The 19 best air fryers in 2024 for an easy, healthy way to upgrade your cooking
Whatever you’re cooking, the air fryer is the kitchen companion you never knew you needed. Shop GQ’s edit of the best air fryers for 2024
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If you're looking for the best air fryers, you've come to the right place. Versatile gadgets that have transformed the kitchen appliance world, these turbo-charged mini ovens are one of the best buys for your kitchen. In other words, the hype is real.
With that in mind, we’ve rounded up some of the top offerings on this very page, to help make your buying decision that bit easier. But why should you care? Well, their ease of use, slick clean-up, dishwasher-safe parts and use of far less oil, all make for some extremely compelling reasons.
As well as cooking chips with little to no oil at all, an air fryer can work wonders on a host of other sweet and savoury foods, which can be cooked from fresh or frozen. Herby chicken wings? You got it. Salmon with a mustard-herb marinade? Coming right up. Sounds enticing, right? Better yet, even the best budget air fryers can sear veggies, broil chicken, and whip up batches of crispy french fries without breaking a sweat.
If you've saved a whole list of air fryer recipes on your phone notes and are finally ready to take the plunge into a world of better, more affordable, and healthier cooking, look no further. From nonstick digital air fryers from Ninja to Morphy Richards, these are all the best air fryers, all summarised with a few pros and cons to help you know which will suit you the best. Happy cooking...
What's the best air fryer in 2024? What are the top three air fryers?
With plenty of presets, easy controls, a generous 5.5L capacity, and an elegant design, the Cosori XXL has a lot going for it. Even better, it's reasonably priced too, making it a foolproof choice for first-time air fryer users.
Taking up less space than most rivals, the Foodie Max will happily produce deliciously juicy, crispy results, with baking, frying, roasting, dehydrating and grilling functions all present and accounted for.
Two 4.5L drawers make this sleek double air fryer one of the best choices for chefs with plenty of hungry mouths to feed. The ability to automatically ensure that both drawers finish cooking at the same time is also an indispensable feature that'll save you from any mental arithmetic.
The Best Air Fryers At A Glance…
- Best multifunctional air fryer: Cosori XXL, £66 at amazon.co.uk
- Best compact air fryer: Ninja Foodie Max, £269 at amazon.co.uk
- Best oven air fryer: Proscenic Air Fryer Oven T31, £129 at amazon.co.uk
- Best multi-drawer air fryer: Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer, £219 at amazon.co.uk
Skip to: How does an air fryer work? | What can I cook in an air fryer? | What should I look for when buying an air fryer? | How we chose the best air fryers 2024
How does an air fryer work?
Air frying works by circulating hot air around your food (courtesy of a powerful heating element) crisping and browning ingredients to enhance flavour and add a delicious crunch. In essence, it’s like having a miniature convection oven on your kitchen counter — albeit one with incredibly powerful air circulation, given the smaller area. Quick and easy to use, an air fryer can be a healthy choice as you need to use little to no oil. While you can achieve similar results in a conventional oven, an air fryer speeds up the cooking process.
What can I cook in an air fryer?
The choice of what you can cook in an air fryer is vast. With an air fryer, the humble chip can turn from a guilty pleasure to a guilt-free side dish in under 20 minutes. You can use both fresh, hand-cut potatoes or frozen chips in the fryer and, if needed, you just add around half a teaspoon of oil or use an oil spray, then pop them in the air fryer for it to work its magic. You can also experiment with sweet potatoes, courgettes, carrots, and parsnips alike to make a healthier alternative chip.
An air fryer also provides speedy cooking of convenience foods, such as roast chicken, fish fingers, chicken nuggets and frozen chips, which can be a godsend if you’ve got fussy kids and need to feed them quickly. It really comes into its own, however, when cooking fresh cuts of meat, fish and vegetables. This is particularly enticing if you’ve left dinner to the last minute but want to speedily prepare something nutritious and satisfying, without messing around with a fancy sauté in a stainless steel pan (or, heaven forbid, a traditional oven).
What should I look for when buying an air fryer?
A stirring paddle: This moves your food around as it cooks and will come in handy if you want to “set and forget” your food until it’s ready. The majority of designs don’t come with this feature, however, so you’ll need to attend to your food at least once mid-way through cooking to stir and ensure the oil is being evenly distributed and the food evenly cooked.
Easy-to-use digital controls: The best designs come with digital controls that allow you to easily adjust the temperature and let you see how long is left in the cooking process.
Extra settings: As well as the ability to air-fry food, some designs come with more conventional settings and work much like a multi-cooker, with dedicated buttons to bake, roast, reheat, rehydrate and max crisp. You can even go far beyond standard air fry functions, with some units offering pressure cooking, instant pot, slow cook, and toaster oven smarts.
Useful extras: If you want to be able to control your air fryer using your smartphone as a remote, then look for a design such as the Proscenic Smart Air Fryer, which is Wi-Fi enabled. Meanwhile, an automatic switch-off feature that does just that is ideal for safety, and any extras in the box, such as a serving spoon or recipe book, are a bonus. Other handy things to look out for are things like viewing windows, saving you from popping out the drawer to check on your food.
Dual-cooking zones: If you plan to use your air fryer for more than just a simple portion of chips, then choose a design with two cooking zones (aka, dual basket airfryers). These let you cook two different foods simultaneously and you can set them so they are ready to serve at the same time.
How we chose the best air fryers 2024
Air fryers have a surprising amount of variation; whether by their size, how many drawers they have, and any additional cooking styles that you can use them for. To make sure we chose the best air fryers you can buy right now, we looked for a range of different options, from more affordable ones to the most premium. Whichever suits you, your household, and your space more, these are all set to give your cooking a major upgrade.
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