Best price on cuisinart air fryer toaster oven

When we first tested air fryers in 2017, most models were pod-shaped appliances that looked more at home in a sci-fi movie than on a kitchen counter. They used the same technology as convection baking under the guise of a trendy new term: “air frying.” Since then, to stay on trend, some manufacturers have started calling their convection toaster ovens and electric ranges “air fryer ovens.” The Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1 predates the air-fryer craze (so you won’t see that buzzword on the box), but we think it yields better results than any pod-shaped air fryer we’ve tested.

Although we think the Cuisinart toaster oven strikes the best balance of value, size, and versatility in this category, we’ve learned from commenters, customer reviews, and air fryer owners that many people prefer something more compact than a toaster oven or want a dedicated machine for cooking frozen snacks, meat, or vegetables. With that in mind, we’ve allowed our stance on air fryers to evolve. If you don’t plan to bake, and if you intend to make only one or two portions of food at a time, the Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 may align better with your needs than a convection toaster oven, and it’s the best pod-shaped model we’ve tested. In 2021, we tested more lower-cost models to determine a budget pick: the Cosori Pro Air Fryer.

If you’re not sure whether you want a convection toaster oven or an air fryer, we’ve written a helpful checklist so you can better understand the trade-offs for each appliance. We also have general advice on how to adjust air-fryer recipes for your convection toaster oven.

Our pick

When it comes to air frying, our top-pick toaster oven, the Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1, produced better results than any of the air fryers we’ve tested since 2017, and it also has more accessories. The Cuisinart produced crispier, more evenly cooked food in our tests, and it easily accommodates much more than a typical pod-shaped air fryer does—including up to nine slices of toast, a 6-pound chicken, a 9-inch pie or cake, or a 13-inch pizza. It also comes with more useful accessories than any air fryer we tested, because it includes a baking tray, a ceramic pizza stone, and two oven racks (a rarity for most toaster ovens). You don’t need to buy any special equipment to bake in the Cuisinart oven, as you do with air fryers; an 8- or 9-inch cake pan or a standard loaf pan will fit with room to spare.

Also great

Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96

The best pod-shaped air fryer

We think a convection toaster oven does the job better, but if you need something smaller, this is the model to get. When filled to capacity, the Philips HD9741/96 was able to cook food more evenly than the other pod-shaped models we tested.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $250.

You may want a small, pod-shaped air fryer if you have limited counter space, or if you plan to make only one or two servings of food at a time. The Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 is the best pod-shaped air fryer we’ve tested. It has a relatively small footprint, it’s easy to use, and it cooks food more evenly than similar models. You can’t adjust or turn off its powerful convection fan, which means it’s not great for baking and you can’t use it to make toast. Aside from its “fryer” basket, all of its accessories are sold separately. We think many people are likely to be happier with the larger cooking capacity and versatility of a convection toaster oven. Bottom line: We recommend getting the Philips air fryer only if it’s suitable for your space and lifestyle.

Budget pick

Cosori Pro Air Fryer

The best budget pod-shaped air fryer

This air fryer was the best we tested for under $100. It shares some of the design features of the Philips model, but it doesn’t cook as evenly, and its settings aren’t quite as accurate.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $85.

If you want a pod-shaped air fryer that costs less than the Philips model, we recommend the Cosori Pro Air Fryer. In our tests, it didn’t cook as evenly as the Philips, but we found its results perfectly acceptable considering its lower price. The Cosori has lots of preprogrammed settings, but some aren’t that accurate (which is true of many models), so you may have to fiddle with it more to find the optimal settings for what you’re cooking. It also comes with a recipe booklet, which is nice if you’re looking for some guidance when cooking with convection technology. Like the Philips, the Cosori has a well-designed exterior and won’t be an eyesore if you plan to store it on your counter.

The research

• Why you should trust me
• What is “air frying” anyway, and how does it work?
• Types of air fryers
• How to choose: Convection toaster oven vs. air fryer
• How we tested
• Our pick: Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1
• Flaws but not dealbreakers
• Also great: Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96
• Budget pick: Cosori Pro Air Fryer
• How to adjust air-fryer recipes for a convection toaster oven
• What about using a full-size convection oven?
• What about air-fryer lids for an Instant Pot?
• What to look forward to
• The competition
• Sources

Why you should trust me

As a senior staff writer at Wirecutter, I’ve researched, tested, and reviewed toasters, toaster ovens, and deep fryers, among other kitchen gear and gadgets, since 2016. I’ve spent more than 250 hours over the past four years researching and testing air fryers for this guide. In that time, I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten more fish sticks and french fries than the Gorton’s Fisherman and Ronald McDonald combined.

