BLACK+DECKER Purifry Review

The BLACK+DECKER Purifry is a high-performing air fryer that is just slightly bested by some of its main competitors.

Performance Comparison

The BLACK+DECKER Purifry did well in nearly all of our tests, but fell just short of reaching the top of our scoreboard.

Cooking Performance

The Purifry produced the best results for some foods in our testing, but had some drawbacks with others. This combination let it share the top score in this metric with a few other models.

The Purifry earned superlatives in our cooking tests for onion rings, tater tots, and chicken breasts. Its onion rings were perfectly golden and crispy, yet nice and tender inside. It repeated that feat with tater tots that provided a nice crunch quickly giving way to a delightful fluffiness. Its chicken breast came out tasting like store-bought roasted chicken.

The Purifry's air basket fits snugly enough that you generally need to use two hands to slide it in and out.

It had some weak points when it came to doughnuts and (like all the air fryers we've tested) sweet potato fries. Doughnuts came out with a nice crust, but the insides were a bit overcooked and thus tasted a bit more chewy than fluffy. Sweet potato fries came out browned but not crispy. However, the only model we've found that could produce even a slightly better texture than that is the GoWISE 3.7 Quart, and even that model fell short of the crunchy decadence one would hope for.

User Friendliness

We generally like the Purifry's user interface and experience, but it missed out on a top score because we wish it had a digital readout.

The Purifry has two knobs, one for selecting cooking time and one for temperature, and some indicator lights to let you know when preheating is done. This interface is simple and easy enough, but we're always going to prefer a digital readout that shows the exact temperature and time to knobs that aren't always precise. Also, the numbers on these dials are small and relatively hard to read, so it's fairly easy to set the wrong temp or time by mistake.

We found the Purifry's lack of any sort of digital readout slightly disappointing.

Another minor complaint we have with the Purifry is the fact that its frying basket fits very tightly. That makes it a bit difficult to remove it with one hand as you generally need to stabilize the unit with a second hand as you pull out your food.

Ease of Cleaning

We had almost no issues in cleaning the Purifry. The fry basket tends not to hang onto grease, and there aren't any nooks or crannies where food scraps can hide. Our only complaint is that the texture of the fry basket is a little rough, so it might tear tiny bits off of your sponge.

The Purifry's basket design makes for easy scrubbing.

Temperature Accuracy

At higher temperatures, we found the Purifry's temperature accuracy to be spot on. At the lowest temperatures you'd use for air frying (300˚) it tended to run a bit hot.

Value

The BLACK+DECKER Purifry, but like many air fryers can often be found online for around half of that. While we don't think paying that much for the overall good performance of the BLACK+DECKER Purifry is a bad value, you can generally spend a little less and get the slightly better performance of the Ninja 1550 Watt. Therefore we would only suggest buying the BLACK+DECKER Purifry if you can't find the Ninja 1550 Watt.

Conclusion