We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.
These mini super ovens make moist chicken, delicious pasta dishes and even light and fluffy cakes Kitchen Tandem Pull Out Basket
This article was updated in January to include the new tried and tested air fryer health grill from Procook and our new joint runner up, the Salter EK5728 Fuzion Dual Air Fryer.
Fried favourites cooked more healthily may sound a little too good to be true but, thanks to the nifty air fryer, you can serve up classics such as fish and chips using little to no oil.
In fact, this increasingly popular appliance can cook everything from chicken to cupcakes (and much, much more) in a few simple steps, making it a great multi-purpose gadget to have in the kitchen.
Interested? Well, the Good Housekeeping Institute has tested the leading models to find the best air fryers to buy now:
If you’re replacing an existing air fryer, there are plenty of places for you to safely recycle your old one. Find your nearest electrical recycling point, or read our guide on how to donate or dispose of your appliances and tech for extra guidance.
In a nutshell, air fryers use an alternative cooking method to deep frying. Rather than submerging food in oil, air fryers use very little – in our tests we used one tablespoon of oil as standard – to bake food quickly.
They work by blasting hot air around the basket or oven instead, producing crispy and fluffy chips or moist chicken that’s healthier than if the food had been coated in oil.
You may have read recently that an air fryer can save you money on your electricity bills. They certainly are time and energy efficient; the cheapest when roasting a small chicken on test was the Tower T17100 Vortx Vizion Dual Basket Air Fryer, which used just 17p of electricity over 30 minutes of cooking time.
However, if you need to use an air fryer multiple times to make enough food to feed your household, you’re probably better off cooking everything in one go in the oven. Not to mention, most air fryers are an expensive initial investment, meaning it will take a while for savings on your energy bill to cancel out their cost.
Not all air fryers are created equal – there are a few different designs to choose between.
Basket-style air fryers have one or two drawers where you place your food for cooking. Those with two drawers are particularly handy if you want to cook different foods at the same time, but they can take up a lot more room in the kitchen than their more compact counterparts.
There are also oven-style air fryers that often come with rotisserie accessories, so you can roast a full chicken for example. Again, these tend to be fairly weighty appliances.
Some on our list, such as the Instant Pot Duo Crisp + Air Fryer, are actually multi-cookers, giving you multiple appliances in one, including a slow cooker or dehydrator as well as an air fryer. We’ve also included one machine that doubles as a health grill.
Lastly, it’s worth thinking about clean-up – most of the fryers on our list have dishwasher-proof baskets and accessories, while the two oven air fryers we’ve featured have removable doors to help you keep your machine as clean as possible.
The experts at the GHI cook up a small feast to find the best air fryers. Depending on the capacity and type of fryer, they either roast a whole chicken or cook chicken kievs, monitoring how long it takes for the chicken to reach 75C. Then they judge (and try!) the results, looking for crispy, golden skin and moist meat.
Chips are next – they look for quickly cooked, well-browned and crunchy skins that house fluffy interiors. Finally, they make fairy cakes, to judge how well the appliance can bake and how evenly air circulates – the better baked and fluffier the cakes, the more efficient the air flow.
Each air fryer is then scored overall according to its performance, ease of use, design, instructions and accompanying information. See our top-rated picks below.
And once you've found your perfect air fryer, head to our round-up of the best air fryer recipes for some cooking inspiration, including a delicious recipe for lemon drizzle cake. Need some tips on how to use your air fryer? The GH cookery team has your back.
Barely dropping a point on test, this air fryer will feed a crowd quickly, and feed them well. Our fairy cakes were evenly baked and ready to enjoy in a speedy 15 minutes, while it scored perfect marks for chicken kievs – they were crispy on the outside yet juicy in the middle after 25 minutes. Our chips were fluffy, too.
It's a fairly hefty appliance, so if your kitchen is compact it may not be for you, but you can fill its two drawers with different foods and sync the programmes so everything is ready to eat at the same time – a process we found intuitive on test. A great family fryer.
Just like our other winner, this Haier air fryer provided consistently crispy results across the board, making it a great choice for delicious fried feasts without all that oil.
It earned a perfect score for producing golden, flavourful chicken with a beautifully crisp exterior. It also baked light and fluffy cupcakes that rose to an impressive 40cm with a baking time of 20 minutes. In some cases, the food needed a few extra minutes in the fryer to be perfectly cooked, but that’s just a case of trial and error.