What is “air frying” anyway, and how does it work?

Despite what it sounds like, air frying doesn’t actually fry your food. Instead, air fryers are mini convection ovens that use fans to rapidly circulate hot air, cooking food faster and more evenly than a standard oven does.

Convection has been around for more than a century. The first commercially sold convection ovens were developed by the W. L. Maxson Corporation in the 1940s as a way to reheat frozen food for airplanes. And they worked much the same as today’s air fryers and convection toaster ovens do: As the fan circulates hot air around the food, it crisps the outside in a way that mimics deep frying. But your tastebuds will tell you that air-fried food isn’t anything like traditionally deep-fried food in flavor and texture. (For more on deep frying, check out our guide to the best deep fryer.)

Types of air fryers

The term “air fryers” is now often used for two main types of appliances: small, pod-shaped models (which usually resemble weird, futuristic dinosaur eggs waiting to hatch) and larger models that look like a typical high-end convection toaster oven. (You’ll also encounter a few outliers with especially gimmicky features, such as the Oster DuraCeramic Air Fryer—which looks like something out of an ’80s sci-fi movie—or the Ninja Foodi, a combination air fryer and pressure cooker.)

Pod-shaped air fryers have a single fan and heating element positioned on top of the oven cavity. Some of the pod-shaped models we tested ran so hot that they concentrated heat on top of the food, behaving more like convection broilers than convection ovens. Other models we tested ran so cool that it was hard to tell whether they were even on. We found that pod-shaped air fryers often had more powerful fans, too, but this wasn’t necessarily a good thing, since they could produce dried-out foods and overcooked, ripply cakes.

Pod-shaped air fryers, like the now-discontinued Philips HD9641/96, have a single fan and heating element positioned on top of the oven cavity. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Toaster-oven air fryers usually have heating elements on the top and the bottom, as well as a fan on the top or the side of the oven’s interior. They also tend to have larger oven cavities, which typically means you can cook more food at once. In addition, the roomier interior allows heat to more fully circulate around the food, yielding more even browning. However, the extra space also means that toaster-oven-type air fryers can take longer to heat up and a bit more time to cook your food. And most offer more cooking options, such as preprogrammed settings for making toast, baking pizza, or dehydrating fruit (though we recommend getting a dedicated dehydrator if you want to make a significant amount of dried food).

Overall, the nine toaster-oven air fryers we tested performed better than the pod-shaped air fryers we evaluated. And even then, none of those nine performed better than our favorite toaster oven with convection, the Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1. Cuisinart doesn’t market this model as an air fryer, but it uses the same convection technology and does everything you might want an air fryer to do (and more).

Regardless, some people may not need all that functionality or might be willing to compromise a little on results to save counter space. If you’re trying to decide, we break it down for you in the next section.

How to choose: Convection toaster oven vs. air fryer

If you’re having trouble choosing which type of air fryer to get, here’s how we’d decide.

Get the Cuisinart oven if:

• You have room in your kitchen for a larger oven.
• You have a family or larger household, and/or want to be able to cook larger portions of food at once.
• You want to make a variety of foods, such as baked goods, toast, frozen pizzas up to 13 inches, or roast chicken as big as 6 pounds.
• You want the option to adjust the convection fan’s speed or turn it off completely.
• You don’t want to buy extra accessories (like baking trays or pizza stones) to get the most out of your appliance.
• You don’t mind turning your food to achieve even browning while cooking.
• You like to avoid nonstick coating, which lines the baskets in most pod-shaped air fryers and tends to wear off quickly.
• You want faster cleanup.

Get a pod-shaped air fryer if:

• You don’t have room in your kitchen for a larger oven.
• You mainly want to cook frozen food or smaller portions of food.
• You don’t want to bake, make toast, cook a 13-inch frozen pizza, or roast a large chicken.
• You don’t mind having a single convection fan speed that you can’t adjust or turn off.
• You don’t mind paying for extra accessories (like a rack or cake pan) in order to make full use of your air fryer.
• You prefer a more casual approach to cooking your food, and you find tossing it in a basket to be less cumbersome than turning it by hand.
• You’re okay with some uneven browning.
• You don’t mind more cleanup—including the extra care necessary to prolong the life of the fryer basket’s nonstick coating.

