It has a glass door with a small handle on top that opens downward and three dials that serve as controls. At just 9 x 18 x 14 inches, it easily fits under a cabinet and doesn’t take up excess countertop space. Hamilton Beach® Air Fryers let you make all your deep-fried favorites using minimal or no oil. Fast, powerful convection cooking gives foods a crispy fried texture, so you can make French fries, mozzarella sticks and chicken wings with less oil and achieve the same great flavor.
I also tested two pieces of bread on the lowest doneness setting (light) and the highest (dark), to see how well these presets were calibrated. After each of the three toast tests, I photographed the results and made sure to let the toaster oven cool to room temperature before testing again. On top of that, the oven is sturdy, attractive and has an easily removable crumb tray, and it’s packed with extra cooking settings and modes that you might actually find useful, including convection cooking. It also preheats extremely fast, holds the heat well and has intuitive controls. Because air fryers are useful for cooking a variety of foods—such as chicken, steak, and even doughnuts—many of us are under the impression there isn’t anything you can’t cook in them. There’s no small appliance that’s more popular than the air fryer right now.
LCD screen indicates your selected function, the remaining cooking time and temperature. Includes adjustable temperature dial and cooking timer with auto shutoff and stay-on setting. We also tested the Cuisinart TOA-60 model and found its performance underwhelming. The model cooked hot and burned food during our tests and we found the manual interface difficult to use for precise cooking. She’s an experienced product tester and recipe creator, trained in classic culinary arts and culinary nutrition.
This assertion is misleading, since the “technology” is just a plastic lid that rests over the bottom of the bucket where the fat collects. In reality, the tray was just one more item we had to clean, so we wouldn’t recommend using it (the air fryer functions fine without it). The Instant Mini Vortex is small, powerful, and one of the cheapest models we tested. While the wee basket can fit only one serving size at a time, the machine circulates heat fairly well and manages to cook food without dehydrating it. The Ninja Foodi Air Fry Oven has one of the largest air frying racks we tested, measuring in at 13 by 13 inches. It offers a large amount of cooking space, but it’s short and folds upwards for storage so it won’t eat up your counter space.
She has worked in test kitchens for small kitchen appliance brands and national magazines, including Family Circle and Ladies’ Home Journal. This is the perfect way to cook chicken thighs for that extra crispy skin and no need to hamilton beach air fryer heat up the oven. I ran each toaster oven for 15 minutes at 300 degrees F to measure the temperature accuracy and consistency. With so many to choose from, there are bound to be some over- and under-performers in the category.
The Comfee and Oster cords were both only 2 feet long while the rest were 3 feet or longer. It certainly isn’t the worst failing for a toaster but, hamilton beach depending on your kitchen layout, can be an annoyance. Here’s the big Oster, large enough to roast a small chicken, next to the itty-bitty Balmuda.
My least favorite display was on the Oster, which had one-dimensional backset buttons and a wonky digital screen that offers very little information. The buttons would often not react and required a forceful push, sometimes two. Manual dials are difficult to set accurately both for temperature and time.
It doesn’t sport electronic controls or a lot of fancy features and settings. While it’s baking performance was disappointing and it’s not large enough to roast a chicken, it shines at toasting and does a credible job of air frying. To test each toaster’s power and ability to cook more substantial foods, I baked three pizza bites placed on a rack in different parts of the oven. This was to test how accurately each toaster melts cheese and another test of how evenly the cooking is spread out across the oven. The box recommends baking a frozen pizza at 425 degrees F for 18 minutes, so that’s what I did in each toaster oven. The Comfee is priced at $45 or less, which makes it the best toaster oven for those on a budget.
We haven’t tested (nor do we recommend) any Insignia air fryers for this guide, so the recall doesn’t affect our picks. Nicole Papantoniou is the director of the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, where she oversees all testing related to cooking and drinking. She has tested more than 15 air fryer toaster ovens herself and also helped developed one of the best-selling air fryer toaster ovens on the market more than six years ago. We think it’s a great choice for people who are looking for a traditional toaster oven primarily to toast all kinds of bread, heat frozen pizzas, and air fry chicken nuggets or frozen fries for the kids. It’s not the model for anyone who is looking for a replacement for their full size oven. It’s much cheaper than any other toaster oven we tested — considerably less so than our winning toaster oven, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro.
The Instant Mini Vortex 4-in-1 is a 2-quart air fryer that packs a big punch. While the Mini Vortex didn’t cook as evenly as the Premium Airfryer, we did think that, given the small size of its shallow, square basket, the food came out surprisingly crisp without tasting dehydrated. The Mini Vortex also cooked just as fast as the Premium Airfryer, with consistently good results. We also found the Philips Premium Airfryer’s basket to be the most seamless to insert into the machine. The square shape of the Premium Airfryer’s 2.75-quart basket also allows a bit more space than round designs with similar capacities, which means you can fit four chicken thighs or wings in the basket versus three.