One handy feature with this air fryer is that it reminds you to shake your food mid-cooking. Our testers found this particularly helpful for ensuring even cooking and consistent crispiness. While it isn’t quite as big as the Ninja, its 7.5 litre capacity should still comfortably serve up enough portions for a delicious family dinner.
This latest model from Instant was impressive on all fronts in our tests – it turned a 1.3kg whole chicken into a golden, moist and tender feast, while cupcakes came out beautifully cooked and fluffy.
What makes it unique from Instant’s other models is that it can be switched between two independent 4.2L cooking baskets to one XXL 8.5L basket simply by removing the divider. While each basket has separate controls, they can be paired with the SyncFinish function so all your food will be ready at the same time.
Our chips came out well cooked but – and we’re being picky here – about 20% lacked that golden brown shade we were looking for. The only other thing to note was that the wells in the bottom plate created an uneven surface, which led to some misshapen cupcakes, but those are minor issues.
In almost every other sense, this air fryer is an excellent buy. Our testers loved the handy alert that reminds you to turn your food at crucial cooking points and were pleased with how easy it is to use, programme, and clean (it’s dishwasher-safe).
Just like the Instant model above, this Salter air fryer has an adjustable dual basket design for added versatility – you can either cook different foods in each of the two 4L compartments or remove the divider to create one 8L basket. It also has eight pre-set cooking functions, so you’ll never be stuck in the kitchen.
It scored almost perfect marks across the board in our tests, delivering light, crispy chips and succulent chicken, which you can programme to be ready at the same time using the handy sync function. However, it really impressed when baking cupcakes – a task many air fryers struggle with. They came out beautifully golden and risen. Even Mary Berry would find it hard to compete.
It doesn’t have a child-lock and the components aren’t dishwasher-friendly (although they’re easy to wipe clean). But those minor quibbles aside, it’s easy to use and comes with detailed instructions (both physical and via a QR code that takes you to video tutorials). A smart buy for busy bakers.
While a predecessor to the VersaZone, this one is no less impressive. You can’t combine the two drawers, but you can sync them to prepare multiple dishes at once, with a total capacity of 7.6L, which is plenty of space for cooking for a family of four.
The results didn’t disappoint either, with a particularly succulent roast chicken. Our chips were fluffy too, but crisped up best when distributed across two drawers, rather than cramming lots into one. Turning them a few times helped as well.
The lack of cooking charts means some guesswork is required to begin with, but you can scan a QR code in the booklet to access lots of recipes online (albeit not very traditional ones).
Handy windows also mean you can easily check ion how your food is doing. Plus, the effective non-stick design made washing up a breeze, which is always a bonus in our book.
Not just an air fryer, this multi-cooker also grills, sears, roasts, bakes and slow cooks, making it a smart choice if you’re after a space-saving do-it-all appliance.
It claims to air fry up to 70% quicker than earlier Russell Hobbs models; this wasn’t tested, but it did cook our chicken to succulent, golden perfection in a faster-than-most 30 minutes (simply press the chicken icon on the casing and it presets the optimal temperature and cooking time.)
Simple and modern in design, it couldn’t be easier to set up and use. The buttons are responsive, it’s compact for storage in smaller kitchens and it’s lightweight enough to move around. It scored a perfect ten in our chips and chicken tests, only dropping a few marks for its patchy cupcakes (not all rose well and some came out paler than others) and fiddly iron basket, which proved tricky to remove while wearing oven gloves.
At £80 less than our winning Ninja, this is a more affordable offering from the premium kitchen appliance brand. It also proved its worth on test, with perfectly chicken kievs inside and out. Chips were scrumptious too, but we recommend cooking them in smaller batches for best results.
The compact design is ideal for cooking for one or two people. It also has a clear display, is stable in use and lightweight if you’re storing it in a cupboard. But unlike most fryers, the basket doesn’t have a proper handle, which means oven gloves are needed when removing it.
There are also plenty of recipes and food charts included, so you can cook up a storm as soon as you set it up.
Ninja’s new 10-mode multi-cooker stands out for its innovative “Speedi Meals” function, which allows you to cook your grain of choice at the same time as meat and vegetables, thus quickly preparing a full meal for up to four people at once.
Impressively, every part of our trial meals cooked correctly and retained their flavour, with both chicken and salmon turning out moist and tender. It also cooked chips in a respectable 22 minutes (two minutes faster than the promised 24) and delivered fluffy fairy cakes.