How we tested

For our original guide in 2017, we ran the air fryers through a series of tests: We cooked frozen and hand-cut french fries, frozen finger foods, and pork chops. For our 2019 update, we decided to begin testing the toaster-oven air fryers as we would regular toaster ovens. We filled each model with as many slices of white sandwich bread as they would allow and used the toasted results as a heat map: Uneven browning alerted us to any hot spots in each oven. We also made batches of frozen french fries and tasted them to see whether any pieces ended up under- or overcooked; in addition, we baked frozen breaded chicken tenders and fish sticks to see whether they browned evenly or ended up with soggy bottoms. After eliminating several models, we baked a yellow cake (from a box mix) and roasted whole chickens in the finalists. We also conducted all of the same tests in the now-discontinued Philips Avance HD9641/96—the pod-shaped air fryer that in our 2017 tests performed the best—so that we could compare the results. In 2021 we tested the newer version of that model, the Philips Premium HD9741/96, which we now recommend in its place; the newer model produced results that were consistent with those of the discontinued model. We also tested seven other pod-shaped air fryers for our 2021 update.

Hand-cut fries weren’t very tasty when cooked in either appliance, but the batch we cooked in the Cuisinart (right) was slightly less dry. We recommend deep-frying hand-cut fries for the best results. Photo: Sarah Kobos

In our original 2017 tests, we stuck an air probe thermometer inside each oven to see how well each model maintained a set temperature. We also used all of the controls to see how easy they were to navigate and how accurate the cooking guidelines were for preparing common foods like french fries and fish sticks. Additionally, we compared the cooking capacity of each model, and we took note of any egregiously noisy fans or annoying beeps. After testing, we washed all of the fryer components to see how easy they were to clean. We repeated all of these tests for our 2021 update and cooked chicken wings in the finalists.

Our pick: Cuisinart Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1

Our pick

Though not specifically billed as an air fryer, the Cuisinart Chef's Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1 remains the best appliance we’ve tested for air frying food. The Cuisinart’s two-speed fan, combined with its spacious interior, allowed it to cook food more evenly than the competition. It also has the best accessories of any model we’ve tested, including a 13-inch ceramic pizza stone, two oven racks, and an enamel-coated steel baking pan. On average, cooking food in the Cuisinart took us a few minutes longer than in most of the air fryers we tested, but its superior results (as well as its ability to cook more food at once) are well worth a little extra time.

The Cuisinart TOB-260N1 is better than other toaster-oven air fryers partly due to the size and speed of the fan: It’s not so powerful that its force disturbs cake batter (creating rippled, overcooked layers), but it’s also not so weak that you’re left with a mountain of soggy french fries. Unlike most air fryers, the Cuisinart toaster oven has two fan speeds, giving you greater flexibility—regular convection for low speed and “speed convection” for high speed. In our tests, the speed convection setting created cooking conditions that were the most comparable to those of the air fryers we evaluated in terms of the time it took to cook and the results it yielded. We recommend using this setting anytime you want extra-crispy results, especially when preparing frozen finger foods, french fries, or chicken wings.

One major distinction between the Cuisinart toaster oven and most pod air fryers is that you can turn the fan off entirely if you don’t want to use it, such as when you’re making toast. Also, you can adjust the fan’s speed if you want a gentler circulation of air, when you’re baking cakes, for instance. The Cuisinart affords you more flexibility so you can tailor it to your exact cooking needs, whereas most air fryers have only one powerful fan, which may not be best for every recipe.

Unlike some toaster-oven air fryers we tested, such as the Cuisinart TOA-60, the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 is large enough to bake a 13-inch pizza, roast a 5-pound chicken, or toast up to nine slices of bread at once. Also, the oven was one of the few that came with two racks instead of one. (We recommend getting an extra standard quarter-sheet pan so you can cook a tray of food on each rack simultaneously. Combined, that’s the equivalent of a standard half-sheet pan’s worth of food, all cooked in a toaster oven! That’s pretty impressive.)

Though the Cuisinart took a few minutes longer than most models to cook frozen french fries, the fries didn’t come out dry and dehydrated, like the ones we prepared in the Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven, or soggy, like the ones we made in the NuWave Bravo XL Air Fryer Smart Oven. We found a few limp fries in each batch, but overall the fries were crispy and evenly cooked, with a creamy center. Chicken fingers and fish sticks that we baked in the Cuisinart also turned out golden brown and crunchy on the outside. (We recommend flipping frozen finger foods halfway through the cooking time for the best results, but even when we didn’t flip the food, the Cuisinart produced crispier fare than the competition.)

We roasted carrots at 350 °F in the Philips Avance HD9641/96 (now discontinued and replaced by the Philips Premium HD9741/96) and at 425 °F in the Cuisinart, and the results were nearly the same. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Even though many of the air fryers we tested cooked food faster than the Cuisinart, the results weren’t necessarily better. Some air fryers ran so hot and had such powerful (and not adjustable) fans that vegetables came out burned on the outside and still raw in the center. Cake layers rose unevenly and ended up overbaked, especially in the Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven, which produced a cake with a dark patch on top in the exact same shape as the fan. In contrast, the vegetables we roasted in the Cuisinart were caramelized and tender, and cake layers were golden and moist, results that we think are well worth the slightly slower cooking time. Aside from air frying, the Cuisinart also made very even batches of toast (setting number 3 made perfect golden-brown toast in our tests). And it roasted the most beautiful chicken, hands down, with a crispy, golden-brown skin.

