The 5 Best Air Fryers of 2023

Best Overall Air Fryer

Instant Vortex Plus

Capacity: 6 qt | Accessories: None

The Instant Vortex Plus excels in every test, which lands it at the top of the pack as our favorite air fryer in the test suite. It fully delivers, cooking everything to near perfection, producing delectably crunchy onion rings and mouth-watering donuts — all with minimal oil. Perhaps most impressively, it achieves an excellent texture and slight crispness when making sweet potato fries, which is no easy feat. The Vortex Plus utilizes a smooth tray rather than a fry basket, making the cleaning process much easier. That simplicity extends to the user interface, as it allows for a pleasant user experience via the easy-to-navigate settings. This machine's temperature accuracy is near perfect, ensuring you achieve the same results time after time. True to the Instant brand, this device is multi-functional — it can dehydrate, reheat, and do some basic baking.

The Instant Vortex Plus gives us very little to gripe about. While we note the price isn't the lowest, we feel the overall performance is well worth the cost. As long as you're willing to spend a little extra, the Vortex Plus is the best way to satisfy fried food cravings without going overboard on the oil.

Read more: Instant Vortex Plus review

Best on a Budget

GoWISE USA Digital

Capacity: 5.8 qt | Accessories: none

The GoWISE USA Digital is a 5.8-quart air fryer that is perfect for all potato products. Sweet potato fries are notoriously difficult to cook in the air fryer, but the GoWISE did surprisingly well. Our sweet potatoes were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Tater tots and onion rings offer a satisfying crunch, and donuts are fully cooked with a golden brown exterior. The temperature reading is very accurate for such a budget-friendly air fryer. The range reaches 400 degrees, which is plenty high for most recipes, although some air fryers can surpass this temperature.

The interface is not super straightforward, and the buttons don't always register on the first touch. This can be a little frustrating but does not significantly lower the overall user experience. The GoWISE is very easy to wipe down, and both the basket and drawer are dishwasher safe; however, when you separate the two pieces, the drawer is left without a handle, so you have to wait until it cools completely before cleaning it. Our biggest gripe with the GoWISE Digital is the way it cooks meat. Unfortunately, it leaves chicken chewy and tough. That said, if your plan is mostly to cook potatoes or doughy foods, the GoWISE is a great budget-friendly option.

Read more: GoWISE USA Digital review

An Excellent Mid-Volume Model

Ninja Air Fryer

Capacity: 4 qt | Accessories: Dehydrating rack

In your search for an air fryer, you may have noticed that many high-end models opt for a larger six-quart capacity. If you're short on counter or storage space or simply do not need the larger capacity but still want top-notch performance, the four-quart Ninja Air Fryer is our top recommendation. Our tests consistently churn out satisfyingly crispy foods with minimal fuss. We are also impressed by its temperature accuracy, which our thermometers indicate is spot on. Accuracy is important for this particular model because it doubles as a food dehydrator, a process vastly improved by steady and precise temperatures.

The biggest downside to the Ninja is the fryer basket. Gunk tends to gather in the numerous nooks and crannies on the bottom of the basket, requiring extra elbow grease to clean thoroughly. The Ninja offers otherwise impressive performance as long as you don't mind some extra cleaning effort.

Read more: Ninja Air Fryer review

Best Oven-Air Fryer Combo

Ninja Foodi Digital Oven

Capacity: 4 qt | Accessories: Wire rack, 13" x 13" nonstick sheet pan, 13" x 13" air fry basket

Multifunctionality is quickly becoming the name of the game for countertop kitchen appliances, and the Ninja Foodi Digital Oven is currently at the forefront of that trend. It effectively combines the abilities of an air fryer, a toaster oven, and a dehydrator into a single device that can flip upright when not in use, barely taking up any counter space. In terms of cooking functionality per square inch of counter storage space, it may just be one of the top kitchen appliances in the world. Our tests prove that it can back up all these flashy specs with real performance. We are able to make near-perfect onion rings and delicious donuts, and can also get a nice crispy skin-on chicken. It performs similarly well in our testing as a toaster oven and dehydrator.

