However, if you’re feeding several people, or want to cook a few different food items at the same time, an oven has more space and may work out cheaper than cooking several batches in an air fryer. Air fryer v halogen oven v electric oven A big selling point for most air fryer enthusiasts is their money-saving capabilities, but there's no point in making the initial investment on a machine that ends up gathering dust in the cupboard. We scrutinised the cost of each of our chosen air fryers to make sure they represented good value for money in the long run. As with the previous model, you can use just a single drawer, or use each drawer independently, synchronised (individual settings, but the air fryer will get both of your selected programmes to end at the same time or matched with the same settings.

Oven-type air fryers come with one or multiple trays to place your food on and slot into the machine for cooking.

1. Overall best air fryer: Tefal ActiFry Genius XL 2-in-1 YV970840

Use your air fryer to whip up crispy chilli beef for dinner. It takes just 30 minutes to make – perfect for a crowdpleasing midweek meal A 'smart' air fryer is one you can control from your phone or tablet. You select the recipe you want to use from the app, which then sends instructions to the air fryer to cook the food to a particular temperature and length of time. The oven can also employ its Element iQ tech to direct power where it’s needed to eliminate cold spots in food. In practice, it worked perfectly, leaving us with evenly cooked home chips that had a crispy outside and fluffy inside. Most have a viewing window on the front so you can keep an eye on your food without disturbing the cooking process.

An air fryer cooks food by heating air up to around 200°C and circulating it around the inside of the appliance. It works a little like a fan oven in this respect and can be used to cook a range of foods, including some frozen foods. It's amazing. You can roast veggies in it to put in soups, it cooks, bakes, reheats, has max crisp (frozen stuff cooked to perfection in 10 mins). It also has a dehydrate function. My husband isn't veggie and one of the drawers is his but we can cook his meal and any of my sides to finish cooking at the same time. It doesn't heat the kitchen up so it uses less energy. I love mine."(Endorsed by Mumsnet user HuffleWoof)While you can’t cook different foods at different temperatures at the same time, this grill creates great char and crispier air-fried foods, and can even cook meat and fish from frozen. The other functions that the Ninja DG551 can do is grill, roast, bake, dehydrate, and broil food - all which we found did better than the Ninja Foodie 6-in-1 10-qt. XL 2-Basket Air Fryer with DualZone Technology, its predecessor. Simply put, these air fryers have different compartments, so you can cook two delicious dishes at once - ideal for a complete meal. Some have two layers, while others have both a pot and a removable basket (ideal for chips). I couldn’t afford [a Ninja] so have a Tower one and it’s been brilliant. My oven broke for the third time and no way was I paying for another repair so the air fryer has completely replaced my oven!" (Brand recommended by Mumsnet user ThatsRoughBuddy) Our verdict Do you own a dishwasher? If you have a dishwasher, choosing a model with dishwasher-safe parts will help save on cleaning time. Here, we've selected some of the best air fryers from our rigorous air fryer tests, which include a chip taste test by our experts.

We have the COSORI 5.5L. It's great, easy to use, easy to clean, takes up very little space. We've had it three months or so and I'm very happy with it." (Tried and tested by Mumsnet user TheBitterBoy) Make sure that you buy an air fryer large enough for your needs. If you’ve got a large family, then you’ll want a model that can cook enough chips for you all. Style: Basket | Capacity: 1.6L (up to 450g chips) | Size: ‎25 x 18 x 30cm | Cooking modes: Poultry, steak or meat, bakes, fresh fries and veg, frozen fries and veg | Dishwasher-safe parts: No | Wattage: 1200W What we like Our biggest gripe is that it's not the most user-friendly device initially; we'd recommend you take some time to read the instructions and get to grips with the different settings before the first use. Once you get the hang of it, however, you'll soon be impressed with the delicious results - the chips in particular are second to none. This list of buying questions will help you narrow down your options and ensure you get the best air fryer for your needs:

How we chose the best air fryer

Basket style with heating elements: tall, slim air-fryers feature a main unit with heating elements and fans. These have slide-out baskets or trays that slot into place inside. As they tend to have a smaller cooking area than oven-style fryers, in testing we found even results were more likely if the cooking was paused occasionally to rearrange or toss the food around. Some fryers will cut out automatically when you do this, some will need to be paused if you want accurate timings.

An air fryer is a countertop kitchen appliance that makes it possible to achieve similar results to a pan or fryer without submerging food in oil. Instead, air fryers only require a small about of oil to circulate hot air around the drawer and crisp up food in a short amount of time. Combining and air fryer and grill in one appliance makes a lot of sense: it doubles up of the number of uses and, for the grill in particular, keeps smoke and smells inside the appliance. Mostly, products like this are very expensive, but the Salter Aerogrill is cheaper than a lot of air-fryer only cookers.Style: Health grill with air fryer | Capacity: 3.8L | Size: 270 x 390 x 410 mm (H x W x D) | Cooking modes: Air fry, bake, roast, reheat, dehydrate and grill | Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes | Wattage: 2460W What we like