The lid is hinged, rather than removable, which our tester found slightly awkward to use, and may make under-cupboard storage tricky. However, the control interface is intuitive, the troubleshooting advice is clear and it comes with a recipe booklet packed with tasty inspiration for each setting.
This smart fryer has ample room to prepare a family dinner and boasts a whopping 13 cooking modes, including steak, seafood and frozen food.
It took a while to roast a chicken but, 45 minutes later, it came out golden and moist, while our fairy cakes were just right. When cooking chips, it dropped just half a mark – they were exceptionally evenly cooked.
We like how it comes with an extensive recipe book and detailed instructions too, while its accompanying app lets you control the machine remotely for helpful flexibility.
As well as air frying, this machine works as a pressure cooker, slow cooker, sauté pan, steamer, sous vide and food warmer with extra settings for roasting, broiling, baking and dehydrating!
On test, it delivered delicious chips and scored perfect marks for its fairy cakes, although we were unable to bulk bake as we could only fit five in at a time.
As a result of its multi-purpose design, it wasn’t the most intuitive model we tested for air frying, but its online instructions should help you get set up quickly.
The capacity of its air frying basket was also fairly small – we managed to cook two chicken kievs and three portions of chips. One side of our chicken kiev stuck to it, too. That said, this is worth investing in if you’re only looking to cook for one or two and need a multi-tasking machine to save on storage space.
Tight on cupboard space? This slim air fryer should slot in nicely. We were able to cook two chicken kievs in it at once and the end results were crispy, while our chips were well-browned. Our fairy cakes cooked evenly, too.
The digital display didn’t always respond well to our touch and we’d have liked an indicator light to show the fryer was heated and ready to cook. As a basic air fryer, though, it did a reliable job at producing tasty food.
Does the world of air fryers seem daunting? Well, this dual-basket machine comes with clear instructions and food charts, which make getting started simple. The display is easy to follow and setting up each drawer is straightforward. It’s also one of the more compact dual air fryers we tested, making it suitable for smaller kitchens.
Heat distribution was mixed though; food positioned in the front half of each drawer cooked better than that at the back. Luckily, this didn’t impact the finished dishes too much – our chicken was juicy and our chips were the perfect texture inside, if a little unevenly browned.
Some cupcakes were undercooked, but this shouldn’t be a dealbreaker for an otherwise beginner-friendly machine.
Boasting a three-litre basket, this air fryer has ample room if you’re cooking for the family. It barely dropped any points in our chips and cupcake tests, with both emerging evenly cooked thanks to outstanding air circulation. And while the chicken kievs lost some moisture from the middle, they were crisp.
The outside of the appliance stayed cool during cooking and, overall, it was easy to use thanks to clear instructions and recipes. Coming with a two-year guarantee, this is a great value buy.
This nifty little air fryer is a great affordable choice. Its controls are clear and responsive, the machine is stable in use, and it’s effortless to clean thanks to a trusty non-stick coating. The cooking performance also impressed, with our chicken, chips and cupcakes hard to fault.
Despite its one-basket design, you can cook multiple meal components at once thanks to the “Group-Fry” function. It took some trial and error to get this right on test, but eventually we figured out the perfect size to chop our vegetables so they stayed moist while the steak finished cooking.
This air fryer is a good alternative if you’re cooking for one or two, or don’t have room for a dual-drawer model.
This multi-cooker's top feature is that it only has one lid, unlike many that need one for pressure cooking and one for everything else (including the Instant Pot above).
In theory, this means it’s easier to store, but given its large capacity – it should feed between six and eight people – we’d recommend checking your cupboard space before buying.
Overall, it’s intuitively designed; our tester barely looked at the instructions. And it cooked a medium-sized chicken in 45 minutes to delicious effect – think juicy, tender meat.
Note, the manual doesn’t make clear that to start cooking you need to press the buttons twice, but this qualm aside, we’d happily declare this a multi-tasking master chef.
If the winning Ninja ticks your boxes but isn’t in your price range, then this Salter model may be of interest. Like our top-scorer, it has two drawers and a sync function, so you can cook two different foods at once, safe in the knowledge they’ll both be ready to eat at the same time.
Its match function also lets you use the same settings for both drawers – although we noticed our fairy cakes were cooked to slightly different levels on test.
Our chips were evenly cooked and browned in both drawers though, but note that the pre-set function took 30 minutes as opposed to the 15 advertised. The chicken kievs also stuck to the drawers a tad, but they were deliciously crispy.
