We were able to get somewhat better browning by extending the cook time. For example, when we cooked chicken nuggets, we set every air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for seven minutes, per the nuggets’ air hamilton beach air fryer fryer cooking instructions. If your main priority is simply to get a small, inexpensive appliance to heat food better than a microwave, you might be happy with a small toaster oven without convection.
Some may argue that air frying is just like cooking with convection, but its technology typically allows food to cook quicker and get crispier thanks to a powerful heating element and a large, quick-moving fan. Compared to stand-alone air fryers, air fryer toaster ovens can be used for more cooking tasks and differ in design, making them more versatile. For all intents and purposes, air fryers toaster ovens are countertop convection ovens. Convection ovens use heating elements and fans to circulate hot air around the item you’re cooking so it can cook evenly—and potentially reducing the cooking time. It’s also what creates that crisp outer layer on food that gives the illusion that it’s fried.
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Unlike most air fryers, the 7-quart Gourmia GAF798 Digital Air Fryer required preheating (probably due to its large size). Annoyingly, however, if you want to add a few minutes to the cooking time after the initial set time runs out, the appliance automatically kicks into preheat mode again, even though the air fryer is already hot. In addition, instead of a basket, this model uses a tray at the bottom of the bucket, which occasionally falls out when you invert the bucket. And the finger holes for lifting the tray are wide enough to allow french fries to fall through to the bottom. For our original guide in 2017, we ran the air fryers through a series of tests, cooking frozen and hand-cut french fries, frozen finger foods, and pork chops. In subsequent years of testing, we cooked frozen french fries, chicken tenders, and fish sticks, as well as fresh chicken wings.
Today, it’s the best-selling Hamilton Beach 3.2 Quart/3 Liter Digital Air Fryer that’s 32% off. Although it can toast 6 slices at once, in our tests, it didn’t brown the slices in the front as evenly as the ones in the back. Brandi’s goal is to share recipes that support a consistently healthy lifestyle. Brandi currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri and is a self-taught cook and fitness enthusiast. I make sure the chicken thighs are patted dry and any excess skin is cut away. Create an account to easily save your favorite recipes and access FREE meal plans.
(Ahem, Thanksgiving.) This toaster oven can handle a 13-by-9-inch baking dish, 12-cup muffin tin or even a 14-pound turkey. And if you’re into baking your own bread, it can even proof your dinner rolls to complement the feast. In April 2022, Best Buy recalled 770,000 Insignia air fryer models—including digital, analog, and air fryer toaster oven models—which amounts to roughly 3% of all air fryers sold in the US over the past two years.
That said, the beeping is loud enough to be heard from far away, which is handy if you’re in another room. Like the Premium Airfryer, this Cosori model is about as loud as a hair dryer while the convection fan is running. The Hamilton Beach Air Fryer Sure Crisp Toaster Oven is considerably smaller and less expensive than the other models we tested.
But no matter how you slice it, $350 is a whole lot of dough to drop on a slot toaster. Some of the temperature controls are more imprecise than others which may be a nuisance depending on how and what you plan to cook. The Balmuda can only be set in increments of 50 degrees, for instance, while the Panasonic FlashXpress in increments of 35 degrees. This didn’t bother me too much, but it does mean you can’t hit a precise 400 and thus may have to adjust for certain foods. In the Jamaican patty test, all of the ovens heated the frozen meat pies through the center, but the Breville and Balmuda produced the best browning on the outer pastry shell. The hand pie that emerged from the Balmuda Oven (see below) was nearly overcooked (and perhaps it would be for some folks) but that’s just how I like mine.
The machine is also light enough to move around or store in a cabinet if you need to free up some space. The Pro LE’s handle has an improved design over that of the original Cosori Pro, which we tested in 2017. The old version had a plastic guard on the handle to cover the button that releases the inner basket from the outer one.
We set the air fry function as per the provided manual or based on package directions if there was no information in the manual. We then tested the bake/oven function by baking five 1-ounce store bought cookie dough balls at 350 degrees F for 12 minutes. Our last performance test was to roast 2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts at 425 degrees F until internal temperature was 165 degrees and note how long it took, how crispy the skin was and how juicy the meat was. We also test the air fryer toaster ovens’ baking ability by making frozen pizza (to see how evenly the cheese melts) and boxed cake mix. Read on to learn more about how we test air fryer toaster ovens, what to consider when shopping and more about how air fryer toaster ovens work.