The Cuisinart TOB-260N1 heats quite evenly from edge to edge, as this toast heat map shows. Photo: Michael Hession

The Cuisinart makes for easier cleanup, too, because you can throw dirty pans directly into the dishwasher. Most air-fryer accessories are nonstick, and even though manufacturers say they’re dishwasher-safe, you should wash them by hand to extend the life of their coating. Even if you do wash your toaster-oven pans by hand, air fryers are a much bigger pain to clean. Grease and baked-on bits of food cling to the fryer basket screen, and gunk gets in grooves and crevices of the pan. Sponges are easily shredded by the basket screen’s rough texture.

In our tests, bits of food stuck to the "fryer" basket, and a pool of grease sat at the bottom of the container, which made it more cumbersome to clean. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The Cuisinart TOB-260N1 comes with an impressive three-year limited warranty, whereas most air fryers come with only a one-year warranty. According to the representative we spoke with, Cuisinart has updated its warranty service program, and the company will cover shipping costs to and from its service center if your model is defective under warranty. Some user manuals may not accurately reflect this change, so contact Cuisinart for details.

To read more about how the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 compares to the other toaster ovens we’ve tested, see our full guide to the best toaster ovens.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Due to the Cuisinart TOB-260N1’s large interior, this model took about five minutes longer to cook frozen french fries (on the speed convection setting) than some of the smaller air fryers we tested took. That said, its slightly slower cooking time often produced more evenly cooked food that was better tasting. We think that’s a trade-off well worth the few extra minutes of your time. And the Cuisinart is still small enough that it can preheat and cook faster than a standard oven.

Since Cuisinart doesn’t market the TOB-260N1 as an air fryer, it doesn’t come with a cooking chart for commonly air-fried foods. However, we found that in most cases, the same temperatures you’d use to cook in a standard oven can also be used in the Cuisinart, whereas smaller, pod-shaped air fryers require you to cook at lower temperatures. (Since cramped, pod-shaped air fryers heat up quickly and keep food so close to the heating element, things would overcook if you didn’t reduce the temperature.) We also found that when you’re air frying vegetables with lots of moisture, such as eggplant and zucchini, it’s best to chop them into 1-inch or smaller pieces to prevent them from getting mushy. We have more tips for cooking air-fryer recipes in the Cuisinart below.

The Cuisinart’s baking pan may warp slightly when the oven is roasting at high temperatures, but this in no way affects its cooking performance; the pan will return to its normal shape when it cools. If you want a better pan, we recommend that you get a Nordic Ware quarter-sheet pan, a smaller version of our favorite baking sheet, which fits perfectly inside the Cuisinart oven.

Also great: Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96

Also great

Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96

The best pod-shaped air fryer

We think a convection toaster oven does the job better, but if you need something smaller, this is the model to get. When filled to capacity, the Philips HD9741/96 was able to cook food more evenly than the other pod-shaped models we tested.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $250.

The Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 is the best pod-shaped air fryer we’ve tested. It’s a far less versatile appliance than the Cuisinart convection toaster oven, but its smaller footprint may make it ideal for tiny kitchens with limited counter space. Smaller households that plan to make only one or two portions of food at a time may also prefer this model. Compared with other pod-shaped air fryers we tested, the Philips cooked food the most evenly, aside from the occasional soggy french fry; on average, it cooked faster than most other models we tried and with better results. Like all pod-shaped air fryers, this Philips model isn’t good for baking or making toast—its fan is too powerful and produces overcooked, irregularly shaped cakes and wonky, unevenly browned toast. But if you don’t plan to bake in it, we think it’s a suitable choice for cooking frozen snacks, smaller portions of meat and vegetables, or certain dishes you want extra crispy, like chicken wings or flautas.

