The 4 Best Air Fryers - Spring 2025

The Ninja Foodi DZ550 is the best air fryer we've tested. It's a family-sized air fryer, but its big capacity comes in handy even when you're just cooking 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 in the basket to arrange your food in a single layer.

You can use different settings for each basket, so you can prepare a main and side dish simultaneously. It's quite versatile, with a range of fan speeds and modes for cooking methods like dehydrating and baking. Like many other Ninja air fryers, its crisper trays have a ceramic non-stick coating. This is harder to clean by hand compared with conventional non-stick materials, but might be a pro if you avoid PTFE materials.

This model also has a temperature probe that automatically monitors the internal temperature of meat like steak or a whole chicken. If you don't have much use for that feature and want a cheaper option, the Ninja Foodi DZ071 has a similar overall performance. It has one big 7-qt basket that can be divided when you want to cook separate dishes. The large basket is a bit awkward to handle, but it produces very good-quality air-fried food.

Bigger is better when it comes to air frying performance, but you might want smaller if bigger won't fit in your kitchen. The COSORI TurboBlaze is a 6-qt air fryer, which is generally enough capacity to serve about four people. Still, its square basket gives you more room to arrange food in a single layer compared with some options with the same overall capacity. While it doesn't perform quite as well as the Ninja Foodi DZ550, it comes close, producing very good-quality air-fried food.

It's also very versatile. There are five different fan speeds, so you can use the 'Bake' setting for a medium fan speed when you want to avoid drying out cake or cookies, or the 'Dehydrate' setting for a very low fan speed to prevent light ingredients from blowing around. The adjustable fan makes it a good option if you plan to experiment with a variety of cooking methods in your air fryer.

However, it doesn't have the best temperature stability. While it's alright at maintaining a stable temperature, the Ninja is much better in this regard, which helps with accurately following recipes or cooking delicate foods that need specific conditions. 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. Despite its compact design, you have a good amount of room to spread out ingredients in a single layer in its 5-qt square basket. 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 it's done cooking. Still, it produces good results.

It also preheats and cooks very quickly, making it a good option for quick snacks. Once preheated, it returns to temperature very soon after you open the drawer to add food and maintains a very stable temperature for the rest of the cooking. While it's not as versatile as the COSORI TurboBlaze, with a smaller range of fan speed and temperature settings, it has four functions, including Air Fry, Roast, Reheat, and Dehydrate. Like our top pick, its crisper tray has a ceramic non-stick coating instead of the more common PTFE.

If you want to keep a close eye on your food while it cooks, consider the Dreo ChefMaker. This high-end air fryer has a window in its basket and a light inside its cooking chamber, so you can peek inside without opening the drawer. It's much smaller than the similarly priced Ninja Foodi DZ550 and cooks less evenly, but it's fast and makes good-quality air-fried food.

It has a small fan speed range with a relatively slow maximum fan speed but offers a temperature range wide enough for a variety of recipes. This model also has some unique features, including its '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 cooking information to the air fryer, so all you have to do on the machine itself is press start.

It's also expensive 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. It's significantly cheaper than the Dreo while still allowing you to keep an eye on your dinner.