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The Best Air Fryers Of 2024

Take a look at my list of necessary things to think about when picking the best air fryer for you and your family.

Nov 29, 2023 The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure

The Best Air Fryers Of 2024: Rated And Reviewed by the Air Fryer Queen

Most people ask what is the perfect air fryer, and the answer in a way is simple, it is whichever air fryer has all the capabilities you want, and the right size you want it to be. What makes the question difficult is that what everyone needs can be completely different.

So, let me go over some of my favorite appliances, the air fryer, and all the different ins and outs of the way they work.

After personally trying over two dozen air fryers, let me lead with my top reasons I love air fryers.

First, they are great for those who really don’t enjoy cooking. You can find some great recipes that you can make in no time at all.

Second, since air fryers are fairly simple to work with, I have been able to empower my kids to do some cooking for themselves and be confident doing it.

Thirdly, I no longer have to wait for the oven to preheat after 15 minutes. The air fryer can cook what you need with as little as zero to 5 minutes to preheat. Plus most recipes are done in about 15 minutes.

Fourthly, they are great for everyone! Families, singletons, snowbirds, college kids, pretty much everyone!

Things to consider when choosing an air fryer:

1. Type of air fryer

Oven style: This type is made with racks and shelves, and looks like a mini oven. harder to clean the grease tends to get dirt, need hot pads, rotate racks so food cooks evenly. Longer to cook because it is a larger unit and it takes longer to heat up. They also tend to emit quite a bit of heat.

Basket style: These have baskets that pull in and out with ease, and are more compact. They cook faster, are easier to clean, and in most cases can be popped right into the dishwasher. You also don’t need to use hot pads when removing the basket.

2. Size of Air Fryer

To cut to the chase, the thing that really matters is the horizontal cooking space. With a basket-style air fryer, you will have actually more space because of the height of the air fryer basket. Whereas the depth of the air fryer racks or trays is actually pretty minimal.

The 6 qt is a great option that tends to be about a 9×9 square basket. Using a square basket as opposed to using a round basket you will get a lot more useable space.

If you go much smaller than a 6 qt air fryer, you might actually find you are unhappy because you can’t cook what you want and then end up buying the 6 qt size air fryer instead.

3. Wattage

1700 watts is the magic number that you want your air fryer to reach or exceed for a 5-8qt air fryer because you will need the hot air to heat up the space and with the larger wattage it will heat up faster and cook faster.

For 4-5 qt you can get away with 1500 watts because the space being heated up to air fry is smaller.

4. Footprint

Kitchens only have so much room in them, so obviously you need to take into consideration how much space your air fryer will take up on your counter.

You will want to think about the footprint of the counter space, but also how tall the air fryer is, and how much space you have between the counters and the cabinets. Plus, when the air fryer is cooking, it needs to have a few inches on each side to get proper airflow.

5. User Friendly Interface

You will want to look at the control panel or interface the air fryer has to see how user-friendly it is. Is it intuitive? Are there different cooking functions that you are looking for (i.e. modes like roast, dehydration, broil, bake)?

Are there preset buttons to make cooking easier? Are they programmable?

If you aren’t sure where to start for cooking times you can always look at my cooking cheat sheets on airfryercheatsheet.com.

6. Easy to clean

Most air fryer baskets are dishwasher safe, but verify that with the user manual first to make sure you don’t ruin the air fryer parts.

However, I find that just popping the air fryer basket into the sink with some Dawn powerwash dish soap will do the trick just fine. Plus the air fryer baskets do tend to take up quite a bit of room in the dishwasher.

The fewer small spaces the air fryer basket has the easier it is to clean. Less crevices for the food to get stuck in.

Must have features in an air fryer:

Automatic shut off

Most air fryers now do have this safety feature, but there are sometimes that the air fryer will not turn off when you pull the basket out if it does not have this feature.

Warranty

The best warranty I’ve seen is a 2 year warranty which is great, especially when you buy from a reputable brand that stands behind their products.

Nice to have features:

Preheat button

It doesn’t happen often that I preheat the air fryer, but when I do it is nice to be able to just press one button and it is ready to go.

Shake reminder button

This is definitely a bonus feature because especially as a mom it is easy to get distracted when you are multitasking to the max. This allows you to know when you need to shake the basket to make sure the food is cooking evenly.

Bluetooth connect

If you love being able to use your phone to turn the air fryer on, this would also be something to consider. While I do not use this feature often, it is a nice perk to have.

Who needs what air fryer based on cooking needs:

For college students:

I would recommend the Cosori Light – 4 qt air fryer. It is on the smaller side, but works great for 1-2 people and is nice and compact for smaller spaces.

For the solo cooker:

I recommend the Cosori Turbo Blaze – 6 qt air fryer. the interface is at the top, the numbers are big, the buttons are easy to push, and it doesn’t take up a lot of space on the counter. Plus the basket is easy to get in and out without a ton of effort and has the large capacity with the 6 qt.

Family-size air fryer:

They are great for making sides, sheet pan dinners, desserts, and so much more!

Cosori Dual Blaze 6.8 qt
Cosori Pro II
Cosori Turbo Blaze 6 qt
Instant VersaZone (this one has where you can cook two things at the same time but at different temperatures or use the whole large area for one thing)

More things to consider:

Price Conscious:

Instead of wasting your money on a lesser brand, I would suggest imploring your patience and waiting for when they go on sale.

Believe it or not, they are on sale multiple times a year. Look towards those big shopping holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

Don’t go too cheap! You will get what you pay for based on my experience. But, if you wait for one of those key shopping days, you should be able to get what you are looking for for about $80-$100.

Convenience:

If you are looking for an air fryer where you basically just have to pop the food in and go, not flipping, or rotating needed, then the Cosori Dual Blaze air fryer is the one you need.

It has two burners, one on the top and one on the bottom. It also has a removable grate and the bottom is safe to cook in without it and works great.

Lazy Cooking:

Alright, next, level hands off, where the air fryer is literally telling you what you need to do in order to get the best meal of your life, then you need the Dreo ChefMaker! It has a crazy good interface and a magic probe that comes with the Chefmaker and basically does all the cooking for you.

While the Dreo is a crazy good machine, it does come at a higher cost but will produce some of the best cooking with little to no work on your part.

What about ceramic-coated air fryers?

Surprisingly enough, I get this question often for those who want to avoid the Teflon-coated air fryers.

I recommend the Yedi Ceramic air fryer over the Paula Dean air fryer. They definitely have a good amount of room in the frying basket and the Yedi came with some extra accessories too.

However, there are some drawbacks to using the ceramic-coated air fryers. They get pretty hot on the outside surface (about 100 degrees F or more). Plus they tend to have the slots on the side, which is super hard to clean when you are using a recipe with a sauce or marinade.