimes they come with a stirring paddle, though we’ve found this doesn't always make for better results.
Pros
Cons
Take a look at our basket air fryer reviews to see all of the models we've tested.
Oven-type air fryers come with one or multiple trays to place your food on and slot into the machine for cooking.
Most have a viewing window on the front so you can keep an eye on your food without disturbing the cooking process.
Pros
Cons
See our oven air fryer reviews to see the models we recommend.
Right now, countertop cooking appliances are becoming bigger, bulkier and more feature-laden as they take on a multitude of cooking tasks, from air frying and pressure cooking, to steaming and slow cooking.
We’ve tested several pressure cookers and multicookers that also have an air fryer function, such as the Ninja OP350UK and the Instant Pot Duo Crisp & Air Fryer. These have separate lids for pressure cooking and air frying, and do a number of other jobs, too.
All this versatility comes at a price though, so consider whether you’ll really use all the features. If you just want to cook batches of chips and the odd chicken drumstick, a simpler, cheaper air fryer will do the job just as well.
We compare the top air fryer brands in Ninja Foodi vs Tower Air Fryer vs Tefal Actifry.
Don't pay over the odds for features that you'll rarely use. Consider this list before before you decide on a model.
All air fryers have timers that allow you to set how long you want your food to cook for, and show you how much cooking time is left. Some, such as the Philips Viva Airfryer and Russell Hobbs Purifry, have manual dials that you turn to set the time, but most other air fryers, including the Tefal Actifry, have digital timers instead. A digital timer can make it easier to see at a glance how much time is left on the clock.
The buzz around air fryers means that popular models have been difficult to come by recently.
To help you find your choice, we've picked out a handful of the most searched-for sellers that have a wide range air fryers in stock.
Not sure which shop to buy from? Take a look at our member survey on the best home and appliance shops.
Yes. An air fryer can save you money, but it depends on the size of your air fryer and how many people you’re cooking for.
The main drawback with the air fryer is the amount of food you can cook. The cooking capacity of the air fryers we’ve tested ranges from 0.3kg and 2.2kg, a huge variance, so choose a model that caters for your needs.
In general, small households cooking single batches of food will benefit most. As an alternative to switching on a full-sized oven several times a week to cook a meal for two, the benefits really stack up.
However, if you’re feeding several people, or want to cook a few different food items at the same time, an oven has more space and may work out cheaper than cooking several batches in an air fryer.
To help you decide whether an air fryer is a worthwhile investment, we cooked 320g of chips (two to three portions) in an air fryer, a halogen oven and a built-in electric oven.
We found that the air fryer was quicker to heat up, cooked faster and used less energy, although the quality of cooking was slightly worse than in either of the ovens.
If you're a smaller household, an air fryer may save you money if you use it several times a week instead of a built-in electric oven.
Air fryer | Halogen oven | Built-in electric oven | |
---|---|---|---|
Cooking time | 23 minutes | 35 minutes | 33 minutes |
Energy used to cook | 0.287kWh | 0.679kWh | 0.863kWh |
Cost to cook | 10p | 23p | 29p |
Saving (compared to electric oven) | 19p cheaper | 6p cheaper | n/a |
Quality of cooking (out of 5) | 3 – some cooked perfectly but the chips at the bottom were undercooked | 3.5 – some chips were overcooked and some were undercooked | 3.5 – inconsistent cooking as some chips were too crispy |
Curious to know how the air fryer and an oven compare to a slow cooker? Find out more in our story comparing the cheapest ways to cook.
Any food that does well when roasted, baked or fried will do well in your air fryer.
As well as chicken and chips, other popular choices include potatoes, roasted vegetables, falafel, fish, pizza and even baked goods such as cookies and cakes.
Air fryers can also be useful for quickly cooking and crisping up frozen foods and snacks such as fish fingers, chicken nuggets, spring rolls and pies.
Things you should avoid putting in your air fryer include fresh greens, cheese and any food covered in wet batter. Cooking whole roasts such as roast chicken can also be problematic, so joint your bird first before frying.
Some air fryer manufacturers offer starter recipes to get you going: take a look at these Ninja Foodi recipes and Philips recipes.
Get answers to more common air fryer questions.
Need ideas for how to use your appliance? Find creative ideas by exploring BBC Good Food's air fryer recipes.
If you're out of warranty then getting your air fryer replaced can be very expensive, so much so that it's worthwhile wondering if you should even bother. Air fryers have fairly short guarantees, usually one or two years, so you'll only be covered for a brief period of time after purchase.
Some manufacturers sell spare parts for air fryers, but for the most part you can only buy parts that are readily accessible and easily exchanged. Buying spare racks and baskets is easy, but internal components are generally too hard to access and not sold separately.
As a general rule, if you've broken something detachable from your air fryer then you might be in luck. If something more complicated has gone wrong, like an internal component has stopped working or if performance has nosedived because of the heating element or the fan, then you'll probably need to take it in for repair if it's not a simpler fix.
If your air fryer is beyond repair, take it to your local council recycling/reuse centre. Use Recycle Now’s recycling locator to find your nearest one.
Find out more in how to recycle electrical items.