Due to the oven-style design, a potholder is necessary to handle the air fryer basket. We found this to be far less convenient than the basket handles featured by many machines. Overall, this shortcoming is a small sacrifice to gain the extra functionality of the Foodi Digital Oven. While the price is higher than most competing air fryers, you're essentially getting three devices in one, giving you more value for your dollar. If you're looking to kit out your kitchen with air frying, toasting, and dehydrating capabilities, the Foodi Digital Oven is a fantastic and space-saving option.

Read review: Ninja Foodi Digital Oven

Two Drawers for Simul-Frying

Instant Vortex Plus XL

Capacity: 8 qt | Accessories: Two cooking trays

The Instant Vortex Plus XL comes with two separate baskets that can be operated completely independently from one another. The temperature of one does not affect the other, and their timers can be synced up to complete the cooking at the same time. The viewing windows and interior lights make it easy to keep an eye on your meal's progress, and the slightly angled interface is easy to read. The interface rocks a dial-digital combination and is generally very intuitive. While its cooking performance varies, the Vortex Plus XL never fails to produce a perfectly cooked chicken breast.

The temperature is accurate, but for some reason, the Vortex Plus XL struggles with cooking a crispy potato. Whether you are working with sweet potato fries or tater tots, the evenness and texture are just off. The same can be said for onion rings. None of these food items are inedible, but they don't completely satiate the craving for crunchy, crispy fried food.

Read more: Instant Vortex Plus XL review

Compare Products

Compare select up to 5 products to compare

	Score	Product	Price
	84	Instant Vortex Plus	$140
	83	Ninja Air Fryer	$120
	77	Ninja Foodi Digital Oven	$230
	76	GoWISE USA Digital	$100
	75	Ultrean Air Fryer	$70
	75	Black+Decker Purifry	$150
	74	Instant Vortex Plus XL	$230
	74	Ninja Foodi Deluxe XL	$250
	73	Amazon Basics Compact Air Fryer	$82
	73	Instant Vortex Plus with Rotisserie	$150
	72	Nuwave Brio	$120
	71	Instant Vortex Plus Clear Cook	$160
	69	Ninja Foodi 8-Quart 2-Basket	$200
	66	Cosori Pro LE	$99
	66	Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro	$400
	65	Dash Compact	$70
	64	Cosori Dual Blaze	$180
	62	Dreo Pro Max	$120
	59	Dash Deluxe Electric	$100
	42	Cuisinart AirFryer Toaster Oven	$230

Why You Should Trust Us

To start out, we conducted thorough research into the market to discover the best and top-rated air fryers. After narrowing down our selection, we purchased each product at retail prices and got down to business. We cooked dozens of batches of sweet potato fries, tater tots, onion rings, donuts, and chicken strips for this review, using the same ingredients, recipes, and techniques in each air fryer. After some gluttonous side-by-side taste tests, we carefully evaluated each model's general user-friendliness and ease of cleaning. Finally, we plopped two calibrated oven thermometers into each model and set them to four different temperatures to assess heating time and, more importantly, temperature accuracy.

Our air fryer testing is divided into four different metrics:

• Cooking Performance (35% of overall score weighting)

• User Friendliness (25% weighting)

• Ease of Cleaning (20% weighting)

• Temperature Accuracy (20% weighting)

Michelle Powell brings over a decade of professional food service experience to the table to design and carry out tests of kitchen appliances. She has a nuanced understanding of how an appliance should perform and what the highest quality result should look like. Max Mutter has been testing kitchen appliances for three years and has now reviewed more than 100 pressure cookers, toasters, toaster ovens, espresso machines, coffee makers, and coffee grinders.

Lead reviewer Jessica Riconscente has extensive experience in the restaurant industry and is also an ace in her own kitchen. She takes pride in creating everything from scratch, from homemade wontons to pickling her own vegetables. She enjoys making her own recipes based on what's available in her fridge and combines produce and spices to concoct a delicious meal. Hayley Thomas has lived and traveled all over the world, and her palette is rather refined. While dishes vary greatly with location, there is one thing that you can find everywhere: fried food. Whether she's ordering calamari in Italy or tempura shrimp in Japan, each dish requires the perfect crisp-to-moisture ratio; Hayley knows just what to look for after many taste tests.

