The Plus 6-in 1 Air Fryer with ClearCook and OdorErase comes in a medium-size box that’s well-packed to keep your air fryer safe as it ships. The packaging was not too sustainable, with styrofoam layers at the top and bottom of the fryer that cannot be recycled. When you put food on multiple trays at at time, it doesn’t cook evenly, so you must swap the trays halfway through your cooking time.
We’ve come to expect the best from the maker of the Instant Pot, and the Instant Vortex Plus doesn’t feel quite like it. While I loved the dehydrate feature and enjoyed watching a small chicken rotate on a spit, there are still some rough edges here. If you’re new to the world of air frying, you might find it difficult to dip your toes in with either of these air fryers. There’s no time and temperature guidance for popular air fried meals included.
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Finally, we made our own recipe of chicken and waffles to see how the machine would fry chicken and toast frozen waffles. It’s 20% smaller than some of Instant Pot’s other models, but doesn’t sacrifice capacity, offering 6 quarts / 5.7 liters. Given that many older air fryers of this size offer a reduced capacity of 2 quarts / 2 liters, this is a huge win for the Instant Vortex Slim. Emitting a cheerful jingle, the air fryer indicated a few minutes before the end of the cooking cycle that it was time to give the basked a shake, which I dutifully obeyed. Once the time had elapsed, the air fryer automatically switched off – and I was greeted with perfectly crisp and fluffy fries cooked just to my liking, alongside a moist, flavorful fillet of salmon. To test the Instant Vortex, I considered factors like portability, versatility, and overall performance.
There are a few things you lose by opting for this model, though. It doesn’t have a dehydrate setting, there’s no progress or text bar (instead, a small seven-segment screen displays the time, temperature, and cooking stage), and there’s no window nor a light. In terms of performance, it offers the same high-quality build and fantastic results – and I’ll happily take that in a smaller size over a progress bar. Also missing are a few of moosoo air fryer’s more premium features, such as OdorErase and ClearCook; but for the Slim’s price and convenience, this isn’t the end of the world.
The dial also moves smoothly and is fast for navigating minutes and temperature degrees, compared to holding down a button. A lot of the air frying experience—just like cooking in general—is trial and error. When you’re trying out your own recipe or heating up something that isn’t listed in a recipe book or app, you often have to use your best judgment and cross your fingers. I’ve been testing air fryers regularly for a year, and have become very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of various features, as well as what to look for in everyday use.
As the manufacturer claims you can cook 2 pounds of French fries, we cooked a whole bag at once. Yes, the basket could hold that much and cook them quickly, but they came out uneven with some overly crisped and others still soft and pale, so we wouldn’t recommend it for this. On our tests, we found that the Instant Pot 6 Quart Vortex 4 in 1 Air Fryer Oven performed best on brussels sprouts and frozen French fries. In fact, it was the only air fryer to score full marks for frozen French fries, needing just 15 minutes to cook.
We also loved that it could deliver these results speedily. While it doesn’t have preset programs for air frying, it is exceptionally easy to use as the buttons are clear and the display isn’t cluttered with icons. During cooking, no spot on the exterior of this air fryer gets hot enough to instant pot duo nova cause a burn. The highest temperature that we recorded was 126.6°F on the lower-front side of the machine. Both the handle and the controls don’t get much warmer than room temperature. We measured a noise level of 66.5dB during heating, which is the loudest of the air fryers we had on test.