Farberware brand 25l 6-slice toaster oven with air fry fw12-100024316

How We Tested Air Fryer Toaster Ovens

The Tester

Hi, I’m Sharon Franke, and I’ve been testing kitchen equipment for more than 30 years. When I’m not reporting on everything from wire whisks to high-tech ranges and refrigerators, you can find me cooking in my own kitchen. In another life, I rustled pots and pans as a professional chef in New York City restaurants. While I can crank out a huge holiday meal with the best of them, using every tool in my kitchen, these days I’m mostly making family meals that involve the toaster oven, and increasingly the air fryer.

The Tests

To find our top picks, each model in this guide was tested as both a toaster oven and an air fryer. First, we tested to see how well it toasts bread, just like we do with a pop-up toaster. Could it produce a range of shades and toast evenly so that both pieces come out looking about the same on each side? Could it evenly toast bagels?

In some, we also cooked frozen pizza, refrigerated biscuits, and broiled chicken breasts to see if they baked on the inside and browned on the outside in a reasonable amount of time. Each appliance was rated on how well it air-fried frozen French fries. In most, we also looked at how it cooked homemade French fries and chicken nuggets, frozen nuggets, and Nashville hot chicken.

An important part of our rating process was the convenience of using the product, including how intuitive it was to set the controls, the helpfulness of the cooking functions, and of course the ease of clean up. Since this is a relatively new category of appliances, the manual is critical when you’re getting started. I checked to see if each explained how to use the product thoroughly, provided guidelines for cooking specific foods, and included recipes. During testing, I considered each product’s size, construction, design, and safety.

What To Know About Buying Air Fryer Toaster Ovens

These appliances expand the versatility of a toaster oven. Pop-up toasters are great for making, well, toast—and that’s about it. Toaster ovens, on the other hand, can handle a whole range of tasks, from toasting four or more slices of toast at once to broiling, baking, and reheating.

Now more and more can also air fry so that with just one appliance on your countertop you can get the functionality of three or more. Some models can also roast on a rotisserie, slow cook, or dehydrate, making them even more useful.

All air fryer toaster ovens are basically convection ovens with fans that operate at a high speed to promote browning and crisping.

They also have some big advantages over dedicated air fryers. In these multitaskers, you can usually cook more food at a time, because it’s designed to spread the food out in a shallow air fry basket that’s the length and width of the oven’s interior. It’s also easy to monitor cooking through the window and to pull out the basket and stir and flip over items.

However, few of these multifunction countertop ovens are among the tops at air frying. That means these appliances are for people who prioritize toasting and versatility over air frying. To get good results, you may find you have to extend the cooking time and be vigilant about tossing, flipping over, and rearranging.

For the most part, we found these appliances more difficult to clean. The majority of air fryers have nonstick air fry baskets that are easy to clean by hand and can often be popped in the dishwasher while toaster ovens usually have stainless steel baskets as well as aluminum drip pans that can take some soaking and scrubbing to get spotless.

When you cook something in a batter—like shrimp or onion rings—or toss in a little oil like homemade French fries, you get messy drips on the heating elements that will need to be cleaned off. Over the years, we’ve found that some newer models are also starting to include nonstick interiors, which is a big plus.

Since you’ll be using either the oven rack or the air fry basket, be sure you have space to store the one you’re not using as well as the baking dish and any other accessories that may come with the oven.

Other Air Fryer Toaster Ovens We Reviewed

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