It proved intuitive to use on test, thanks to a clear display panel, responsive controls and easy-to-use pre-sets. Plus, it comes with a three-year guarantee.
With 12 cooking functions, this air fryer also works as a health grill, like the Ninja above. Its controls were intuitive and easy to use – a single knob lets you switch between all the different settings – something our testers found useful.
Our chips and fairy cakes came out well-cooked but were a little inconsistent; the chips were light and fluffy, but some came out browner than we’d have liked, and the bottom of our fairy cakes were also on the darker side. Testers would have liked some more guidance on timings, but with a bit of trial and error, you should achieve perfect results.
Despite this small niggle, our testers were impressed with this fryer’s versatility and easy-to-clean design.
Arriving in plastic-free packaging, this machine reached 200C in a rapid three minutes and put in its best performance when cooking chicken, dropping just one mark. We had to spatchcock the 1.3kg bird to fit it in, and it took 65 minutes to cook, but the skin was mouthwateringly crispy and the meat was moist.
It’s a bulky bit of kit, but we found it easy to use and appreciated the included cooking charts that detail how to use the machine to prepare different foods. It also boasts a nifty built-in temperature probe but we’d only use it as a guide, as it was a few degrees out when we took a reading from the chicken using an external probe.
Here’s one of the more affordable dual-basket air fryers we tried. This model also has clear windows so you can keep an eye on your roast while it cooks – and you’ll want to use it for roasts, as our chicken was near-perfect on test.
Our chips were mixed, however, with some emerging greasy and underdone. We found this was because one drawer performed better than the other, which is something to keep in mind when cooking.
We found the drawer syncing feature worked well though, and its controls are intuitive. It’s a reliable pick for cooking a whole meal in one go.
Rotisserie fans will love this simple-to-use model. It comes with a spit and cooked our chicken in 64 minutes – well inside the time it claimed. We found placing the chicken in the oven was a bit fiddly – we had to tie its legs and wings to the body in order for it to fit – but it was roasted evenly throughout.
The appliance was ready to fry from cold in just four minutes too, and you can remove the door so cleaning is a doddle. It is large, making it one for bigger kitchens, but its 10-litre capacity is ideal if you frequently feed a crowd.
Hannah is our homes editor, specialising in reviewing the latest kitchen appliances, cleaning products, mattresses and bedding, and crafting equipment. Hannah has written about hundreds of products, from air fryers to smoothie makers to pillows, and is committed to finding the most reliable and best value for money buys.
Hannah is also interested in sustainability in the home and has completed a course with the University of the Arts London in sustainable textiles, so she can help cut through the noise on what’s green and what’s not. Hannah has an MA in Magazine Journalism and has previously worked as a freelance lifestyle and women’s sports journalist, working for Stylist, Sky Sports and more.
Hannah has also previously worked in a florist and can normally be found caring for her house plants or sewing something new for her home or wardrobe.
Megan is the Good Housekeeping Institute’s homes writer. She loves diving into the latest product releases to find the very best buys on the market. When she’s not writing about the newest gadgets and gizmos for your home and garden, you’ll find her cooking, running and exploring London’s foodie hotspots – or trying to make friends with every dog she passes. Megan has an MA in Magazine Journalism and has previously written for Stylist, Glamour, TimeOut, SquareMeal, and YOU magazine. You can find Megan on Instagram @meganlouisegeall and on X @megan_geall
Blossom is our Senior Homes Tester. Passionate about finding the best home products and appliances for our readers, she has tested everything from blenders to pizza ovens. Blossom enjoys delving into the intricacies of products and refining testing protocols for hundreds of items. Innovative items like robot vacuum cleaners and wine coolers are among her favourite tests to date, and her most notable accomplishment is toasting 360 slices of bread in a determined bid to find the best toaster. In her free time, Blossom openly admits to being a music geek and indulges her creative side through crocheting, baking, singing and writing.
17 best flavoured gins, expert tested
26 best eye creams for wrinkles and fine lines
17 best coffee pods to try
21 best hair dryers, tried and tested
The best vibrators to buy in 2024
The best pressure washers to buy in 2024
11 best IPL hair removal devices 2024
15 best garment steamers, tried and tested
8 best home gel nail kits
The best pan sets for 2024
Good Housekeeping, Part of the Hearst UK Fashion & Beauty Network
Good Housekeeping participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.
Kitchen Basket 6 Shelf Pull Out Rack ©2024 Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ. Registered in England. All Rights Reserved.