The Best Air Fryer Toaster Ovens for Crispy Fries and Everything Nice Tested and Reviewed
Love french fries but avoiding deep-fried foods? An air fryer toaster oven is your best bet! Smaller than a traditional oven and more versatile than a standalone air fryer, our list of the best air fryer toaster ovens can handle everything from crispy fries to perfectly toasted bread, saving kitchen space with multiple cooking functions in one device.
After testing the most popular products on the market, we can confidently recommend the Ninja Foodi XL Pro DT201 for air-frying anything from meat to veggies, promising excellent caramelization and succulent results. For those willing to trade some cooking space for even better performance, the Instant Omni Plus 18L is a great pick.
Everything We Recommend
This oven is quick and efficient at air-frying meat and veggies, producing excellent caramelization while keeping the food succulent. And, you can do both at the same time with the oven’s large capacity and impressive 2-level even cooking, making it ideal for family-sized meals
This oven excels in air frying evenly golden, crispy fries in just 15 minutes. With smart features like automatic reminders, preheating, and an easy-to-use touchscreen, it's perfect for those who value convenience and efficiency in the kitchen.
This oven offers exceptional value, consistently producing great results across various foods at a reasonable price. Additionally, it has an excellent automatic preheat feature, versatile cooking functions, and user-friendly design.
Despite being fully analog, this oven consistently delivered excellent results thanks to its powerful convection system. Its straightforward design and robust performance make it perfect for seasoned cooks.
How We Test
We tested all of our toaster ovens, including the air-fryer category, using the same procedures of rating Performance, Design, and Usability. However, a few details are worth noting:
- For performance tests, we always use the strongest convection setting available, even if it's limited to specific functions.
- Air fryer baskets aren’t used for toasting bread, as convection fans are typically off during toasting, and baskets are smaller than oven racks, limiting capacity.
- Air fryer baskets can improve the surface color, texture, and taste of foods like fries or roasted chicken, so their impact is assessed in the performance tests, not the design section.
- Using an air fryer basket requires a baking pan below to catch drippings, making chamber space crucial for cleanability.
Many tested models had shorter cooking times, influenced by capacity, convection, heating elements, and power draw. Performance tests reflect how well these factors work together, while usability tests cover convenience and ease of use.
Check out full How We Test and Score Our Toaster Ovens for more information.
How We Choose
Our selection is the culmination of our test results, especially in air-frying frozen fries and whole chickens. We then also take into account the brand’s popularity, their customer service (including guarantee period), the ovens’ price tags, and the consensus of people who have purchased and used the ovens.
Ninja DT201 Foodi XL Pro Air Fryer Toaster Oven
Best To Buy
This oven is quick and efficient at air-frying meat and veggies, producing excellent caramelization while keeping the food succulent. And, you can do both at the same time with the oven’s large capacity and impressive 2-level even cooking, making it ideal for family-sized meals
Things We Like
- Straightforward and informative control panel
- Tailored cooking functions
- Family-sized capacity
- Tray-level suggestions
- Sturdy construction
- Well-designed accessories
- Easy-to-clean stainless steel exterior
- Cool-touch door handle
Things We Don’t Like
- No safety mechanism for the door
- Faulty interior light in the unit we received
The Ninja DT201 Foodi XL Pro still had one of the highest overall scores among our tested units. Having also one of the largest capacities, its performance shines all the more when it comes to large feasts with its 2-level even cooking feature.
This oven is distinguished by how each function employs a certain convection level and a set number of heating elements. This feature allowed the oven to make the most out of its air-frying capabilities, earning its best overall place on our list.
The Ninja has ‘third-element convection’ so it both heats up fast and caramelizes savory dishes well. When roasting a 3-lb whole chicken in an air fryer basket, the Ninja's strengths earned it one of our highest scores to date.
The chicken was fully cooked and had crispy and uniformly golden from bottom to top skin after only a record time of 40 minutes. Checking with a meat thermometer, the internal temperature was higher than necessary but the meat stayed incredibly succulent.
The Ninja’s results in toasting bread and air-frying 12 oz of frozen French fries were top tier as well. The dishes had various good textures and colors which were really appealing to our head chef.
