4-Quart Air Fryer Review: 120 Cooks and a Wall Meter

An air fryer is a small convection oven with an aggressive fan and a basket, and the marketing around it is worse than the product deserves. It does not fry. It does not make food healthy. What it does is cook small quantities of food quickly with a browned exterior, using about a third of the energy of a full-size oven — and that last part is the reason I bought a 4-quart basket model for $99 and used it as my primary cooking appliance for four months.

Roughly 120 cooks later, I know exactly what it is good at, what it is bad at, and which two claims on the box are nonsense.

The energy maths, measured

This is the strongest argument and it's the one least often made. I metered both appliances at the wall.

The air fryer draws about 1,450 W and needs no meaningful preheat — three minutes at most. Cooking a tray of chicken thighs and vegetables took 22 minutes and used roughly 0.5 kWh.

My electric oven draws about 2,400 W, takes 12 minutes to reach 200°C, and the same meal took 35 minutes total including preheat — about 1.4 kWh. So the air fryer used roughly a third of the energy for the same food, which at typical electricity prices is a few cents a meal but adds up to real money over a year of daily cooking, and matters considerably more if you're cooking for one or two.

It also doesn't heat the kitchen, which in summer is worth more than the electricity.

What it is genuinely excellent at

Frozen food. Chips, breaded fish, spring rolls, potato products of every kind — these are designed to be cooked in hot circulating air and the air fryer does them better and faster than an oven. Frozen chips at 200°C for 16 minutes with one shake came out crisper than 25 minutes in the oven, every time across dozens of attempts.

Chicken thighs and wings. Skin-on chicken renders its own fat and the circulating air crisps the skin properly. Twenty-two minutes at 190°C, turned once, produced better skin than my oven managed at any setting.

Reheating. This is the underrated one. Leftover pizza, roast potatoes, pastry, anything that should be crisp and that a microwave turns to rubber — four minutes at 180°C and it's genuinely restored. Over four months this became the function I used most.

Roasting small quantities of vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower, sprouts, carrots — tossed in a teaspoon of oil, 15-18 minutes, and they char at the edges the way a hot oven does.

What it is bad at

Anything wet. Battered food, anything in a marinade with liquid in it, and anything with a loose coating. Wet batter drips through the crisper plate onto the heating element and burns; loose breadcrumbs get blown off by the fan and end up scattered around the basket. Dry rubs and dry coatings work; wet ones do not.

Quantity. The 4-quart basket cooks for one to two people. Food must sit in a single layer with air gaps to crisp, and the moment you pile it up you get steaming instead of browning. Cooking for four means two or three batches, at which point an oven is faster overall. This is the single most common regret I've heard from people who bought one.

Cake and anything that rises delicately. The fan is strong enough to deform a light batter. I tried twice and got lopsided results both times.

Anything needing gentle even heat. The heating element is directly above the food, so the top browns faster than the bottom and you must turn or shake. Nothing cooks unattended for 40 minutes the way it does in an oven.

The two claims that are nonsense

"Healthier." An air fryer uses less oil than deep frying, which is true and irrelevant unless you were deep frying at home, which almost nobody was. Compared to an oven — what most people actually replace — the oil difference is zero. Food cooked in an air fryer is as healthy as the same food cooked in an oven, which is to say it depends entirely on the food.

"Fried." There is no frying. It is convection roasting with a fast fan. A properly deep-fried chip and an air fried chip are recognisably different foods, and if you're expecting the former you'll be disappointed on day one. What you get is a good roast potato in chip form, which is genuinely nice and is not the same thing.

The presets, and which ones I used

Mine has eight preset buttons — chips, chicken, steak, fish, vegetables, bake, reheat, dehydrate. Each is a preset time and temperature, nothing more, and they are all conservative.

