How to Pick the Perfect Air Fryer

Over time, air fryers’ functionality has evolved. Once considered a handy kitchen gadget for cooking fries, nuggets, and wings, air fryers have proved capable of much more. In particular, they can reheat food in a fraction of the time it would take in your oven or on a cooktop, offering a convenient way to heat up leftovers.

With a typical air fryer, the basket that holds food has a handle that locks it in place and activates the cooking element. The handle also lets you pull out the basket and toss the food partway through cooking to ensure it cooks evenly.

Basket-style air fryers are available in both digital and manual versions. Digital models enable you to control cooking time and temperature with the press of a few buttons. More often than not, the touchpads on these models feature presets for common foods and indicators to notify you when the basket has reached its intended temperature. (In our air fryer ratings, we record how accurate the temperature is when set to 350°F.)

Manual air fryers often cost less, but they don’t offer the advanced features digital models do. Instead, these units have analog dials to set the temperature and cooking time. While food is cooking, the dial ticks down, and when it’s ready you’ll hear a ding and the air fryer will automatically shut off.

An air fryer’s basket may be coated with a nonstick surface made of PTFE (Teflon), it could have a ceramic-like coating, or it might be made of glass.

Consumer Reports buys and tests air fryers from more than 40 brands–including Bella, Cosori, Cuisinart, Dash, Gourmia, Instant, Ninja, and Philips–to find out whether they’re worth making room for on your kitchen counter. Each appliance is evaluated and rated based on its controls, convenience, operating noise, and ease of cleaning.

Controls: Our engineers evaluate each air fryer’s buttons, dials, or digital display and assess how clear the lettering is.

Convenience: The most convenient air fryers in our evaluations offer helpful features, such as keep-warm settings, shake reminders, and useful accessories. Along with settings for cook temperature and time, many air fryers come with preset buttons that help guide you on cooking time and temperature for specific types of food.

Noise: Our testers place each air fryer on a countertop in the lab. They then use a sound-level meter to take multiple measurements of how loud each air fryer is during operation, noting the noise at its peak. (If noise is important to you, 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 also have advice on the best way to clean an air fryer.)

Our air-fryer ratings provide information on each model’s controls, noise level, convenience, and ease of cleaning. Here are some other factors to consider when shopping for one.

Price: The air fryers in our ratings sell for $40 to $400. But many models are priced at $100 or less, so it’s possible to find a high-performing one at a reasonable price.

Capacity: Air fryers are designed to fit on a 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 amounts of food, such as multiple cuts of meat, a whole chicken, and even a small baking pan or muffin tin.

Our guide to the best large air fryers focuses on models with a basket size of 5 quarts or larger, while our roundup of the best small air fryers highlights models with a capacity of 5 quarts or less. One important note: In our labs, we measure the actual usable capacity of the air fryers we test, and we often find that the space is smaller than the manufacturer’s claimed capacity.

Advanced features: With many appliances competing for precious countertop space, choosing an air fryer with modes such as dehydration, baking, and rotisserie cooking enables you to combine the functionality of multiple appliances into a single device. Additional presets for specific foods and indicators that notify you when to check on the cooking process can also be helpful. Many models also feature a “keep warm” function to maintain your food’s temperature, keeping it 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 model page of each unit we’ve rated.

Many toaster ovens now offer an air-fry setting, designed to replicate what air fryers do so well. The question is, which appliance does the job better?

The answer depends largely on the specific toaster oven you’re considering and what you intend to use it for. Part of what makes air fryers particularly successful at crisping foods is the relatively small, concentrated space in which hot air circulates.

Toaster ovens usually have larger interior capacities. And while an air fryer’s basket isn’t fully airtight, it may do better at retaining hot air than a toaster oven, where air can escape around the door (and opening the door to check on your food lets a lot of heat escape). Generally, air-frying toaster ovens can’t achieve the same level of crispiness as true air fryers.

To more closely imitate air fryers, the air-fry settings on many of these toaster ovens attempt to direct heat toward a specific zone of the oven, and they often come with special air-frying baskets to facilitate this. CR’s testers have found that these combo devices can deliver good results, though they may not achieve an extra-crunchy texture in the food you cook.

However, toaster ovens 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 than to handle food in a deep air fryer basket. And though air fryers can cook foods more quickly, they may also crisp up the exterior before the interior is fully cooked. Toaster ovens perform similarly to full-sized ovens, which might be more familiar and predictable for many cooks. Plus, for those trying to cut down on their plastic use, a toaster oven likely contains less plastic than an air fryer.

All that 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.