If you want to air fry for the whole family at once, a convection oven or air fryer toaster oven is your best bet. With a large cooking basket and easy-to-understand controls, instant vortex this is the perfect air fryer for busy families looking to streamline weeknight meals. The basket can fit up to two pounds of fries or even a 4-pound whole chicken.
This isn’t a dealbreaker, I just found the display a bit uninformative for a product that heats up to 400 degrees. The air fryer and rotisserie capabilities really shine on the Vortex Plus, but it’s the cleanup that might make it the most appealing air fryer ever. All of the accessories — the racks, the rotisserie basket and fork — are dishwasher-safe. If you’ve ever struggled to hand-wash the basket of another air fryer, the easy grease removal on the Vortex might move you to tears. (In a good way!) The door can be removed for hand-washing, and the inside is easy to wipe clean between uses. I first tested this air fryer with asparagus, which is a great way to see how it handles vegetables.
We wanted food to come out crisp on the outside but moist internally, without any burning or dehydrating. However, no time and temperature recommendations were made and using the default settings resulted in insufficiently dried fruit. By using a higher heat setting you could dry a small amount of food if you’re willing to listen to the unit whirring away instant vortex for seven hours or longer. While it’s clearly laid out and intuitive to operate, the lettering is on the small side. The Vortex Plus displayed near-perfect temperature accuracy in our testing, reliably hitting the set temperature every single cook cycle. When cooking chicken, the Vortex Plus produced cuts so tender and moist they could be cut with a fork.
The air fryer has a capacity of 5.7 litres / 6 quarts, which Instant says is sufficient for six portions. It’s a versatile appliance, too, offering the ability to roast, bake, grill, dehydrate and reheat food, as well as air fry. Instant has only been on the air fryer scene for a few years, launching its first hot-air cooking appliance in 2019, having gained cult status with its multi-cooker, the Instant Pot.
At some point, for some functions, the panel beeps and instructs you to turn the food. The Vortex Plus is a bit more expensive than the average air fryer, but not to a ridiculous degree. Seeing as it provides exceptional performance, this slight bump in price is well worth it, making it a great overall value. The Instant Vortex Plus excelled in every one of our tests, making it a great choice for those looking for a high-quality air fryer, even if it comes at a slightly above average price. Anything you can cook in a conventional oven can be cooked in your Vortex Pro, but for best results, always space out foods so air has room to circulate freely, and cook in small batches. Instant also recommends starting with conventional oven directions on food packages as a guide for temperature and time, not directions for deep frying.
The basket takes up a lot of real estate in the washer — the nonstick coating releases debris with ease, so it was easy to clean with a sponge. Plus, you can use silicone air fryer liners to almost eliminate the need to wash it altogether. The third performance test I put all air fryers through is cooking a one-pound batch of fresh broccoli.
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. We tried a range of foods in these air fryers to see how they perform.
The blast of hot air traps all that juicy moisture beneath the crispy coating, but air fryers are quicker, cleaner, healthier, and a whole lot easier than deep fryers. It’s interesting that Instant chooses to market this as an air fryer, when it feels more like a toaster oven that can also air-fry. The Clear Cook is easy to clean, offers accurate temps, and the viewing window is a dream — when it’s clean. Unfortunately, it falls a little short in the cooking performance department.
The Clearcook rocks a digital interface with a dial for easy time and temperature adjustments. Although they occasionally require a second tap, the digital buttons are very responsive to a gentle touch. The display is nicely angled for ease of viewing, and the buttons and display are crisp and clear. The Vortex comes with a few accessories, including three pans that function as racks (two vented roasting pans and one flat drip pan), a rotisserie basket, and two rotisserie forks.
We were surprised to see a few of these struggle with the most straightforward food, like fries and chicken wings. Others had decent performance but lacked some of the features that our winners included as a default, like presets, large baskets, and easy cleanup processes. Some we felt the cumbersome size outweighed the results, and others were simply too small to recommend for most household uses. The 10-quart Air Fryer produced great fries, wings, and air-fried apples and was a breeze to operate thanks to the clear display and good instructions.