22 best air fryers to buy now UK 2023

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These mini super ovens make moist chicken, delicious pasta dishes and even light and fluffy cakes Patent Dual Basket Air Fryer 8L

This article was updated in November to include a new tried and tested air fryer. We'll continue to update it throughout the month to bring you the best deals.

Fried favourites cooked more healthily may sound a little too good to be true but, thanks to the nifty air fryer, you can serve up classics such as fish and chips using little to no oil.

In fact, this increasingly popular appliance can cook everything from chicken to cupcakes in a few simple steps, making it a great multi-purpose gadget to have in the kitchen.

Interested? Well, the Good Housekeeping Institute tested the leading models to find the best air fryers to buy now:

In a nutshell, air fryers use an alternative cooking method to deep frying. Rather than submerging food in oil, air fryers use very little – in our tests we used one tablespoon of oil as standard – to bake food quickly.

They work by blasting hot air around the basket or oven instead, producing crispy and fluffy chips or moist chicken that’s healthier than if the food had been coated in oil.

You may have read recently that an air fryer can save you money on your electricity bills. They certainly are time and energy efficient; the cheapest on test to roast a small chicken was the Tower T17100 Vortx Vizion Dual Basket Air Fryer, which used just 17p of electricity over 30 minutes of cooking time.

However, if you need to use an air fryer multiple times to make enough food to feed your household, you’re probably better off cooking everything in one go in the oven. Not to mention, most air fryers are an expensive initial investment, meaning it will take a while for savings on your energy bill to cancel out their cost.

Not all air fryers are created equal – there are a few different designs to choose between.

Basket-style air fryers have one or two drawers where you place your food for cooking. Those with two drawers are particularly handy if you want to cook different foods at the same time, but they can take up a lot more room in the kitchen than their more compact counterparts.

There are also oven-style air fryers that often come with rotisserie accessories, so you can roast a full chicken for example. Again, these tend to be fairly weighty appliances.

Some on our list, such as the Instant Pot Duo Crisp + Air Fryer, are actually multi-cookers, giving you multiple appliances in one, including a slow cooker or dehydrator as well as an air fryer. We’ve also included one machine that doubles as a health grill.

Lastly, it’s worth thinking about clean-up – most of the fryers on our list have dishwasher-proof baskets and accessories, while the two oven air fryers we’ve featured have removable doors to help you keep your machine as clean as possible.

The experts at the GHI cook up a small feast to find the best air fryers. Depending on the capacity and type of fryer, they either roast a whole chicken or cook chicken kievs, monitoring how long it takes for the chicken to reach 75C. Then they judge (and try!) the results, looking for crispy, golden skin and moist meat.

Chips are next – they look for quickly cooked, well-browned and crunchy skins that house fluffy interiors. Finally, they make fairy cakes, to judge how well the appliance can bake and how evenly air circulates – the better baked and fluffier the cakes, the more efficient the air flow.

Each air fryer is then scored overall according to its performance, ease of use, design, instructions and accompanying information. See our top-rated picks below.

And once you've found your perfect air fryer, head to the GH cookery team's roundup of their favourite air fryer recipes, including lemon drizzle cake. And if you're needing some tips on how to use your air fryer, then the cookery team have your back.

Barely dropping a point on test, this air fryer will feed a crowd quickly, and feed them well. Our fairy cakes were evenly baked and ready to enjoy in a speedy 15 minutes, while it scored perfect marks for chicken kievs – they were crispy on the outside yet juicy in the middle after 25 minutes. Our chips were fluffy, too.

It's a fairly hefty appliance, so if your kitchen is compact it may not be for you, but you can fill its two drawers with different foods and sync the programmes so everything is ready to eat at the same time – a process we found intuitive on test. A great family fryer.

Just like our joint winner, this Haier air fryer provided consistently crispy results across the board, making it a great choice for delicious fried feasts without all that oil.