The Philips is one of the best-designed pod-shaped air fryers we’ve tested due to its small footprint, streamlined interface, and sleek looks. Unlike a lot of models, such as our budget pick, the Cosori Pro Air Fryer, which has 11 different preprogrammed settings for commonly cooked food (plus settings for preheating and keeping food warm), the Philips has just four: frozen fries, chicken, fish, and meat, all of which you access through a single dial on the control panel. We also found the Philips air fryer’s basket to be the most seamless to insert into the machine because it glided shut and didn’t require any extra force to close; many other models we tested slid across the counter slightly or wobbled like a Weeble (video) when we tried to shut the basket. The square shape of the 2.75-quart basket also allows a bit more space than round designs, which means you can fit four chicken thighs in the basket versus three. This air fryer isn’t an eyesore like some oddball machines we’ve tried over the years, so it won’t look like an alien spaceship has landed on your kitchen counter. It is, however, pretty loud while the convection fan is running—it’s about as loud as a hair dryer (whereas the Cuisinart convection toaster oven barely makes a sound).

When filled to capacity, the Philips air fryer cooked food more evenly than other models of the same size, though we still discovered a handful of underdone fries and some soggy patches on fish sticks and chicken fingers. Overall it produced the crispiest, most evenly browned food of any pod-shaped models we tested. That said, you’ll likely need to adjust the time or temperature a bit when using the preprogrammed settings, which is true of all air fryers. For instance, when we used the fish setting, the fish sticks we cooked were done two minutes sooner than the preprogrammed time. Conversely, the fries we baked could have used two minutes longer. However, compared with other models, this Philips air fryer had the most accurate preprogrammed settings, and the appliance maintained its temperature well.

The manual claims that this model’s “fat removal technology” extracts fat from food and captures it all below the fat reducer at the bottom of the air fryer. This statement is misleading, since the “technology” is just a plastic lid that rests over the bottom of the air-fryer bucket where the fat collects. Fat trickles down to the tray through a hole in the center of the lid, and then ostensibly the lid prevents it from circulating back up into your food. But fat naturally drains into the bottom tray of any air fryer, and it stays there even without a lid thanks to gravity and the force of the fan—there’s nothing actively “extracting” fat from your food in this, or any, air fryer. In reality, the tray was just one more item we had to clean after cooking, so we wouldn’t recommend using it.

We don’t think the “fat-reducing tray” in the Philips Premium HD9741/96 is very useful—it’s just one more thing you need to wash after cooking. Photo: Michael Sullivan

Philips also sells a larger version of this air fryer, the Philips Premium Air Fryer XXL HD9650/96, which has a 7-quart capacity. We haven’t tested this specific model, but we did test its predecessor, the Philips Avance XL Airfryer HD9240/94. If you’re able to fit the larger Philips model in your space, however, we think you’re better off getting the Cuisinart toaster oven, as it is only about 5 inches wider than the Philips XXL air fryer yet is capable of so much more.

Budget pick: Cosori Pro Air Fryer

Budget pick

Cosori Pro Air Fryer

The best budget pod-shaped air fryer

This air fryer was the best we tested for under $100. It shares some of the design features of the Philips model, but it doesn’t cook as evenly, and its settings aren’t quite as accurate.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $85.

The Cosori Pro Air Fryer was the best pod-shaped model we tested for under $100. Although the Cosori’s 3.7-quart capacity is slightly larger than that of the Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96, it doesn’t cook as evenly, but considering its relatively low price, we think its results were good enough. The Cosori’s many preprogrammed settings weren’t as accurate as those of the Philips, either—we preferred using the manual controls for selecting the time and temperature instead. Like the Philips, the Cosori has a square-shaped basket that fits more food than the round baskets in other models. The Cosori also comes with a recipe booklet, which is helpful if you’re new to cooking with convection technology.

Like the Philips model’s basket, the Cosori’s square basket allows you to comfortably fit four chicken thighs instead of three. Photo: Michael Sullivan

Like the Philips, the Cosori has a removable basket to hold your food while it cooks. We prefer this design to the removable trays of a lot of newer models, because trays tend to fall out when you flip the bucket upside down to transfer food to a plate—this was the case with the Ninja AF101 Air Fryer we tested—and when the tray comes flying out, it could potentially cause burns. We also like that the Cosori has a plastic guard that covers the basket’s release button (pictured below), which prevents you from inadvertently pressing it while shaking your food. Without the guard, it’s easier to accidentally press the button, which would release the bucket and send it crashing onto the floor.

On certain settings, this model alerts you with five beeps halfway through the cooking time to remind you to shake your food for more even browning, something the Philips doesn’t do. However, we wish the reminder were programmed for all settings, since it’s hard to remember which ones have this feature and which ones don’t (it’s activated only for the shrimp, frozen food, frozen fries, vegetable, and root vegetable settings). If you manually enter the time and temperature, the reminder beeps aren’t activated, either. The beeping is much louder than on the Philips, and you have no way to lower the volume or turn it off, so some people may find the sound annoying. That said, the beeping is loud enough to be heard from far away, which is handy if you’re in another room. And, like the Philips, this Cosori model is about as loud as a hair dryer while the convection fan is running. The overall design of the Cosori is streamlined and sleek, so it won’t look out of place on a counter.

