Air fryers have come a long way since the days of being a one-trick, crisp-up-frozen-chips pony. All air fryers are kitted out with the standard Air Fry function, but in the years since these little appliances took over ovens up and down the land, cooking settings have increased to the point that an air fryer is the only appliance you need in your kitchen.
You can get multi-cooker style air fryers which you can use to dehydrate, slow cook, pressure cook, steam, bake/roast, grill, sear/saute, make yoghurt, and reheat/keep warm. Some high end air fryers have upwards of 15 cooking functions. Even the most basic of air fryers have an average of four settings, with Air Fry, Max Crisp, Reheat, and Bake/Roast being the most prevalent.
It’s not just cooking functions where air fryers differ, either. You’ll see single or double drawer styles, stacked drawers, some that look like ovens, some big and hefty ones built around deep cooking pots, you can go for rotisserie or pizza priorities, or some retro oven/toaster styles.
In this guide, we’ll run you through the different types of air fryer you can buy, from the most popular styles down to the design-led brands.
Types of air fryers
Drawers
The simplest, and often cheapest, style of air fryer is the single drawer. You get one basket, one crisping plate, and a varying range of cooking functions. What you get depends on the brand and the price.
Ninja single drawer air fryers are incredibly popular. So are Ninja’s dual drawers, and its multi-cookers, and its portable air fryers. Just about all air fryers Ninja makes are popular… There’s a reason for that: Ninja makes quality, long-lasting products. The downside? The cost.
For cheaper single drawer air fryers, head to Argos or Currys and do some browsing. Look for brands such as Tower, Russell Hobbs, Instant, or Tefal. There are other brands available, however the ones listed are regular top performers on reviews sites.
If you’re cooking for more than one or two people, you’ll need to up-size to a dual drawer air fryer. The volume of food you can fit in a dual drawer air fryer, again, varies wildly. On the smaller side, you’ve got six litres; on the larger side, you can find up to 36 litres. BridgePro’s 36-litre dual zone air fryer is the biggest we’ve seen.
As you can probably guess, the bigger the baskets, the bigger the price. The same with cooking functions – if you want to be able to cook with over nine functions, you’d better start saving your pennies.
On average, dual drawer air fryers are nine to 11 litres, which is enough to comfortably feed four to six people. Air fryer marketing will inflate the numbers, but in reality, the number of meals you can get from your air fryer is lower.
In our Ninja Foodi Dual Drawer we can cook enough thick-cut chips for five hungry adults.
While there are a lot of pros to air fryers, they’re not without their cons. Dual drawer air fryers are bulky and have a large footprint. If you’re limited on counter space, you’ll need to be able to store it away when not in use. If you’ve got limited space, but want to feed a family, try a doublestack instead.
Doublestack
Similar to a dual drawer, doublestack air fryers aim to solve the problem of worktop space. Instead, their footprint remains similar to the smaller, single drawer air fryers, at the cost of height. If you’ve got low cupboards, you might not have enough headroom to fit a doublestack on your worktop. Choose a doublestack air fryer if you need to preserve precious food prep space and have no height restrictions.
FlexDrawer
It’s a dual drawer air fryer, but in a FlexDrawer, you can remove the divider and turn it into a single drawer. If you’re cooking a mass amount of one item, you can cook it in one basket, rather than trying to time two separate baskets.
With a FlexDrawer, you’ll still have the issue of a massive footprint and high price.
Portable
Now you may be thinking: “Aren’t all air fryers portable?”
You’re not wrong, they are. You can unplug any air fryer and take it on holiday with you. The idea of a portable air fryer is slightly more convenient than that.
Ninja pioneered the portable style with the Crispi, marketed as something you could take to the office to reheat your lunch with. While we found it easy, if not a touch heavy, to take the glass containers to the office to reheat leftovers using a microwave, taking the Crispi lid was a stretch.
Since launching the Ninja Crispi, it doesn’t look like any other brands have followed suit.
Rotisserie air fryer
A big fan of roast chicken? Get an air fryer with an in-built rotisserie feature. Get an all-round crispy chicken or kebab
Will cook your chicken or roast joint evenly.
Steam air-fryer
The Breville Halo steam is the dominating product in this category. Steam air fryers combine air frying with steaming, in what Breville calls ‘SteamFry’ technology. According to the brand, the Halo alternates between steaming and air frying while cooking to achieve an all-over crisp.
We’ve never used a steam air fryer before so we can’t comment on its usefulness.
Multi-cooker
The biggest and most expensive type of air fryer you can buy. We are users of the Ninja Foodi Max Multicooker, and we use it to cook a whole variety of dinners and bakes for the whole family.
We’ve used it to dehydrate chillies to make our own chilli powder, cook a family-size lasagne, stew, shepherd’s pie, sugar-free flapjacks, homemade wedges and chicken mini fillets, beige-freezer feasts, and much more.
Energy consumption
Compared to a traditional oven, which uses around 5,000W of energy to cook a whole dinner, an air fryer uses between 800-1,800W for the same thing, depending on the setting you chose.
If an air fryer doesn’t take your fancy, you could always lower your energy bill by swapping your oven for a halogen oven. Typically, a halogen oven uses around half the energy of your normal oven, therefore halving your cooking energy usage.
If you’re on a budget but still want quick, crispy food, a halogen oven is far cheaper to buy than an air fryer. Again, we don’t have experience using a halogen oven so can’t comment on their abilities.
In short, you can get loads of different types of air fryers: drawer, steam, multi-cooker or rotisserie. Shop around, do some research, and plan around your budget and kitchen limitations. And if the one you want is out of budget, keep an eye on our air fryer price tracker and deals page.