After the first fortnight I stopped using them entirely and set time and temperature manually, which is two dial turns. The presets are useful for exactly one thing: they tell you a sensible starting temperature for a food type if you have no idea. Chips at 200°C, chicken at 190°C, fish at 180°C, vegetables at 190°C. Once you know those four numbers the presets are decoration.

Noise, smell and counter space

The fan measured around 65 dB at a metre — a constant whoosh for the entire cook, louder than a microwave and quieter than a blender. In an open-plan room it's noticeable throughout a 20-minute cook.

Smell escapes more than an oven because the basket is not sealed. Cooking fish left a detectable smell in the kitchen for a couple of hours, where an oven contains it better.

Footprint is 32 x 32 cm and it needs about 12 cm of clearance behind for the exhaust, which means it cannot sit flush against a wall. Mine took a permanent corner of counter, and that is the honest cost — an air fryer is not a cupboard appliance, because one that lives in a cupboard doesn't get used.

Cleaning, and the thing to check before buying

Basket and crisper plate are non-stick and dishwasher safe, and I've run them through perhaps 30 cycles with no coating damage. Hand washing takes two minutes.

The part nobody mentions is the heating element above the basket. Fat aerosolises during cooking and coats it, and after about six weeks mine had a visible brown film that began to smoke slightly at 200°C. Cleaning it means unplugging the unit, letting it cool completely, tipping it upside down and wiping the element and the ceiling with a damp cloth. It takes five minutes and needs doing monthly. Skip it and you get a smoking appliance and eventually a burnt smell in everything you cook.

Check before you buy that the element is reachable. Some designs make it genuinely awkward.

Accessories, and which are worth it

Perforated parchment liners, about $10 for a hundred, are the one accessory I'd buy again. They catch marinade drips before they reach the element, which addresses the main cleaning problem, and they don't block airflow the way solid foil does. Solid foil across the basket floor is the mistake to avoid — it stops air reaching the food from below and you get a soggy underside.

A small oven-safe dish that fits the basket, about $12, extends what the machine can do: baked eggs, small gratins, and anything saucy that would otherwise drip through. Cooking time runs longer because the dish blocks airflow, roughly 1.5x, but it works.

Skip the silicone basket liners. I tested one for two weeks and it insulated the food from the basket floor enough to noticeably reduce browning on the underside, which is the whole reason you bought the appliance.

Against the alternatives

Against a full-size oven, the air fryer wins on speed, energy and small-batch crisping, and loses on capacity, unattended cooking and anything baked. It complements an oven rather than replacing one, and everyone I know who claimed it replaced their oven turned out to cook for one.

Against a countertop convection oven at a similar price, the convection oven holds more, takes a baking tray, has a window and a light, and crisps slightly less aggressively. If you're choosing between them and you cook for three or more people, the convection oven is the more useful appliance.

Against a $180 dual-basket air fryer, you get the ability to cook two things at two temperatures, which solves the capacity problem for a family. It also takes twice the counter space, which is not free.

Who should buy this

Buy a 4-quart basket air fryer if you cook for one or two, if you eat frozen food or chicken regularly, if you reheat leftovers often, or if running a full oven for a small meal annoys you. Buy it particularly if summer kitchen heat is a problem where you live.

Buy a larger or dual-basket model if you cook for three or more, because batch cooking is the fastest route to resenting this appliance. Skip it entirely if you want to bake, if you have no permanent counter space, or if you bought into the healthier-frying claim — because that claim is the least true thing about a genuinely useful device.

Verdict

Four months and about 120 cooks in, this air fryer earned its counter space on energy and speed rather than on anything the marketing says. It used a third of my oven's electricity for the same meal, crisps frozen food and chicken skin better than an oven, and has turned leftover reheating from a compromise into a genuinely good outcome. Against that: it feeds two people at most, wet batters are impossible, cake is impossible, it's 65 dB for the whole cook, the heating element needs monthly cleaning nobody warns you about, and it does not fry and does not make food healthy. A very good small appliance sold on two false premises.