The Ninja AF161 is a higher-end air fryer. Its 5.5-quart capacity can serve about 3-4 people and makes it one of Ninja's biggest single-basket air fryers. It's one of the brand's earlier air fryer models and is a bigger version of the 4-qt Ninja AF101. It has more presets for different cooking methods and a higher maximum temperature you can use with its 'Max Crisp' and 'Air Broil' modes.
Our Verdict
The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL is a very good air fryer. It makes good-quality air-fried food, so your meal comes out mostly well-cooked and crispy. Its wide fan speed and temperature ranges make it useful for methods besides air frying, like reheating and dehydrating. It also preheats and cooks quickly. However, it runs hot, so if too much of your food is getting overcooked, you might need to use a lower temperature setting.
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Cooks quickly.
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Makes good-quality fried food.
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Wide temperature and fan speed ranges.
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Runs hot.
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Small cooking surface area for its capacity.
The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL is decent for large-batch cooking. With 5.5 quarts of capacity, it's not a big air fryer, but you can use it to prepare food for about 3-4 people. Unfortunately, compared with some air fryers with a smaller overall capacity, it has less cooking surface area, giving it a smaller effective capacity if you want to spread food in a single layer for the best results. Otherwise, it's fast, versatile, and makes good-quality air-fried food.
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Cooks quickly.
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Makes good-quality fried food.
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Wide temperature and fan speed ranges.
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Runs hot.
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Small cooking surface area for its capacity.
The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL has a good frying performance. Air-fried foods like vegetables, chicken nuggets, and French fries come out mostly well-cooked, golden brown, and crispy. It overcooks a bigger proportion compared with some air fryers, possibly because it tends to overshoot the selected temperature. However, you can use a lower setting to compensate, and it maintains a pretty stable temperature during cooking. It cooks food quickly, but its cooking surface area is small for its overall capacity, and you may get better results cooking smaller quantities of food at once.
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Cooks quickly.
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Makes good-quality fried food.
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Maintains a stable temperature.
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Runs hot.
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Small cooking surface area for its capacity.
The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL is a fast air fryer. It preheats and cooks food quickly.
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Cooks quickly.
The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL has a decent cooking capacity. Its 5.5-quart basket can serve 3-4 people, but compared to many air fryers with a similar overall capacity, its deep basket has less surface area, so you don't have much room to arrange food in a single layer.
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Small cooking surface area for its capacity.
The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL is a somewhat bulky air fryer for its capacity. You can get smaller air fryers with a similar or even slightly bigger capacity.
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Bulky design.
- 7.9 Air Frying
- 7.4 Large Batch Cooking
Performance Usages
- 7.7 Frying Performance
- 8.5 Cooking Speed
- 7.0 Cooking Capacity
- 7.2 Size
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Ninja AF161 only comes in 'Gray.' Here's a photo of our unit's label. The AF160 and AF150AMZ are similar models with fewer presets (they lack 'Max Crisp' and 'Air Broil') and a lower maximum temperature of 400°F. These models may perform differently.
If you encounter another variant, let us know in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Compared To Other Air Fryers
The Ninja AF161 is a medium-sized, higher-end air fryer. While its basket has a small surface area for a 5.5-quart air fryer, meaning it has less capacity for arranging food in a single layer, it has a good overall performance. It's very versatile, with a maximum temperature of 450°F, unlike models like the Chefman TurboFry RJ38-5-T and the Ninja Pro AF141, which can't get hotter than 400°F. Very high heat can be useful for quickly cooking small, precooked items like frozen French fries or chicken wings that you want crispy but don't need very long to cook through. It has a wide range of fan speed settings as well, with a high maximum fan speed for air frying and a much lower speed for dehydrating.
If you're looking for a recommendation, check out our list of the best air fryers.
Test Results
Despite its bigger 5.5-qt capacity, it has the same cooking surface area as the 4-qt Ninja AF101. The basket is quite deep, and compared with many other 5-qt or 6-quart air fryers, you can't arrange that much food in a single layer. The crisper tray has a ceramic coating, which you might prefer if you want to avoid PTFE non-stick materials, although it's not as easy to clean by hand.
It has great versatility, thanks to a wide range of temperatures and fan speed settings. Unlike the similar Ninja AF101, it has a 'Max Crisp' mode, which provides maximum heat (450°F) and maximum airflow for fast cooking. This mode is recommended for prepackaged frozen foods like French fries or chicken wings, but very fast cooking will likely work best with smaller items that you want crispy that don't require much time to be cooked through. The only other mode that can reach the maximum temperature is 'Air Broil.' For the other modes, you can adjust the temperature as well as the time.
- Max crisp: 450 °F, maximum fan speed, 1 to 30 minutes (time is adjustable in one-minute increments)
- Air Fry: Temperature: 300°F to 400°F, maximum fan speed, 1 to 60 minutes
- Air Roast: 1 to 3 hours (time is adjustable in one-minute increments up to one hour and in five-minute increments beyond one hour)
- Air Broil: 450 °F, 1 to 30 minutes
- Bake: 1 to 4 hours (time is adjustable in one-minute increments up to 30 minutes and in five-minute increments beyond 30 minutes)
- Reheat: 1 to 60 minutes (time is adjustable in one-minute increments up to 1 hour)
- Dehydrate: Minimum fan speed, 15 minutes to 12 hours (time is adjustable in 15-minute increments)
It makes good-quality fried food. While it overcooks a bigger proportion of food compared to some air fryers, air-fried foods like vegetables and chicken wings come out well-cooked, crispy, and golden brown. Only a small amount is undercooked by the time your food is ready.
To get a good result, we had to remove the vent cover at the back of the machine. Unlike most other Ninja air fryers, it's set up to vent upwards, which we believe causes the machine to retain more moisture. You can see the two vent designs compared in this photo, with the Ninja AF161 on the right and the Ninja AF101 on the left. With the vent cover in place, about 1/3 of the food ended up overcooked, resulting in a much worse score overall. However, you won't have that problem at home. Since our test determines when the food is ready based on moisture loss (determined by weight), any moisture trapped inside the vent would extend the cooking time, causing more food to get overcooked. If you're setting the cooking time based on a recipe and checking it visually to see when it's done, you'll get results closer to our published score.
It has good temperature stability. It comes back up to temperature decently quickly after you open the drawer to add food. The average temperature doesn't vary much during cooking, but it's worth noting that, unlike most air fryers, it tends to stay hotter than the selected setting. You might find that you have to reduce the temperature setting to compensate.