Top Air Fryer Reviews – Rolling Stone

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Admittedly, we’re a little obsessed with our air fryers. If you’re a skeptic, we get it — you may only think of these countertop home fryers for their ability to remove oil (which usually equals flavor) from your favorite fried foods. But even chefs are recently endorsing them as serious cooking tools: like Breville’s latest Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, which connects to guided recipes and content from world-class chefs like Carla Lalli Music, Nik Sharma, and long-standing Top Chef judge Gregory Gourde. But with the air fryer boom still, well, booming, how do you know which model to choose to get the crispiest crunch possible on your favorite foods?

You don’t need to be a deep frying master to whip up everything from crowd-pleasing, game day chicken wings or fried shrimp hors d’oeuvres for your next dinner party. The best air fryers come from popular kitchen brands like Ninja, Instant, and Cosori. These are models that use circulated hot air around your food (like a mini convection oven) that’ll not only beat out your regular oven or microwave by a long shot when it comes to crisping up food fast, but, most importantly, they’ll give you more features that you can use beyond just purely frying. The ability to roast, bake, toast, and even reheat leftovers make them a great addition to any home chef’s cooking arsenal.

Getting one of the best air fryers on Amazon also means you know exactly when they’re in stock, and they’ll ship to you quickly, so you can rev up that fryer right away and get to making some tasty food. Here are some of our top air fryer picks.

Air Fryer Buying Guide

There are several factors to consider when shopping for an air fryer, considering what kind of cooking you’re going to be doing, as well as your current kitchen countertop real estate. 

Size: Consider whether you’re going to be cooking for one, or trying to feed an entire family on a busy weeknight. Compact models (4 to 6-quarts) have limited tray space, but can be as low as $30 — they’re best for one person, or small apartments. Bigger air fryers range from 8 to 10+ quarts, and have room to make larger items (like a whole roast chicken), or a main and side dish at the same time, but you might not have the countertop space.

Cooking Presets: Most modern air fryers come with a variety of preprogrammed “smart” settings, either for specific dishes like chicken, shrimp, or fries, or for specialty modes like “dehydrating” and “reheating”. If you’re not looking to experiment too much, all you need to do is press a button to get the cook time and temperature right every time.

Style: There’s plenty of different types of air fryers to choose from depending on what you’ll be making most. Basket-style fryers are great for making small batches and snacks, like french fries and popcorn chicken. Air fryer ovens have more space, and can fry on multiple levels, but they’re more hands-on, since you’ll need to rotate the food during cooking. Air fryer toaster ovens can do more than just frying, from baking, to roasting and reheating, but take up more space than an air fryer.

The Best Air Fryers on Amazon 

Below, we rounded up some of the best air fryers available on Amazon. All the air fryers we recommend have easy-to-use controls, either through manual buttons or an intuitive touch screen interface. We also only recommend air fryers with minimal clean-up (either wiped down or have parts that are dishwasher-safe), and can handle at least a dozen chicken wings or one pound of french fries at once.

1. Instant Vortex Plus 6-Quart Air Fryer Oven

We love plenty of Instant’s air fryers, the same brand that gave us the beloved Instant Pot multicookers, but our favorite pick solves one of our biggest pet peeves with air-frying — the inability to visually see how done your food is. The Vortex Plus air fryer has a clear window and internal light so you can easily monitor how crispy your wings are getting or if you need to turn over your brussels sprouts without opening the basket. Even if you’re short on time, with six customizable smart food programs and little to no preheating time up to 400° F, you can get perfectly crispy food fast. The basket has ample cook space for two pounds of chicken or four pounds of fries, and both the basket and tray slide out to be placed in a dishwasher.

Buy Instant Vortex Plus 6-Quart Air Fryer… $132.99

2. Cosori Pro II Smart Air Fryer

For home cooks who want their kitchen gear to be tech-d out, this Cosori smart air fryer will let you set the temp, control cook time, and pause cooking using Alexa if your hands are busy prepping other side dishes. Monitor how your meals are cooking closely on the app, or use one of the 11 built-in presets to whip up steak, seafood, poultry, and more with the touch of a button. Cosori fryer’s 5.8-quart square basket can fit a whole, 5- or 6-pound chicken, and a convenient shake reminder gives you an alert when it’s time to shake the basket to move around the contents.

Buy COSORI Pro II Smart Air Fryer 5.8QT… $139.99

3. Dash Tasti-Crisp 2.6-Quart Air Fryer

This streamlined Tasti-Crisp air fryer lets you fry up your favorite foods without oil and help reduce added fat by 70-80%, without sacrificing flavor. Even if you’re short on time, this air fryer is a weeknight lifesaver—just set the time, and within minutes your food comes out nice and crispy (the auto-shut off function also prevents things from getting too crispy). Compact and great for smaller kitchen spaces, Dash says this model is half the weight of a standard air fryer at just seven pounds. The digital interface could not be more simple to use, letting you set time, temperature, and three saved cooking presets.

Buy DASH Tasti-Crisp Digital Air Fryer with… $79.99

4. Ninja Foodi 10-Quart 6-in-1 DualZone XL Air Fryer

If you’re feeding a big family, then a dual-basket oven should be your first pick. Ninja Foodi’s 2-basket air fryer lets you cook different dishes (like a main and a side) at different temperatures with the touch of a button, so everything you’re making finishes cooking at the same time. With a total 10 quarts of capacity, we’ve found this extra-large fryer can crisp up six lbs of fries, or two whole six-pound chickens as evenly and quickly as possible with a special “IQ Boost” feature that manages power across each basket. There’s six versatile cooking programs, from air broiling to dehydrating, but you can easily copy settings to both baskets for full meals, or two baskets of the same ingredient.

Buy Ninja DZ401 Foodi 10 Quart 6-in-1… $199.99

5. GoWISE USA 1700-Watt 5.8-QT Digital Air Fryer

With a 5.8-quart capacity, this air fryer is definitely on the larger size, but what we appreciate more is its unique oval shape, which lets you cook more food in a single layer than a round basket (great for recipes that involve dehydrating). We like its eight cooking presets that aren’t just cooking methods — fries, pork, chicken, steak, shrimp, cake, fish and pizza — as well as the start and stop button, which allows you to change time and temperature mid-cook cycle, in case you made a mistake. You’ll also get additional stacking racks, which allows you air fry on multiple levels, or cook skewed meats. The shake alarm, which reminds you to shake ingredients at five, 10 and 15 minutes, is another handy feature.

Buy GoWISE USA GWAC22003 5.8-Quart Air… $67.20

6. Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro

The Breville Smart Oven Pro is a multipurpose beast that has 13 dedicated presets, and reduces your cook time by 30% compared to traditional full-size convection ovens for faster, crispier and juicier results. A smart algorithm directs six independent quartz heating elements to where power is needed most above and below the food, eliminating cold spots for more precise and even crisping. One underrated feature is the 2-speed convection fan, which maximizes hot air flow and is an especially useful tool for air frying, dehydration and roasting. It’s incredibly roomy, enough for a 14-pound turkey or for slow cooking with a 5-quart Dutch oven, but you can also stack up to four trays to air fry french fries or dehydrate a range of foods.

Buy Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro… $398.99