Here's 10 best air fryers

This Duo Crisp & Air Fryer from Instant Pot is an absolute dream. It’s not the smallest or most attractive of all the kitchenware out there, but it more than makes up for it in what it can do. The Duo has two lids – one for pressure cooking and one for frying – so you can slow cook, steam, sauté and sous vide (slow cooking in a fancy French way) with the former, and air fry, roast, bake, broil and dehydrate with the latter. There are also 11 cooking settings, a shake reminder and a multi-level basket.

At £250 a pop, this Ninja Foodi MAX ain’t for the fainthearted. But if you like sleek, compact style (it actually looks like a ninja crossed with a pizza oven), wide technical range and hands-off cooking, this is the air fryer for you. It has a digital probe, so you can cook to precise levels of ‘doneness’, there's no flipping involved mid-cook, and the temperature-controlled grill plate paired with a cool-air zone (whatever that is) reduces smoke. Ninja says that it’s also especially good at reheating leftovers such as pizza to a fresh standard and – our favourite part – it dehydrates, so you can make sweet or savoury jerky.

Boasting shells in red, white or black and myriad touch-screen buttons that appear and disappear with use, this behemoth will look a bit like Kubrick’s Monolith has landed on your worktop, but trust us, it’s worth making room for. At 5.5l, and with a square drawer for max capacity, the COSORI Pro II XXL can feed up to six family members. It also comes with 11 cooking functions, 100 free recipes, it’ll switch off as soon as anyone opens the frying drawer for safety, and it can remind you to give the basket a little shake when needed. 

Priced at less than £50, this Tower T17021 family fryer makes for a wallet-friendly option. What you gain in pennies saved, you lose in style and fancy features, but it does all the things you need it to: fry, bake, grill and roast. Plus it has a 60-minute timer, cooks up to temperatures of 200ºc and can fit 2.2l of food at a time, which will easily feed two people, or one hungry eater. So it won’t look as sexy on your kitchen counter – around the size of a small coffee machine, you can stick it in the cupboard when you’re not using it.

If you love all that spotless stainless steel in professional kitchens, you’ll be more than happy to display the Russell Hobbs 26095 Air Fryer Mini Oven on your counter. It’s sleek, simple – just three knobs and a flip down door – and pretty (if you like that kinda thing). Plus it comes in at under £100, so a bargain to boot. Cook up to four times faster than your biggy oven and, unlike many on the market, the 26095 comes with a bake pan and rack included, so you can fry, grill, bake and toast to your heart’s content.

Air fryers are great an’ all, but wouldn’t they be so much better if you could use them without having to get up or even be in the same room? Hello! Proscenic hears you and provides, because their T21 XXL can be controlled via your phone and Alexa. That means you can set it to cook to preset dishes in the app, you can change settings from the sofa and even schedule meals to be ready for when you get home. Another big plus for this Proscenic is the 5.5l drawer and the ace optional accessories, like the pie bucket (yes please) and the pizza tray.

Back in 2010 Philips launched this little guy, the HD9220 (or a former version of) from their Viva Collection, which will fry almost anything you want up to 2.2l (one to two portions). You’ll need something bigger if you’re cooking for the whole family, but it fits a good batch of grub in at once. Adding accessories like the food separator, grill pan or pastry rack will allow for some creative baking, grilling and all-round multitasking and ensure you’re using the sleek machine to its full potential.

The Princess 182065 is massive. A whopping 10l massive – that’s a big ol’ family feast in waiting. You can roast an entire medium chicken in this mini oven (it even comes with a rotisserie arm), or dehydrate a week’s worth of snacks on its three shelves, or simply fry some chips in the unique, drum-like wire basket. It also comes with a grill rack and handle, plus a non-stick crumb tray. Looks-wise, it could be prettier, but if you need the capacity and you have the room, plump for a Princess.

Compared to Ninja’s Foodi MAX, this little brother model is fairly basic, but it’s also over £100 cheaper, so you get what you pay for in this instance. It comes with a crisper plate included and has four functions that’ll allow for frying, roasting, reheating and dehydrating food. You can use this air fryer without any oil at all if you wish, but a little is recommended for best (read: deliciously crispy) results.

Although this Tefal ActiFry Genius won’t exactly blend into the background, it’s the most compact air fryer in our list. It’s shaped like a squat kettle that’ll sit unassumingly beside your toaster, but it fits a surprising amount in. That’ll be where the XL 2-in-1 portion of its name comes into play. This little Tardis can fry crispy chips and cook juicy chicken at the same time, or so say Tefal. What it really does is cooks one and keeps it warm (and fresh) while it cooks the other. Still, it’ll leave you time to spare when you would have been juggling your side dish.