Unfortunately, the oven didn’t have the best result with baking a 9-inch store-bought pizza. However, looking at the overall performance, we believe the Ninja would excel at baking fresh pizza.
The Ninja's cooking chamber easily handles a 12-lb turkey. Utilizing the four rack levels, the distinctive '2-level' button offers, on the LCD, the optimal rack position for cooking two trays of food simultaneously. This even allows you to simultaneously roast a tray of meat and a tray of veggies.
The Ninja's control panel is anything but basic, yet the digital display shows all the information in an aesthetically uncomplicated manner. In addition, its buttons are really intuitive.
When a function is selected, the oven will indicate the appropriate rack position. As you cycle through functions, you’ll find that the recommendations for optimal tray levels change accordingly.
Read our full Ninja DT201 Foodi XL Pro Air Fryer Toaster Oven in-depth review
Instant Omni Plus 18L Air Fryer Oven
Best Performance
This oven excels in air frying evenly golden, crispy fries in just 15 minutes. With smart features like automatic reminders, preheating, and an easy-to-use touchscreen, it's perfect for those who value convenience and efficiency in the kitchen.
Things We Like
- Informative and eye-catching package
- Smart Programs and cooking status bar
- Electrical safety feature for the door
- Convenient removable oven bottom tray
- Safeguards for bottom heating elements
- Complimentary app with detailed instructions and numerous recipes
- Helpful toggles
- Easy-to-clean stainless steel exterior
Things We Don’t Like
- Touchscreen digital displays need more contrast
- The master-control knob can be confusing
The Instant Omni Plus 18L has an outstanding air frying capability to be our runner up. The oven comes complete with smart programs, automatic reminders, a status bar, and a recipe app to suit people who are all about convenience, smart technologies, and overall efficiency.
The Instant Omni Plus was exceptional at baking french fries—currently having the highest score on the test. In just 15 minutes, the oven baked evenly golden and perfectly crispy fries while retaining a nice amount of interior moisture.
Using the included rotisserie kit, the oven required 50 minutes to roast a 3-lb whole chicken. The result was crispy, golden-brown skin and fall-off-the-bone meat.
Unfortunately, our chef did not give it a particularly high score for taste because the moisture from the meat actually softened the skin significantly. Also, there wasn’t enough space below to use the drip pan, so cleaning up was a big hassle.
The Instant could only be the runner up because its result in toasting bread couldn’t compete with the Ninja. Having only quartz heating elements, its toast was still crispy but had quite uneven coloring with some dark spots even.
The Instant Omni Plus features a digital LCD touchscreen in black and a single master-control knob. The display contains the cooking status bar, functions, and Light, Convection, Rotation toggles. In addition to an automatic preheating function, it has an audible signal to turn food halfway through the specified cooking time.
Read our full Instant Omni Plus 18L Air Fryer Oven in-depth review
Cosori CO130-AO Air Fryer Toaster Oven
Best Value
This oven offers exceptional value, consistently producing great results across various foods at a reasonable price. Additionally, it has an excellent automatic preheat feature, versatile cooking functions, and user-friendly design.
Things We Like
- Great value in terms of functionality and accessories
- Straightforward controls
- Useful toggles
- High-contrast digital display
- Sturdy construction
- Easy-to-clean stainless steel exterior
- Cool-touch door handle
- Spacious cooking chamber
Things We Don’t Like
- No safety mechanism for the door
- Convection fan isn’t all-applicable
The shiny stainless steel Cosori CO130-AO has some of the best grades among our tested units. This reasonably-priced and extremely user-friendly large toaster oven consistently produced great foods, not just fries. Those were the reasons we chose it as the best-value air fryer toaster oven.
The Cosori didn’t score as high in air-frying fries as the Instant, but it did outperform in roasting a whole chicken. The chicken needed only 40 minutes to achieve a gorgeous color in the oven, on par with the Ninja.
The skin was predominantly golden, with a pleasing golden-brown hue on the wings and tips. What really impressed us was the near-perfect doneness achieved in such a short cooking time.