This model has 13 preprogrammed settings, which is a bit overkill. Some of the settings aren’t that accurate, either (a common drawback with most air fryers), so you’ll have to figure out the optimal settings for what you’re cooking by trial and error. For instance, in our tests, the setting for cooking fish was too low—when cooking fish sticks, we had to increase the temperature from 350 °F to 400 °F and the time from 10 minutes to 16 minutes in order to achieve the crispiest results. The chicken fingers we cooked were done in about 20 minutes, versus the preprogrammed setting of 25. Even with those adjustments, the Cosori still didn’t cook as evenly as the Philips air fryer or the Cuisinart convection toaster oven, and in some cases it took longer.

How to adjust air-fryer recipes for a convection toaster oven

You don’t need to seek out air-fryer recipes to get great results in a convection toaster oven—any recipe written for a standard oven (as most are) works. However, if you have your eye on a recipe written specifically for an air fryer but want to prepare it in a convection toaster oven, you have to make some minor adjustments for the best results.

Generally, if you’re following an air-fryer recipe but plan to cook it in a convection toaster oven, you need to increase the cooking time and temperature to compensate for the toaster oven’s larger cavity. You don’t need to buy an air-frying basket—a regular quarter-sheet pan will give you similar “air-frying” results in a convection oven (though you may want to line the pan with aluminum foil for faster cleanup). Here are some tips for cooking some common dishes in a convection toaster oven.

• Roasted vegetables: Roast at 425 °F with speed convection for 12 to 20 minutes, tossing halfway through cooking time.
• “Air-fryer” pickles: Bake at 425 °F with speed convection for 15 minutes, flipping halfway through cooking time.
• Hand-cut fries: Bake at 425 °F with speed convection for 40 to 45 minutes, tossing occasionally. (For best results, though, we recommend deep frying hand-cut fries.)
• Frozen fries: Bake with speed convection at the temperature indicated on the package. You may need to cook them longer than the instructions recommend (we thought the Ore-Ida fries we made were best after about 35 to 40 minutes).

• Whole 5- to 6-pound chicken: Roast at 425 °F using speed convection for 45 to 50 minutes, or until the thigh registers 165 °F on a meat thermometer.
• Chicken wings: Roast at 450 °F using speed convection for 25 to 30 minutes, flipping halfway through cooking time.
• Chicken pieces: Roast at 425 °F using speed convection for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the thickest part registers 165 °F on a meat thermometer.
• Steaks or pork chops: Preheat the toaster oven to 425 °F with the convection fan turned off. Heat 2 teaspoons of neutral oil in a skillet (preferably cast iron) over high heat. Sear the steaks or pork chops on both sides until nicely browned. Transfer to a baking pan and finish cooking in the oven (until desired internal temperature is reached).
• Frozen chicken fingers or fish sticks: Follow the instructions on the package for a standard oven. Turn on speed convection and flip the food halfway through cooking time. (Note: You may need to reduce the cooking time by a few minutes depending on the brand.)
• Salmon: Bake skin-side down at 425 °F using speed convection until your fish reaches the desired internal temperature or until it flakes easily with a fork at the thickest part.

• Cakes or brownies: Bake at 350 °F (reduce the temperature to 325 °F for dark-colored pans) with the convection fan turned off until a toothpick comes out clean. (Note: If using convection, you may need to reduce the baking time slightly.) Allow 24 to 33 minutes for an 8- or 9-inch round pan, 12 to 17 minutes for cupcakes, or 27 to 34 minutes for an 8- or 9-inch square pan of brownies.
• Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies: For chewier cookies, bake at 350 °F for 11 minutes with the convection fan turned off. For softer cookies, bake at 350 °F for 12 minutes using the convection or speed convection setting. (Note: Most other cookie recipes can bake at 350 °F, but the baking time varies depending on your recipe.)

What about using a full-size convection oven?

In our tests, food prepared in a convection oven and a convection toaster oven turned out crispier and more flavorful than food cooked in a pod-shaped air fryer. Photo: Michael Hession

For the record, you can get similar “air-fried” results when cooking food in a full-size oven with convection. But because a full-size oven is so much larger than a toaster oven or an air fryer, it takes much longer to preheat and can take longer to cook food. The Cuisinart TOB-260N1 toaster oven preheats almost immediately, making it the better choice if speed is part of what appeals to you about an air fryer.

What about air-fryer lids for an Instant Pot?

