TL;DR
- We buy every unit. No review samples, no loans, no manufacturer contact before publication.
- Same food, same scales, every model. Chips, wings and a tray of vegetables, cooked identically.
- Four scores: crisping, evenness, noise and cleanup, weighted into one number out of 10.
- Evenness is measured, not judged. Nine pieces, nine positions, weighed and compared.
- Nobody pays for a ranking. We earn commission when you buy through our links, and it makes no difference to the score.
Table of Contents
A score is only worth something if you know how it was produced. Here is the full method, including the parts that are imperfect, so you can decide how much weight to give our rankings.
How we buy
Every air fryer on this site was bought at retail with our own money. We do not accept review samples, because a free unit is a hand picked unit and manufacturers know which ones perform. We do not brief brands before publication and we do not send scores for comment.
We earn affiliate commission when you buy through a link on this site. The commission rate is effectively identical across the brands we cover, so there is no version of the ranking that pays us more. What pays us is you trusting the ranking enough to come back.
The test battery
| Test | What we cook | What we measure | Feeds into |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crisping | 700 g fresh chips, 1 cm cut | Surface colour and texture at a fixed time | Crisping score |
| Evenness | 9 chips, 9 fixed positions | Weight loss per piece, spread across positions | Evenness score |
| Fat rendering | 12 chicken wings | Skin crispness and rendered fat | Crisping score |
| Dry heat | Tray of broccoli and peppers | Browning without drying out | Evenness score |
| Preheat | Empty basket to 200C | Time to reach and hold temperature | Crisping score |
| Noise | Steady state running | Decibels at 1 metre, at the machine front | Noise score |
| Cleanup | After the wing test | Time to clean back to as new | Cleanup score |
| Frozen load | 500 g frozen chips | Recovery from a cold load | Crisping score |
The evenness test
Evenness is where air fryers differ most, and where marketing is least useful. Rather than looking at a basket and forming an opinion, we cut nine chips to the same size, weigh each one, and place them in nine marked positions across the basket floor. After a fixed cook we weigh each chip again.
Weight loss tracks how much water has been driven off, which tracks how much heat that position received. A machine with strong, well distributed airflow produces nine similar numbers. A weak or badly shaped one produces a wide spread, and you get the pattern owners complain about, where the edges burn while the middle stays pale.
The spread between the highest and lowest loss becomes the evenness score. No shaking during this test, since shaking is what hides the problem.
How the score is built
| Component | Weight | Why that weight |
|---|---|---|
| Crisping | 40% | The reason you bought an air fryer rather than a microwave |
| Evenness | 30% | The most common real world complaint, and the hardest to fix |
| Cleanup | 20% | Decides whether the machine gets used on a weeknight |
| Noise | 10% | Matters in an open plan kitchen, less elsewhere |
Capacity and price are not scored. Both are facts you can read off a page, and both mean different things to different households. A 4 quart basket is not worse than a 10 quart one, it is smaller, so we report the number and let our size guide help you choose.
What we do not test well
Honesty is more useful than a longer list of tests, so here is where our method falls short.
- Long term durability. We run each machine for weeks, not years. A coating that fails at month eighteen will not show up in our score, and owner reviews are better evidence for that than we are.
- Reliability rates. We buy one unit per model. One unit cannot tell you how often that model fails.
- Smart features. We check that an app connects and works. We do not audit its privacy or judge how long the servers will stay up.
- Repairability. We report whether spares are sold, but we do not strip machines down.
- Every recipe. Our cooking times chart comes from the recipes we develop, not from an exhaustive sweep of every food.
Scores are comparative, not absolute. A model scoring 8 is not eighty percent of a perfect air fryer. It sits above the ones scoring 7 and below the ones scoring 9, on the tests described here. That is all a score can honestly claim.
When scores change
Rankings are relative, so adding a strong new model can push an older one down without anything about it changing. We retest when a manufacturer revises a model, and we mark reviews with the date we last ran the tests.
If we get something wrong, we correct it and say so on the review rather than quietly editing it. Point out an error and we will retest.
Owner reviews
Alongside our scores, each review carries feedback from people who bought the machine and lived with it. Our tests catch what a model does in week one. Owners catch what it does in year two, and the two together are more useful than either alone.
See the method applied across all 44 air fryer reviews, compare models side by side with our comparison tool, or start with the current top 8.
Frequently asked questions
Do you accept free air fryers from manufacturers?
No. Every unit is bought at retail with our own money. A review sample is a unit the manufacturer chose to send, and there is no way to know whether it represents what you would receive. Buying at retail costs us more and is the only way the comparison means anything.
Do brands pay for a better ranking?
No, and there is no mechanism for it. We earn affiliate commission when a reader buys through our links, at rates that are effectively the same across every brand we cover, so no ranking pays us more than another. Placing a weak machine at the top would cost us the only thing that makes the site work, which is readers coming back.
How do you measure evenness?
With nine chips cut to the same size, weighed individually, then placed in nine marked positions across the basket. After a fixed cook we weigh each one again. Weight loss shows how much water was driven off, which shows how much heat each position received. A narrow spread means even airflow, and a wide one means hot spots.
Why is crisping weighted highest?
Because it is the reason air fryers exist. If you only wanted food heated through, a microwave does it faster and cheaper. Crisping is the job, so it carries 40% of the score. Evenness takes 30% because it is the complaint we see most often from owners and the hardest fault to work around.
Do you test how long air fryers last?
Not properly, and we say so. We run each machine for weeks rather than years, so a coating that fails after eighteen months will not show up in our testing. For durability, owner reviews on each review page are better evidence than our score. It is the biggest gap in our method.
Why does a model I bought score lower than a newer one?
Scores are comparative, so a strong new arrival can push older models down without anything about them changing. It does not mean your machine got worse. Check the test date on the review, which tells you when we last ran the full battery.
What if you get something wrong?
We correct it on the review and note that we did, rather than editing quietly. If you own a model and your experience contradicts our score, tell us. Retesting is cheap compared with publishing something wrong.