We’ve been long fans of AirFryers. We tested our first in 2014, and it was stable in our kitchen until we finally replaced it in 2022 with a Ninja AF451; however, after 2 years, would we still say the Ninja AF451 (or similar) is worth the money? Read our longterm review below:
Things we love
- Fast to heat up, you don’t have to wait for the oven to heat up.
- Temperature probe for those more tricky food items but equally we found putting it inside food that we thought was simple to cook produced superior food, e.g. more moist chicken goujons that we might have otherwise overcooked.
- Most foods you can cook in it.
- Timers, so if you forget, it goes off.
- Two drawers for different cooking options.
- Adjust to what you need.
- Cleans up well.
Things that are OK but not perfect
- The two drawers are great but it’s slightly limiting at times, our older Philips drawer was much larger but only one single compartment, newer models from Ninja allow you to have a combination of one large or two smaller which is a welcome addition.
- Sometimes it’s confusing (even 2 years later) to confirm which setting/side you’re using or how to adjust, there are definite simpler AirFryers out there but the Ninja does a lot more.
- I wish there was a good and easy calculator to work out timings, for instance because it’s so efficient we find food often will cook in twice the time which is great but it would be useful if the packets you’re taking the food from had these numbers on.
The coating slightly wearing on the edges of the base plates
Things we hate
- The coating has slightly come off the bases/trays in places – We expected better, to be honest.
- We don’t like having to grab the dirty base out, it’s also easy to catch your nails on it.
A simple goujon becomes better cooked and superior thanks to the temperature probe (we don’t do it everytime but it’s good to work out better times).
Summary
The Ninja AirFryers are great quality and we feel they will last the test of time, they’re a little complex compared to other devices but overall have far more features so this is allowable. We continue to recommend them, especially if you can grab a deal on one from our socials!
Where are the best deals on Ninja AirFryers?
So this varies but if we were you we would check in this order (aff ads):