Instant Pot and Ninja offer electric pressure cookers with air-frying capabilities, such as the Instant Pot Duo Crisp and the Ninja Foodi. Instant Pot also makes a separate air-fryer lid that fits many 6-quart Instant Pot models. We’ve tested both the Duo Crisp and the Foodi, and we’ve found their air-frying capabilities mostly acceptable but still not nearly as good as those of the Cuisinart TOB-260N1. They suffer from the same major pitfalls as pod-shaped air fryers: The cooking chambers tend to be pretty small, producing less evenly cooked and less browned foods. (We have yet to test an air-fryer lid on its own, and we will update this guide with more information once we do.)

At this writing, such pressure-cooker/air-fryer combos are roughly $50 to $70 cheaper than the Cuisinart TOB-260N1, so if you’re interested in saving some money—as well as saving space with a single appliance rather than buying both an electric pressure cooker and a toaster oven—we recommend the Duo Crisp over the Foodi. (Or, if you already own an Instant Pot, you may want to try a compatible Instant Pot air-fryer lid.)

What to look forward to

We’re conducting a new round of testing to expand our coverage of pod-shaped air fryers. In addition to new models, we’re also testing a wider range of sizes, and special features like dual baskets and smart app connectivity. We’re trying out larger air fryers, like the Instant Vortex Plus Dual Basket Air Fryer and the Ninja Foodi DZ201 Dual Basket Air Fryer, and more models from popular brands, including the Dash Deluxe Electric Air Fryer, the Ultrean Air Fryer AF01, and the new Cosori Air Fryer. While we’ll be looking at more versatile and accessible features this time around, our foundational criteria for a great air fryer remain the same: an intuitive user experience, even cooking, and consistent temperatures.

The competition

Toaster-oven air fryers

Instant Brands, manufacturer of the Instant Pot, recently made its first foray into the world of air fryers with the Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven. Unfortunately, the Instant Vortex Plus browned toast unevenly and produced tough, dehydrated fries in our tests. In theory, the rotisserie basket (which rotates food automatically while the unit is cooking) is a good idea, but in practice it can hold only a couple of handfuls of fries at a time, and you can’t sample a fry for doneness without removing the entire basket from the oven. In our tests, the rotisserie spit worked well and produced a nicely roasted chicken, but you have to know how to truss a bird in order for it to cook evenly, and afterward we had to soak the spit overnight to get the gunk off. The cake we baked was too dark and rose unevenly because the lip on the oven rack tilted the pan. The cake also came out rippled on top, apparently from the force of the fan, which was especially loud while running.

The Cuisinart TOA-60 Air Fryer Toaster Oven cooked fries quickly without drying them out, though some were slightly dark. But the chicken fingers and fish sticks we cooked were pale all over and had soggy undersides. The toast we made in the TOA-60 was also unevenly browned.

Like the larger model above, the Cuisinart AFR-25 Compact AirFryer was good at cooking fries quickly. Its chicken fingers and fish sticks, however, had somewhat soggy undersides. Plus, the narrow interior can’t fit a whole chicken.

The rotisserie spit in the Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360 struggled to make a full rotation while roasting a chicken. This model also had difficulty regulating its internal temperature, fluctuating between 330 °F and 371 °F when set to 400 °F. Needless to say, most food took longer to cook because the oven’s temperature was wildly off.

We had difficulty preventing fries from spilling out of the Black+Decker Crisp ’N Bake Air Fry Toaster Oven’s shallow basket while tossing them, and the fries came out predominantly undercooked with burned tips. Fish sticks and chicken fingers were pale and soggy on the bottom after baking.

The NuWave Bravo XL Air Fryer Smart Oven has an overwhelming amount of buttons, which are confusing and overly complicated. One of the biggest issues with this model: the preprogrammed settings, which are egregiously wrong. For instance, the roast, toast, and bagel settings are all programmed to 310 °F, which is far too low—it took over 12 minutes for us to get any color on the toast we made. Also, the probe thermometer doesn’t indicate the internal temperature of meat, while it’s cooking, on the digital interface; it beeps only once, when the set temperature is reached.

The Hamilton Beach Sure-Crisp Air Fryer Toaster Oven had a weak fan that was unable to circulate air through the oven as effectively as those of some of the other models we tested. Its shallow basket made tossing food without spilling more difficult. Fries were unevenly cooked, even with frequent tossing, and several of our testers said the food tasted like plastic—even after we had burned off the industrial coatings meant to protect the oven during shipping and had run the appliance several times.