It earned a perfect score for producing golden, flavourful chicken with a beautifully crisp exterior. It also baked light and fluffy cupcakes that rose to an impressive 40cm with a baking time of 20 minutes. In some cases, the food needed a few extra minutes in the fryer to be perfectly cooked, but that’s just a case of trial and error.

One handy feature with this air fryer is that it reminds you to shake your food mid-cooking. Our testers found this particularly helpful for ensuring even cooking and consistent crispiness. While it isn’t quite as big as the Ninja, its 7.5 litre capacity should still comfortably serve up enough portions for a delicious family dinner.

Like our winner, this large air fryer has two drawers that you can sync to prepare multiple dishes at once. The results were delicious, with a particularly succulent roast chicken. Our chips were fluffy too, but crisped up best when distributed across two drawers, rather than cramming lots into one. Turning them a few times also helped.

There are no cooking charts, so some guesswork is required to begin with, but windows mean you can easily check on how your food is doing. The effective non-stick design also makes washing up easy.

Not just an air fryer, this multi-cooker also grills, sears, roasts, bakes and slow cooks, making it a smart choice if you’re after a space-saving do-it-all appliance.

It claims to air fry up to 70% quicker than earlier Russell Hobbs models; this wasn’t tested, but it did cook our chicken to succulent, golden perfection in a faster-than-most 30 minutes (simply press the chicken icon on the casing and it presets the optimal temperature and cooking time.)

Simple and modern in design, it couldn’t be easier to set up and use. The buttons are responsive, it’s compact for storage in smaller kitchens and it’s lightweight enough to move around. It scored a perfect ten in our chips and chicken tests, only dropping a few marks for its patchy cupcakes (not all rose well and some came out paler than others) and fiddly iron basket, which proved tricky to remove while wearing oven gloves.

At £100 less than our winning Ninja, this is a more affordable offering from the premium kitchen appliance brand. It also proved its worth on test, with perfectly chicken kievs inside and out. Chips were scrumptious too, but cook them in smaller batches for best results.

The compact design is ideal for cooking for one or two people. It also has a clear display, is stable in use and lightweight if you’re storing it in a cupboard. But, unlike most fryers, the basket doesn’t have a proper handle, which means oven gloves are needed when removing it.

There are also plenty of recipes and food charts included, so you can cook up a storm as soon as you set it up.

Ninja’s new 10-mode multi-cooker stands out for its innovative “Speedi Meals” function, which allows you to cook your grain of choice at the same time as meat and vegetables, thus quickly preparing a full meal for up to four people at once.

Impressively, every part of our trial meals cooked correctly and retained their flavour, with both chicken and salmon turning out moist and tender. It also cooked chips in a respectable 22 minutes (two minutes faster than the promised 24) and delivered fluffy fairy cakes.

The lid is hinged, rather than removable, which our tester found slightly awkward to use, and may make under-cupboard storage tricky. However, the control interface is intuitive, the troubleshooting advice is clear and it comes with a recipe booklet packed with tasty inspiration for each setting.

This smart fryer has ample room to prepare a family dinner and boasts a whopping 13 cooking modes, including steak, seafood and frozen food.

It took a while to roast a chicken but, 45 minutes later, it came out golden and moist, while our fairy cakes were just right. When cooking chips, it dropped just half a mark – they were exceptionally evenly cooked.

We like how it comes with an extensive recipe book and detailed instructions too, while its accompanying app lets you control the machine remotely for helpful flexibility.

As well as air frying, this machine works as a pressure cooker, slow cooker, sauté pan, steamer, sous vide and food warmer with extra settings for roasting, broiling, baking and dehydrating!

On test, it delivered delicious chips and scored perfect marks for its fairy cakes, although we were unable to bulk bake as we could only fit five in at a time.

As a result of its multi-purpose design, it wasn’t the most intuitive model we tested for air frying, but its online instructions should help you get set up quickly.

The capacity of its air frying basket was also fairly small – we managed to cook two chicken kievs and three portions of chips. One side of our chicken kiev stuck to it, too. That said, this is worth investing in if you’re only looking to cook for one or two and need a multi-tasking machine to save on storage space.