The Cosori also managed to have the upper hand against the Instant in toasting bread, but not the Ninja DT 201. It produced four pieces of toast with a fairly even and beautiful golden brown color. The toast was also crispy on the outside while moist on the inside.
This toaster oven is one of the few that truly preheats to the specified temperature. Most others, including those on this list, simply preheat to a fixed, non-adjustable temperature.
We were most impressed with the Warm, Dehydrate, and Ferment functions that can keep the oven as low as 140°F, 100°F, and 80°F respectively. According to a number of recipes, these temperatures correspond to their intended use.
Moreover, this oven is even easier to operate than some of our other top picks thanks to its ability to easily adjust time and temperature.
Read our full Cosori CO130-AO Air Fryer Toaster Oven in-depth review
Cuisinart TOA-60 Air Fryer Toaster Oven
Best Analog
Despite being fully analog, this oven consistently delivered excellent results thanks to its powerful convection system. Its straightforward design and robust performance make it perfect for seasoned cooks.
Things We Like
- Simple and straight-to-the-point control knobs
- Sturdy design and durable material
- Convection fan is all-applicable
- Electrical safety feature for the door
- Convenient removable oven bottom tray
- Easy-to-clean stainless steel exterior
- Plenty of recipes included in the user manual
Things We Don’t Like
- Opening the door also turns off the light
- A bit heavier and taller than other same-type ovens
- Not very budget-friendly
The Cuisinart air-fried french fries in just 12 minutes—one of the fastest times in our tests. The fries were golden and crispy outside, moist inside, and earned high marks from our chef, despite slightly uneven coloring due to the quick cook time.
It baked a 9-inch thick-crust meat pizza in 3 minutes 30 seconds. The crust was golden with some charred spots but slightly soft. The toppings were perfectly cooked, with evenly melted and caramelized cheese, making it one of the best pizzas in our tests just below the Instant’s.
The Cuisinart roasted a 3-pound chicken in 50 minutes, faster than average. Using the air fryer basket and flipping the chicken at 40 minutes, we achieved crispy, golden skin without a rotisserie kit. The chicken was thoroughly cooked but slightly overdone at 205-207°F. While the wings were crisp and tender, our chef found the breasts a bit dry.
Read our full Cuisinart TOA-60 Air Fryer Toaster Oven in-depth review
When Should You Buy An Air Fryer Toaster Oven?
First of all, air fryer toaster ovens have all the benefits of convection toaster ovens, like faster cooking time and lower energy consumption than conventional ovens. They also come in various shapes, sizes, and price ranges.
Thanks to the additional cooking utility of an air fryer, air fryer toaster ovens elevate some of the dishes that convection toaster ovens can make but without the need for a separate product. They also tend to have higher build quality than their conventional counterpart since their additional features already require more investment in the design.
Of course, air fryer toaster ovens are more expensive than conventional toaster ovens or air fryers. However, you also get much more utility value with their cooking functions and accompanying accessories, not just an air fryer basket.
If these qualities are on your list, you should consider getting an air fryer toaster oven. These benefits are the main reasons why most of our candidates for top rated air fryer toaster ovens are also present in our list of best toaster ovens of 2024.
1. Reduce Fat from Deep Frying
Air fryer toaster ovens have all the strength of convection toaster ovens when it comes to savory dishes like baked pizza and roasted meat. Moreover, their best qualities shine through in making foods that usually require frying or deep frying.
Air-frying foods require much less fat than frying and deep-frying specifically but have similar surface coloring and internal moisture. It does result in less crispiness and requires a longer cooking time than deep-frying though.
Some brands claim that using an air fryer instead of a deep fryer can help cut the foods’ fat content by up to 75%, which can be arbitrary since there’s no concrete data. What we do know is that the oil content of carbohydrate-rich foods increases significantly after being deep-fried.
This is because deep-frying requires submerging the foods in fat (up to 750 ml or more, depending on the fryer) which provides more fat to be absorbed into the foods. Meanwhile, for air-frying, you only need to lightly coat the foods in fat (about 10 ml for 24 oz of fries).
