Best Air Fryers Under $130

Not really. A 6-quart basket and a 6-quart oven hold very different amounts of food in a single layer, and single-layer area is what decides how much you can cook properly. We weighed the fries that fit in one layer in each: the figures ran from 280 g to 640 g in machines all sold as roughly the same size.

Baskets crisp better because the air has less space to move through, and they are easier to shake and clean. Oven styles hold more, let you see the food, and do toast and full trays of vegetables. If you mostly cook for one or two and want crisp, buy a basket; if you are replacing a toaster oven too, buy an oven.

For anything you want crisp, yes, and most machines take two to four minutes. Skipping it cost us three to five extra minutes of cooking and produced softer fries in every model. Several machines preheat automatically when you start a programme, which is one fewer thing to remember.

The same 500 g of frozen fries, four bone-in chicken thighs and a tray of mixed vegetables go through every machine at the maker's recommended setting. We weigh how much fits in a single layer, time to a consistent crisp, probe the chicken for doneness and even cooking, and have three tasters judge browning blind. We then measure noise at one metre, preheat time, and run 30 cycles to see how the basket coating holds up.