Tight on cupboard space? This slim air fryer should slot in nicely. We were able to cook two chicken kievs in it at once and the end results were crispy, while our chips were well-browned. Our fairy cakes cooked evenly, too.

The digital display didn’t always respond well to our touch and we’d have liked an indicator light to show the fryer was heated and ready to cook. As a basic air fryer, though, it did a reliable job at producing tasty food.

Does the world of air fryers seem daunting? Well, this dual-basket machine comes with clear instructions and food charts, which make getting started simple. The display is easy to follow and setting up each drawer is straightforward. It’s also one of the more compact dual air fryers we tested, making it suitable for smaller kitchens.

Heat distribution was mixed though; food positioned in the front half of each drawer cooked better than that at the back. Luckily, this didn’t impact the finished dishes too much – our chicken was juicy and our chips were the perfect texture inside, if a little unevenly browned.

Some cupcakes were undercooked, but this shouldn’t be a dealbreaker for an otherwise beginner-friendly machine.

Boasting a three-litre basket, this air fryer has ample room if you’re cooking for the family. It barely dropped any points in our chips and cupcake tests, with both emerging evenly cooked thanks to outstanding air circulation. And while the chicken kievs lost some moisture from the middle, they were crisp.

The outside of the appliance stayed cool during cooking and, overall, it was easy to use thanks to clear instructions and recipes. Coming with a two-year guarantee, this is a great value buy.

This nifty little air fryer is a great affordable choice. Its controls are clear and responsive, the machine is stable in use, and it’s effortless to clean thanks to a trusty non-stick coating. The cooking performance also impressed, with our chicken, chips and cupcakes hard to fault.

Despite its one-basket design, you can cook multiple meal components at once thanks to the “Group-Fry” function. It took some trial and error to get this right on test, but eventually we figured out the perfect size to chop our vegetables so they stayed moist while the steak finished cooking.

This air fryer is a good alternative if you’re cooking for one or two, or don’t have room for a dual-drawer model.

This multi-cooker's top feature is that it only has one lid, unlike many that need one for pressure cooking and one for everything else (including the Instant Pot above).

In theory, this means it’s easier to store, but given its large capacity – it should feed between six and eight people – we’d recommend checking your cupboard space before buying.

Overall, it’s intuitively designed; our tester barely looked at the instructions. And it cooked a medium-sized chicken in 45 minutes to delicious effect – think juicy, tender meat.

Note, the manual doesn’t make clear that to start cooking you need to press the buttons twice, but this qualm aside, we’d happily declare this a multi-tasking master chef.

If the winning Ninja ticks your boxes but isn’t in your price range, then this Salter model may be of interest. Like our top-scorer, it has two drawers and a sync function, so you can cook two different foods at once, safe in the knowledge they’ll both be ready to eat at the same time.

Its match function also lets you use the same settings for both drawers – although we noticed our fairy cakes were cooked to slightly different levels on test.

Our chips were evenly cooked and browned in both drawers though, but note that the pre-set function took 30 minutes as opposed to the 15 advertised. The chicken kievs also stuck to the drawers a tad, but they were deliciously crispy.

It proved intuitive to use on test, thanks to a clear display panel, responsive controls and easy-to-use pre-sets. Plus, it comes with a three-year guarantee.

Arriving in plastic-free packaging, this machine reached 200C in a rapid three minutes and put in its best performance cooking chicken, dropping just one mark. We had to spatchcock the 1.3kg bird to fit it in, and it took 65 minutes to cook, but the skin was mouthwateringly crispy and the meat was moist.

It’s a bulky bit of kit, but we found it easy to use and appreciated the included cooking charts that detail how to use the machine to prepare different foods. It also boasts a nifty built-in temperature probe but we’d only use it as a guide, as it was a few degrees out when we took a reading of the chicken using an external probe.