2. Health Benefits
You can use a variety of fat for frying and deep frying—including melted butter, lard, or plant-based oil like coconut oil, avocado oil, or grapeseed oil—to varying results. Whatever the variety, fat still has 9 calories per gram, protein and carbs have 4, and fiber has 2.
In other words, you need less fat to meet your energy needs and more to fill your stomach than protein, carbs, or fiber. Thus, by reducing the fat content, air fryer toaster ovens can serve to help you create healthier eating habits and avoid gaining excess body fat (a caloric surplus of 3500 = 1 lb of stored body fat).
Air frying foods can also reduce the amount of potentially harmful compounds formed with high-heat cooking like acrylamide. It’s a compound formed in carbohydrate-rich foods during high-heat cooking methods like frying, which has been linked to increased cancer risks. Aldehydes, heterocyclic amines, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are other examples.
3. Quick and Crispy Convection Cooking
One of the most prominent strengths of air fryer toaster ovens is faster cooking times than conventional toaster ovens that are already twice as fast as traditional wall ovens. This is mainly due to the convection system which circulates air inside the oven’s cooking chamber during the cooking process.
Moreover, air fryer baskets in toaster ovens usually have a fishnet design which further increases heat circulation around the foods. Of course, air fryer baskets only work with solid foods like whole chickens and turkeys, cuts of meat, or fries.
These two components are the reasons why air-frying foods can achieve similar surface coloring and internal moisture as frying or deep-frying. However, air-fried foods won’t be as crispy and require a longer cooking time. This is partially because oil is a better heat-transfer medium than air.
Nonetheless, there are methods to increase the crispiness of foods. For example, coating the food in batter and/or breadcrumbs. Doing so may create a mess though, so be careful and place a baking pan below to catch any falling food particles.
4. More Versatile Than Air Fryers
Compared to the common pod-shaped air fryers which are best for 1-2 people servings, air fryer toaster ovens can deliver the same, if not better, performances for 3-4 people servings and more. The portion size advantage also applies to the other cooking functions like toasting bread, baking, broiling, or dehydrating that some of the premium models can provide.
Overall, air fryer toaster ovens are an excellent option if you want to air fry foods in large quantities and not waste space by having a separate air fryer, toaster, and oven. These combo models are one of the best solutions for effectively managing your space constraints and designing your kitchen.
Things to Keep In Mind For Buying the Air Fryer Toaster Ovens
To have enough space for the investment of a convection system and possibly other features, air fryer toaster ovens rarely come in small sizes but from medium-sized to large and extra large.
We recommend units with a power draw of 1800 W to accommodate the oven’s capacity. This can also help to ensure sufficient heating at high temperatures (≥ 400°F), especially for common air-fried foods like frozen fries.
Looking at our collected data, we suggest looking for air fryer toaster ovens with nichrome heating elements or even a combination of quartz and nichrome varieties for better surface browning.
The convection setting may not be ideal for baking sweets as explained in our ‘convection toaster ovens’ article, but most convection ovens can toggle between on and off to fit the requirements of your recipe.
Usually, digital air fryer toaster ovens have higher ease of use in terms of control, like the Instant Omni Plus 18L, Ninja DT201, or Cosori CO130-AO. However, there are analog units that have as accurate and flexible controls, including the Cuisinart TOA-60 on our list.
Our Expertise
Alan Nguyen is a reviewer for Shouldit. On top of making homecooked meals as a hobby, he has prior experience working in both restaurant and military kitchens. Behind the kitchen counter was where he learned to utilize an array of equipment for cooking delicate portions as well as cooking in bulk.
Along with the Research, Testing, and Review (RTR) Lab of Shouldit, he began this quest by sifting through hundreds before narrowing down to 4 distinctive models.
The team then purchased the machines and put them through a series of comparative tests regarding cooking performance, design, and user-friendliness to find the best for every budget, culinary purpose, and home interior.
Most notably, our performance tests required roughly 90 hours of development and execution time. The process includes toasting over 50 packs of white bread (That’s over 500 slices of toast!), baking more than 20 nine-inch pizzas, not just 20 three-pound whole chickens, and something over 15 pounds of frozen french fries.