Analysis and Test Results

Though air fryers may seem like a niche kitchen appliance, they can be quite useful for many situations beyond the obvious. Our testing parses out each model's specific pros and cons and aims to help you decide whether or not an air fryer will be a worthwhile addition to your kitchen.

Value

The Instant Vortex Plus with Rotisserie offers high-end performance at a quite reasonable price. Though it's expensive, the Ninja Foodi Digital Oven is a great air fryer and offers about every other function you could ever want from a countertop oven. Thus, it's well worth the high price if you're looking for an incredibly versatile kitchen appliance. If you are looking for the most budget-friendly option and don't plan to tackle meats, the GoWISE Digital is perfect for potatoes and doughy foods. The Ninja Foodi Digital Oven operates as both an air fryer and a toaster oven. It is one of the most expensive options in our testing; however, the dual use gives it a little extra bang for the buck.

Cooking Performance

For obvious reasons, the cooking performance has the largest impact on overall scores and is also where we spend most of our testing time. We cook onion rings, sweet potato fries, chicken breast, donuts, and frozen tater tots to find the best fryer for every dish during our testing. We prep all of these foods in the same way with the same ingredients, then simultaneously make them in each fryer. This allows us to compare freshly prepared treats from each appliance, one right after the other. We specifically score each model based on how well the insides are cooked and how evenly the foods' outsides are crisped. All models did a reasonable job, but some were clearly better than others.

The Instant Vortex Plus and its sibling, the Instant Vortex Plus with Rotisserie, perform very well in this metric. Both of these machines are able to get a better crisp on sweet potato fries than any of the others we tested. They also excel in making evenly cooked and crispy onion rings and produce tater tots so good you could almost believe they were deep-fried.

All of the Ninja products we tested perform similarly well in our cooking trials, producing fantastic onion rings, donuts, chicken, and tater tots. However, they yield slightly less of a crunch on sweet potato fries than the Instant Vortex plus and Rotisserie models. Still, we highly doubt anyone will be disappointed with the air-frying performance of these models. Unfortunately, the Instand Vortex Plus XL does not perform as well as its siblings in the crunch department. It does, however, serve up some of the juiciest chicken we've had the pleasure of tasting.

Also earning a well-deserving higher score is the GoWISE USA Digital. It produces some of the crispier sweet potato fries in our testing and makes the best overall onion rings. It struggles a bit with more substantial foods, particularly chicken, but in general, it produces an appetizing dish no matter the contents.

The Dash Compact also produces some tasty treats. It serves up very crispy and evenly cooked onion rings. It also makes some of the more tender chicken in our testing. However, it struggles a bit at getting sweet potato fries and donuts truly crispy.

The Black+Decker Purifry's onion rings earn all of the superlatives. It also makes incredibly moist and tender chicken, with the results about as close to perfectly roasted chicken as one could hope. The tater tots and onion rings are crispy, but its results in our sweet potato fry and donut tests are somewhat lacking.

Our tests prove that non-dedicated air fryers can also produce great air frying results, as both the Ninja Foodi Deluxe XL (pressure cooker) and the Breville Smart Oven Air (toaster oven) offer solid runner-up performances in our cooking metric. The Smart Oven performs well across the board, falling short of earning "best of the best" accolades for everything from chicken to onion rings.

The Foodi Deluxe makes excellent onion rings and donuts and adds more crispiness to sweet potato fries than most other machines. However, it struggles a bit with chicken breast, leaving things tasting somewhat dry and overdone.

The Ultrean and the Dash Compact are also worth mentioning. The Ultrean excels in making onion rings, achieving near-perfect results. Donuts and chicken breasts also come out with even cooking and good crisps. However, sweet potato fries and taters tots lack a bit of the crunch that some of the top models can produce.

User Friendliness

To assess user-friendliness, we pay attention to a few things: the user interface's intuitiveness; ease of loading, unloading, and shaking the frying basket; and how much each model can adjust to different types of food (essentially, how many cooking settings are offered).

The very simple interface of the Nuwave Brio gives it a leg up in this metric. It also offers one of the widest temperature ranges in our test suite, making it extremely versatile. On top of all that, it comes with 100 presets and the ability to store 50 more of your own.

