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The 4 Best Air Fryers - Fall 2024

Updated Sep 23, 2024 at 08:55 am
Best Air Fryers

Air fryers are a great option if you find yourself impatiently waiting for your oven to preheat or wish your oven-baked fries and chicken wings were a little crispier. These compact appliances don't require much more space than a microwave and work very well for crisping leftover pizza, preparing pre-packaged French fries or chicken nuggets, and making a quick side dish of crispy Brussels sprouts or cauliflower.

While air-fried food isn't the same as deep-fried food, airflow inside the cooking chamber helps with quick cooking and crisping. Plus, some air fryers are versatile enough to work like small ovens. Air fryers with a wide range of temperature settings and fan speeds can roast, bake, and dehydrate, which is great if you want to avoid heating your big oven on a hot day.

Air fryers come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Multi-cooker air fryers bring in more functions, like slow cooking. Dual-drawer models let you cook different foods on each side of the air fryer, so you can prepare your main dish and a side at once or keep vegetarian and meat-eater meals separate.

The best air fryers produce evenly well-cooked, crispy, and golden-brown food. They preheat and cook your food fast and offer a wide range of settings for different recipes and cooking methods.

While the capacity of the air fryers we've tested varies from 2 to 10 quarts, bigger is better when it comes to performance. Unlike in a deep fryer, you won't get the best results by filling the basket with ingredients – instead, you'll want to arrange your food in a single layer as much as possible. You may want a bigger air fryer, even if you only cook for a few people. Baskets that are square instead of round and shallow instead of deep also offer a bigger cooking surface area.

We've tested 20 air fryers, and you'll find our recommendations for the best ones below. Once you've found the right model for your crispy foods, you might want the best microwave for your popcorn or reheating needs or the best blender for your morning smoothies or homemade soups.


  1. Best Air Fryer

    The best air fryer we've tested is the Ninja Foodi DZ550. At 10 quarts, it's a family-sized air fryer, but its bigger cooking surface area is useful even if you usually only cook for yourself. It makes great-quality air-fried food, producing evenly crispy, golden-brown air-fried foods like chicken wings, vegetables, or French fries, partly because you have plenty of room to arrange food in a single layer.

    Its dual-basket design allows you to cook two different foods using different settings in each basket. It has various modes for different cooking methods and a pretty wide range of fan speeds to suit purposes like dehydrating or baking. Like many other Ninja air fryers, its crisper trays have a ceramic non-stick coating. That's a pro if you avoid PTFE materials, but it's not as easy to clean by hand.

    Of course, with its 10-qt capacity, it has a bulky design. This particular model has a temperature probe that you can use to have the air fryer automatically monitor the internal temperature of your food. This feature is useful if you plan to cook meat like steak or a whole chicken. However, if you want a cheaper option, the Ninja Foodi FlexBasket has a similar overall performance. It has one big 10-qt basket that you can divide when you want to use different settings on each side or keep foods separate. The large basket is a bit awkward to handle, but it produces very good-quality fried food.

    See our review

  2. Best Medium-Sized Air Fryer

    Bigger is better for performance, but you might want something smaller if bigger doesn't fit on your counter. The COSORI TurboBlaze is a 6-qt air fryer, a size generally recommended for serving about four people. Still, its square basket gives you more room to arrange food in a single layer compared with some 6-qt air fryers. It doesn't perform quite as well as the Ninja, but it comes close, producing very good-quality air-fried food.

    It's also particularly versatile. There are five different fan speeds, so you can use the 'Bake' setting for a medium fan speed to avoid drying out cake or cookies or 'Dehydrate' with a very low fan speed that helps prevent light ingredients from blowing around. It's one of the few air fryers that tells you what fan speed corresponds with each setting, making it a good option if you plan to experiment with a variety of recipes in your air fryer.

    However, it doesn't have the best temperature stability. While it does an okay job of maintaining a stable temperature, the Ninja is much better in this regard. While it cooks food quickly, it takes a while to preheat. There's a preheat mode, so you don't have to guess when the air fryer is fully heated.

    See our review

  3. Best Small Air Fryer

    The best small air fryer we've tested is the Ninja Pro AF141. This air fryer's basket has more surface area for cooking than other 5-quart models we've tested, so even though it's small, you have a good amount of room to spread out your ingredients. However, it doesn't air fry quite as evenly as the previous picks, so you risk having a bigger proportion of food over or undercooked by the time your food is ready. Still, it produces good results.

    It preheats and cooks very quickly, so it's ideal for preparing a quick snack. It returns to temperature very soon after you add food and maintains a particularly stable temperature during cooking. While it's not as versatile as the COSORI TurboBlaze, since it has a smaller range of fan speed and temperature settings and fewer modes, it includes air fry, roast, reheat, and dehydrate functions. Like our top pick, its crisper tray has a ceramic non-stick coating instead of the more common PTFE.

    See our review

  4. Best Windowed Air Fryer

    If you want an air fryer with a window to watch your food cook, the best option we've tested is the Dreo ChefMaker. This high-end air fryer has a 6-qt capacity, so it's a lot smaller than the similarly priced Ninja Foodi DZ550, but it has a window and a light inside its cooking chamber so you can see inside. It's fast and makes good-quality fried food, but it doesn't air fry quite as evenly as the Ninja.

    It has a small fan speed range with a relatively slow maximum fan speed. Still, it has a temperature range that's wide enough for a variety of recipes. This model also has some unique features, including 'Chef Mode' presets, which use a temperature probe and a water misting feature to automatically cook cuts of meat like steak. It connects with an app that lets you monitor the cooking process, look up 'Chef Mode' instructions for a variety of foods, and send information to the machine, so all you have to do is press start.

    It's also priced at the high end for an air fryer. If you want to save money and don't mind somewhat worse performance, the Cuisinart AIR-200 is the next-best option with a window. It makes less evenly air-fried food compared to the other picks listed here, but it still produces decent results, and it's significantly cheaper than the Dreo.

    See our review

Notable Mentions

  • Ninja Speedi SF301: The Ninja Speedi SF301 is a combo air fryer and multi-cooker, meaning you can use it as a conventional air fryer or add liquid for methods like steaming and slow cooking. Unlike most basket-style air fryers, it opens from the top like a rice or pressure cooker. It makes great-quality fried food, similar to the Ninja Foodi DZ550, but it has a smaller 6qt capacity, and we haven't tested its performance for its other functions. See our review
  • Ninja Foodi DZ201: The Ninja Foodi DZ201 is a dual-basket air fryer with a similar design to the Ninja Foodi DZ550. It has a smaller 8qt capacity and doesn't come with a temperature probe. It's not as versatile and doesn't air fry as evenly as the DZ550 or the Ninja Foodi DZ701, but it's a solid, less expensive option. See our review
  • Beautiful 6qt Digital: While most air fryers are only available in black and stainless steel variations, the Beautiful 6qt Digital comes in various pastel colors with gold accents. It doesn't perform quite as well as the Ninja and isn't as versatile as the COSORI TurboBlaze, but it still produces good-quality air-fried food, so it's a good option if you want an air fryer that matches your kitchen. See our review

All Reviews

Our recommendations above are what we think are currently the top air fryers for most people. We factor in the price, feedback from our visitors, and availability.

If you'd like to do the work of choosing yourself, here's a list of all air fryer reviews. Be careful not to get too caught up in the details. While no air fryer is perfect, most are good enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you look for them.