The 4 Best Air Fryers - Fall 2024

The best air fryer we've tested is the Ninja Foodi DZ550. At 10 quarts, it's a family-sized air fryer, but its bigger cooking surface area is useful even if you usually only cook for yourself. It makes great-quality air-fried food, producing evenly crispy, golden-brown air-fried foods like chicken wings, vegetables, or French fries, partly because you have plenty of room to arrange food in a single layer.

Its dual-basket design lets you cook different foods using different settings in each basket. It has various modes for different cooking methods and a pretty wide range of fan speeds to suit purposes like dehydrating or baking. Like many other Ninja air fryers, its crisper trays have a ceramic non-stick coating. That's a pro if you avoid conventional non-stick materials, but makes it more difficult to clean by hand.

As you might expect, with its 10-qt capacity, it has a bulky design. This particular model has a temperature probe that you can use to automatically monitor the internal temperature of meat like steak or a whole chicken. However, if you want a cheaper option, the Ninja Foodi FlexBasket has a similar overall performance. It has one big 10-qt basket that you can divide for separate dishes or use as one big basket when cooking bigger quantities. The large basket is a bit awkward to handle, but it produces very good-quality fried food.

Bigger is better for performance, but you might want something smaller if bigger won't fit in your kitchen. The COSORI TurboBlaze is a 6-qt air fryer, a size generally recommended for serving about four people. Still, its square basket gives you more room to arrange food in a single layer compared with some 6-qt air fryers. It doesn't perform quite as well as the Ninja, but comes close, producing very good-quality air-fried food.

It's also notably versatile. There are five different fan speeds, so you can use the 'Bake' setting for a medium fan speed to avoid drying out cake or cookies, or 'Dehydrate' with a very low fan speed that helps prevent light ingredients from blowing around. It's one of the few air fryers that tells you what fan speed corresponds with each setting, making it a good option if you plan to experiment with a variety of recipes in your air fryer.

However, it doesn't have the best temperature stability. While it does an okay job of maintaining a stable temperature, the Ninja is much better in this regard. While it cooks food quickly, preheating takes a while. That said, it has a preheat mode, so you don't have to guess when the air fryer is fully heated.

The Ninja Pro AF141 is the best small air fryer we've tested. This air fryer's basket has more surface area for cooking than other 5-quart models we've tested, so despite its compact design, you have a good amount of room to spread out your ingredients. It doesn't air fry quite as evenly as the previous picks, so you risk having a bigger proportion of food over or undercooked by the time your food is ready. Still, it produces good results.

It preheats and cooks very quickly, so it's ideal for preparing a quick snack. It returns to temperature very soon after you add food and maintains a particularly stable temperature during cooking. While it's not as versatile as the COSORI TurboBlaze, since it has a smaller range of fan speed and temperature settings and fewer modes, it includes air fry, roast, reheat, and dehydrate functions. Like our top pick, its crisper tray has a ceramic non-stick coating instead of the more common PTFE.

If you want an air fryer with a window so you can watch your food cook, the best option we've tested is the Dreo ChefMaker. This high-end air fryer has a 6-qt capacity, so it's a lot smaller than the similarly priced Ninja Foodi DZ550, but it has a window and a light inside its cooking chamber so you can see inside. It's fast and makes good-quality fried food, but it doesn't air fry quite as evenly as the Ninja.

It has a small fan speed range with a relatively slow maximum fan speed. Still, it has a temperature range wide enough for a variety of recipes. This model also has some unique features, including 'Chef Mode' presets, which use a temperature probe and a water misting feature to automatically cook cuts of meat like steak. It connects with an app that lets you monitor the cooking process, look up 'Chef Mode' instructions for a variety of foods, and send information to the machine, so all you have to do is press start.

It's also priced at the high end for an air fryer. If you want to save money and don't mind somewhat worse performance, the Cuisinart AIR-200 is our next-best option with a window. It makes less evenly air-fried food compared to the other picks listed here, but it still produces decent results, and it's significantly cheaper than the Dreo while still letting you keep an eye on your dinner.