How to Pick the Perfect Air Fryer

Here’s the funny thing: Air fryers don’t technically fry food. They’re called air fryers because of their ability to crisp up food and reproduce the kinds of fried-food textures you know and love. Inside, a fan circulates hot air to cook the food and crisp up its exterior. It’s basically convection baking—but the small space of the air fryer and the concentration of the hot air make it especially effective at thoroughly and uniformly crisping up the exterior of whatever you’re cooking.

Over the past decade, the appliance’s functionality has evolved. Once considered a great kitchen gadget for making fries, nuggets, and wings, the air fryer has proved capable of doing so much more. In particular, it reheats food in a fraction of the time it would take your oven or cooktop stove, offering a convenient solution for daily meals or heating up leftovers.

Consumer Reports buys and tests air fryers from over 30 brands—including Bella, Cosori, Crux, Cuisinart, Gourmia, Instant, Ninja, and Philips—to find out whether they’re worth making room for on your kitchen counter. Each air fryer is evaluated and rated based on its controls, how quiet it is while operating, and how easy it is to clean.

Controls: Our engineers judge how intuitive it is to use the unit’s buttons, dials, or digital display, and how clear any lettering is. Along with settings for cook temperature and time, many air fryers come with preset buttons that help guide users on cooking times and temps.

Noise: Our testers place each air fryer on a butcher block counter in the lab. They then use a sound-level meter to take multiple measurements of how loud each air fryer gets during operation, noting the noise at its peak. Check out the quietest air fryers from our tests.

Cleaning: No matter how well an air fryer cooks or reheats your food, if cleanup is a hassle, we want you to know. That’s why our testers judge how easy it is to clean each model’s interior and exterior. (We have advice on the best way to clean an air fryer.)

For more details on how we test, watch the video below.

Our air fryer ratings tell you about the controls, noise, and ease of cleaning for each model. Here are some other factors to consider when you’re shopping for an air fryer.

Price: The air fryers in our ratings sell for $30 to $260, and we’ve seen models for as much as $400. But most air fryers tend to hover around $100, so you don’t have to break the bank to get a high-performing air fryer.

Capacity: Air fryers are designed to neatly fit on your counter. Most aren’t big enough to cook for a crowd, unless you cook in batches. But there are a handful of roomy air fryers that can accommodate substantial batches of food, multiple cuts of meat, a whole chicken, and even baking pans, like muffin tins and cake pans. Our guide to the best large air fryers focuses on models with a basket size of 5 quarts or more, while our roundup of the best small air fryers highlights models with a capacity under 5 quarts. One important note: In our labs, we measure the usable capacity of the air fryers we test, and we often find that the space is smaller than the capacity claimed by the manufacturer.

Advanced features: There are a ton of appliances vying to occupy precious countertop space, so it’s advantageous to purchase an air fryer with settings you know you’ll use. Modes like dehydration, baking, and rotisserie cooking combine the functionality of multiple appliances into a single device. Additional presets for particular foods, and indicators to let you know when to check on your food, can also be helpful. Many models also have a “keep warm” function to keep your food hot and crispy.

Warranty: The shortest warranty of the air fryers we tested is 60 days—not exactly a confidence booster. Others in our air fryer ratings have a one- or two-year warranty, but you may run across some with coverage up to three years. We note these specifics on the summary page of each air fryer we’ve rated.

Another recent development in the kitchen appliance landscape has come in toaster ovens: Many higher-end models now offer an air-fry setting, intended to replicate what air fryers do so well. The question is, which appliance does the job better?

The answer depends very much on the specific toaster oven you’re considering, as well as what you intend to use your air fryer or toaster oven for. Part of what makes air fryers particularly successful in crisping up foods is the relatively small, concentrated space in which the hot air circulates. Toaster ovens typically have larger interior capacities. And while air fryers’ baskets aren’t thoroughly airtight, they may do better at keeping hot air inside than toaster ovens, where air can escape around the sides of the door—and opening the door to check on your food allows a lot of heat to escape. (Air fryers with baskets typically have a vent at the back where hot air generated by the fan blows out—it can make the back of the appliance extremely hot, so be sure to handle your air fryer safely.)

Where toaster ovens shine is in their size and layout: They can accommodate larger batches of food than most air fryers. You may also find it easier to open a toaster oven door and slide a tray inside, compared with handling things in a deep air fryer basket. And though air fryers can cook things more quickly, they may also crisp up the exterior of foods before the interior is fully cooked. Toaster ovens perform similarly to full-sized ovens, which might be more familiar and predictable for many cooks.

It’s worth noting that some air fryer models now are designed more like toaster ovens, with doors that open outward and racks inside. That puts them in more direct competition with toaster ovens, but they lose some of the perks of basket-style air fryers.

All the above considerations aside, your decision may come down to what makes sense for your budget: The toaster ovens that offer air-fry modes tend to be much pricier than most air fryers.