The Instant Vortex Plus, Plus XL, and Instant Vortex Plus Clear Cook provide a seamless user experience. The control panel is streamlined and intuitive, making selecting a temperature, cooking mode, and cooking time easy. The fry trays slide in and out easily, so you can shake items mid-cook with a single hand.

The Plus Clear Cook also has a window that you can peer through to keep an eye on your cooking progress. The Ninja Air Fryer supplies one of the most intuitive user experiences in our tests, largely thanks to a simple control panel adorned with an easy-to-read LCD screen. The cherry on top is a frying basket that can slide in and out using just one hand.

Several models fall just behind these top performers in our ease-of-use testing. For the most part, these models offer clear and intuitive interfaces but present one minor annoyance, like a fry basket that offers a bit of resistance when sliding in and out or that requires two hands to handle. This group includes the Ninja Foodi Deluxe XL, Digital Oven, Instant Vortex Plus with Rotisserie, Ultrean Air Fryer, Dreo Pro Max, and the Breville Smart Oven Air Pro.

Most of the models that we tested receive runner-up scores for user-friendliness, like the Ultrean, and the Black+Decker. For the most part, these machines offer intuitive user experiences with just one or two minor annoyances.

Ease of Cleaning

There are two cleaning tasks with air fryers: wiping off any bits of food on the fry baskets between batches and washing the machine itself. We completed both of these tasks multiple times for each machine.

The Instand Vortex Plus is smooth inside and does not have a basket, just a removable tray. This means there is nowhere for food to get stuck, making clean-up uncomplicated and swift.

You might think that having two baskets would make cleaning up a heftier task, but the Ninja Foodi 2-Basket is easy to disassemble and wipes down quickly. The Cosori Dual Blaze and Ultrean Air Fryer are also a quick clean. The Dual Blaze has a matte finish which helps mask some greasy fingerprints better than a glossy finish, and both have smoother baskets, so you don't have to maneuver around sharp nooks and crannies.

The Black+Decker Purifry and GoWISE USA Digital vary slightly in ease of cleaning, but both perform well because they have fry and inner baskets that shed grease well. The GoWISE, however, has some texture on the inner basket that catches fuzzies from a rag if you mistakenly wipe against the grain. You also have to wait for it to cool because the outer basket does not have a handle. The Purifry offers easy access to the basket for cleaning, and the non-stick material wipes down easily. However, it can start to gunk up and collect more grease if you cook a few batches in a row.

Like many top performers, the Amazon Basics Compact and Ultrean are simple designs that come apart easily and are coated in non-stick material.

Temperature Accuracy

When frying foods with minimal oil and convection heating, as these devices do, a temperature that is 10-20˚F too low can make the food taste chewy rather than crispy. Conversely, just 10-20˚F too hot can push beyond crispy and into the burnt territory. To test temperature accuracy, we give each model 20 minutes to preheat to 300˚, then check the temperature using three calibrated oven thermometers. We then up the temperature to settings to 350˚, 375˚, and 400˚, with five minutes allotted to settle in at each new temperature. Then we recheck the thermometers. The closer each model gets to the set temperature, the higher the score.

The Instant Vortex Plus turns in a precise performance in our temperature accuracy tests, never deviating more than a degree or two from the set temperature. Its close relative, the Plus XL, also operates within a few degrees of the claimed temperature.

The Ninja Foodi Deluxe XL, Amazon Basics Compact Air Fryer 9 and GoWISE USA Digital score nearly perfect in this category. We were surprised at how many of the less expensive models didn't actually reach their claimed maximum temperature, but the affordable GoWISE easily reaches its max temperature of 400˚, though there was a small amount of variance at the lower temps.

The Ninja Foodi 2-Basket does a great job of keeping both baskets accurate, even when their temperatures are vastly different. The Cosori Dual Blaze also achieves pretty accurate temperatures, varying by only a few degrees here and there.

Conclusion

If you plan to air fry occasionally, we think it's worth purchasing one of these appliances. The quick heat-up times and ease of cleaning are excellent pros that will make a big difference for frequent users. An air fryer is also a great appliance to utilize in the summer, as using it won't heat up your house like an oven might. Keep in mind that a slightly less efficient but much more versatile toaster oven that includes a convection or air fry setting might be a better fit for your kitchen. Either way, we hope this review has helped guide you toward making a confident purchase decision.