Best air fryer of 2024

So far, we’ve tested over a dozen air fryers to curate this list. Each air fryer is evaluated for its strength, consistency, ease of use, design, features and overall performance. In total, we logged over 75 hours of air frying.

There are hundreds of recipes that can be made using an air fryer, but we stuck to the basics and focused on the most common foods people associate with an air fryer. Chicken wings are at the top of that list but French fries, frozen snacks, and dense vegetables — in this case, Brussels sprouts — are air fryer staples. Before we get started, we reviewed each model’s manual for relevant cooking trends. If the manual does not provide specific instructions, we have applied standardized procedures to each air fryer depending on the type of food we are preparing.

For the chicken wings, we followed the basic air fryer recipe. First, we preheated the air fryer to 400°F and cooked it for 25 minutes in the basket with the tray attached, then we checked and turned it every 8 minutes. Most of the air fryers we tested got a solid showing in the wing test although some, including the powerful Ninja and Cosori Lite models, got slightly crisper wings in this amount of time.

For the Brussels sprouts, we preheated the ovens to 375°F and cooked them for 15 minutes. Before cooking, rinse the sprouts, cut them in half, and add a tablespoon of olive oil to them. In this test, some ovens had difficulty browning the outside of the buds but most got there in the end.

For our french fries test, we chose Alexia frozen french fries and cooked one cup, according to the air fryer directions on the bag. Quick note: Be careful when cooking French fries in an air fryer because some types, especially delicate French fries, can easily dry out when exposed to ultraconvection. We recommend using the large waffle fries, hash browns, hash browns or potato wedges over the smaller variety.

At the end of each test, we looked for how evenly the items were cooked, whether they were fully cooked and whether they had a sufficient level of crunchy, crispy, fried quality that could be compared to deep frying or pan frying.

Ease of use

In addition to cooking performance, how easy it is to operate the air fryer and how intuitive the buttons and controls are are things we noticed closely during testing. Overly complex settings, controls, and presets did not generally result in high scores, but some features were appreciated. All air fryers have basic temperature and cooking time control, although some are digitally controlled while others require a simple manual lever. From there, you’ll find preset programs for various foods like wings, fries, fish, vegetables and even baked goods.

How well they cook

To get a sense of how each air fryer in this test group handled, we ran a battery of three tests on each model. Each test focused on one food: chicken wings, Brussels sprouts, and frozen French fries.