Here’s one of the more affordable dual-basket air fryers we tried. This model also has clear windows so you can keep an eye on your roast while it cooks – and you’ll want to use it for roasts, as our chicken was near-perfect on test.

Our chips were mixed, however, with some emerging greasy and underdone. We found this was because one drawer performed better than the other, which is something to keep in mind when cooking.

We found the drawer syncing feature worked well though, and its controls are intuitive. It’s a reliable pick for cooking a whole meal in one go.

Rotisserie fans will love this simple-to-use model. It comes with a spit and cooked our chicken in 64 minutes – well inside the time it claimed. We found placing the chicken in the oven was a bit fiddly – we had to tie its legs and wings to the body in order for it to fit – but it was roasted evenly throughout.

The appliance was ready to fry from cold in just four minutes too, and you can remove the door so cleaning is a doddle. It is large, making it one for bigger kitchens, but its 10-litre capacity is ideal if you frequently feed a crowd.

With two cooking zones that allow you to prepare two dishes at once and sync them so they’re ready at the same time, a range of accessories for grilling, and a handy “keep warm” setting, this is a great buy for busy households. It has nine auto-cooking functions, a wide selection of pre-set programs that are easy to adapt to your ideal cooking times, and a wide LED display that makes it easy to see what you’re doing at a glance. Our chips came out deliciously crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle and took five minutes less than the recommended cooking times. Note that it struggled to fit a full 1kg chicken in one drawer and the wings didn’t brown, so it’s better suited to smaller cuts. Overall, it’s a solid option for families, but be careful to keep little ones away during cooking as there’s no child-lock.

This air fryer's nine cooking modes and two trays combine to offer 54 different programme combinations. The bottom tray has a paddle that moves the food while it cooks and the top tray rotates to ensure even cooking.

On test, the paddle did sometimes bunch food together, but overall the fryer was ultra-effective – our chicken and chips were outstanding, with the score for the latter equalling that of our winner.

The appliance takes up considerable space and you’ll need to take care when using it too - the viewing window carries a temperature warning and we found it was notably hot. The handle remained cool throughout, though.

Though only tested as an air fryer, note that this affordable gadget also features a steam function for preserving the nutrients of fish, vegetables and more. It scored well for ease of use, thanks to its generous presets, clear display and helpful recipe instructions, and it couldn’t be quicker to clean. It also made minimal noise while cooking, impressing us the most with its moist, fluffy cupcakes, all of which had an appealing rise and even colour.

Its touchscreen buttons let it down a tad. They're positioned too closely together, making it easy to press the wrong one, and they sometimes took longer to respond than with other models. Food at the back of the machine often came out slightly underdone, too, but this wasn't enough of an issue to put our tester off buying it.

Hannah is our senior homes writer, specialising in reviewing the latest kitchen appliances, cleaning products, mattresses and bedding, and crafting equipment. Hannah has written about hundreds of products, from air fryers to smoothie makers to pillows, and is committed to finding the most reliable and best value for money buys. Hannah is also interested in sustainability in the home and has completed a course with the University of the Arts London in sustainable textiles, so she can help cut through the noise on what’s green and what’s not. Hannah helps to uncover the best cleaning hacks too, with a focus on easy, natural solutions. Hannah has an MA in Magazine Journalism and has previously worked as a freelance lifestyle and women’s sports journalist, working for Stylist, Sky Sports and more. Hannah has also previously worked in a florist and can normally be found caring for her house plants or sewing something new for her home or wardrobe. You can find Hannah on Instagram on @sewnbyhan

Blossom is our Senior Homes Tester. Passionate about finding the best home products and appliances for our readers, she has tested everything from blenders to pizza ovens. Blossom enjoys delving into the intricacies of products and refining testing protocols for hundreds of items. Innovative items like robot vacuum cleaners and wine coolers are among her favourite tests to date, and her most notable accomplishment is toasting 360 slices of bread in a determined bid to find the best toaster. In her free time, Blossom openly admits to being a music geek and indulges her creative side through crocheting, baking, singing and writing.

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