Which? Don't Buy air fryers

These terrible Don't Buy air fryers are likely to leave you with soggy, poorly cooked food. If you want decent chips, these are the air fryers we suggest you avoid
Manca VirantResearcher & writer
Don't Buy air fryers

Don't waste your money on an air fryer that will leave your chips soggy or undercooked. Our reviews will help you separate the air fryers to avoid from those we recommend.

Our rigorous lab tests help us uncover the best air fryer models on the market – models that you can rely on to cook your chips and other food quickly and efficiently, without wasting too much energy. Air fryers can cost as much as £200, so make sure you're not wasting your money one that's a letdown and scored poorly in our tests.

What makes a Don’t Buy air fryer

Air fryers are supposed to make it easy to cook lovely golden-brown chips and all sorts of other foods with less oil than traditional deep-fat fryers. But we've found some that you should steer well clear of.

  • Don't Buy air fryers cook food unevenly, leaving you with a nasty mixture of pale, greasy and raw chips along with burnt ones.
  • The best air fryers take 20 minutes to cook four portions of chips, and you don't have to wait for them to heat up. The worst, on the other hand, can take more than 45 minutes.
  • Don't Buy air fryers might also be fiddly or inconvenient to use and a pain to clean and store.

Get the right air fryer, though, and it should turn out tasty, evenly cooked chips with very little effort on your part.

If you're after simple, tasty home-made chips, use our recommendations to guide you through which models are worth buying – and which models you'll want to avoid.

Join Which? to find out which air dryers we’ve named Don’t Buys.

How we test air fryers

We've reviewed all the biggest brands in the world of air fryers, including Breville, Philips, Ninja and Tefal, to help you find the best model. Our in-depth testing means that we can recommend the air fryers whose chips don't just look the part, they taste delicious, too.

  • We rate the chips made by each air fryer, so you get the best home chip experience possible.
  • We give every air fryer a Which? test score so you can immediately see at a glance which are the best and worst, plus compare how each model stacks up on specifications.
  • Our tests cover a wide range of brands and prices, from basic cheaper air fryers to those with fancy extra features such as a grill element or a compartment that allows you to cook two different foods at once.

Which? is independent – we work for you, the consumer, so you can be sure that our product recommendations are influenced only by our test results. We're not influenced by third parties and we don't accept freebies from product manufacturers or retailers. We buy all the products that we test ourselves, so our advice helps you to make the right choice first time and avoid costly mistakes.

Our reviews will help you to avoid a bad choice when buying an air fryer. Join Which? for instant access to our Best Buy and Don't Buy recommendations.