Pod-shaped air fryers

The Philips Avance Collection Airfryer HD9641/96 was originally the best pod-shaped air fryer we’d tested. It had the smallest footprint and did the best job of cooking food evenly when the basket was filled to capacity. However, Philips discontinued it just before releasing the Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 model we now recommend, which performed similarly to the Avance HD9641/96 in our tests. But like the new model, the Avance HD9641/96 couldn’t comfortably fit chickens weighing over 3 pounds; larger birds would touch the heating element, producing billows of smoke potent enough to set off a fire alarm (as we found in our tests). It was capable of baking only a 6-inch cake, and since it didn’t allow control over the fan speed, its blast of hot air caused our cake to mushroom into what looked like a giant muffin top. Like the new Premium HD9741/96 model, the Avance HD9641/96 was about as loud as a hair dryer, while the Cuisinart convection toaster oven cooks in near silence.

The Philips Avance Collection Airfryer XL HD9240/94 is basically a larger version of the Premium Airfryer HD9741/96. In our tests, the two devices performed similarly, but we think the larger model is impractical for most people because it takes up a lot of counter space and is very expensive. If you’re looking for a larger air fryer, we recommend getting our pick, the Cuisinart TOB-260N1.

The Philips Essential Airfryer HD9252/91 performed similarly to our budget pick, the Cosori Pro Air Fryer, yet it often costs significantly more. The fish sticks we prepared in the Essential HD9252/91 stuck together in a giant glob, and preparing food generally took longer than in the Premium HD9741/96, our also-great pick. Overall, this model seemed to run cooler than the set temperature, which would account for its longer cook times.

The Black+Decker Purifry Air Fryer HF110SBD was the best budget pod-shaped model we tried back in 2017, but at the time it had the smallest max-fill capacity of all the fryers we tested. In most cases, we were able to successfully cook about only one serving of food at a time. For a bit more money, we think the Cosori Pro Air Fryer is a better budget option.

We tested three Dash air fryers: the 3-quart and 6-quart versions of the Deluxe Air Fryer and the 2.6-quart Tasti-Crisp Air Fryer. However, all three models did a poor job of maintaining a set temperature—they ran about 40 to 50 degrees below their setting in our tests. In addition, they all produced the most unevenly cooked french fries of the models we tested in 2021. The 6-quart model was enormous, and we thought some people would have trouble fitting it underneath their cupboards. If you’re looking for a less expensive model, we recommend the Cosori over any of these.

We like the spacious square basket of the Instant Vortex Air Fryer, which offers a lot of surface area for evenly cooking food. We also appreciate that this model allows you to silence the beeps, which can be somewhat annoying. Unfortunately, you have to press the controls really hard in order to operate the machine, which was especially frustrating in our tests, so we had to dismiss it.

The Ninja AF101 Air Fryer has a tray instead of a basket for keeping food from sitting in oil. Unfortunately, the tray falls out when you turn food out onto a plate, which could potentially cause burns. This model runs quite hot, too, so you really have to adjust the temperature to prevent burning your food. And because of its round bucket, it holds less food than our picks.

Unlike most air fryers, the 7-quart Gourmia Digital Air Fryer GAF798 requires preheating (probably due to its large size). Annoyingly, however, if you want to add a few minutes to the cooking time after the initial set time runs out, the appliance automatically kicks into preheat mode again (even though the air fryer is already hot); it’s a weird programming glitch that we found to be a nuisance. In addition, instead of a basket, this model uses a tray at the bottom of the bucket, which occasionally falls out when you invert the bucket. And the finger holes for lifting the tray are wide enough to allow french fries to fall through to the bottom of the bucket.

The Oster DuraCeramic Air Fryer, which looks straight out of a sci-fi movie, has a tilting mechanism and a rotating oven cavity so you don’t have to toss food manually. Unfortunately, in our tests, fries took nearly 50 minutes to cook (versus about 20 minutes in our pod-shaped air fryer pick, the Philips Premium HD9741/96) and still weren’t as crispy as we’d like.

The french fries we cooked in the GoWISE USA GW22621 turned out badly burned at the top of the cooker and undercooked at the bottom. Also, when you reinsert the basket, the air fryer slides across the counter because it doesn’t have enough weight or grip to stay in place.

In April 2022, Best Buy recalled 770,000 Insignia air fryers models—including digital, analog, and air fryer toaster oven models—which amounts to roughly 3 percent of all air fryers sold in the US over the past two years. We haven’t tested or recommended any Insignia air fryers for this guide, so the recall doesn’t affect our picks.

This article was edited by Gabriella Gershenson and Marilyn Ong.

Sources

1. Michelle No, I Tried The Airfryer Kitchen Gadget That’s All Over The Internet, BuzzFeed, March 1, 2017

2. Rachel Hunnicutt, Corporate Fare, Frozen: A Donald Deskey Associates’ Cafeteria Concept, Cooper Hewitt Blog, August 31, 2018