Unlike some toaster-oven air fryers we tested, such as the Cuisinart TOA-60, the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 is large enough to bake a 13-inch pizza, roast a 5-pound chicken, or toast up to nine slices of bread at once. The smaller, unevenly cooked chicken we prepared in the now-discontinued Philips Avance HD9641/96 (left) and the larger, beautifully browned chicken we roasted in the Cuisinart (right). For our 2019 update, we decided to begin testing the toaster-oven air fryers as we would regular toaster ovens.
The Cuisinarts two-speed fan, combined with its spacious interior, allowed it to cook food more evenly than the competition. To read more about how the Cuisinart TOB-260N1 compares to the other toaster ovens weve tested, see our full guide to the best toaster ovens. Instead, air fryers are mini convection ovens that use fans to rapidly circulate hot air, cooking food faster and more evenly than a standard oven does. Ive spent more than 250 hours over the past four years researching and testing air fryers for this guide. Unlike most air fryers, the 7-quart Gourmia Digital Air Fryer GAF798 requires preheating (probably due to its large size). It also comes with a recipe booklet, which is nice if youre looking for some guidance when cooking with convection technology. Annoyingly, however, if you want to add a few minutes to the cooking time after the initial set time runs out, the appliance automatically kicks into preheat mode again (even though the air fryer is already hot); its a weird programming glitch that we found to be a nuisance. In addition, they all produced the most unevenly cooked french fries of the models we tested in 2021. 
They also tend to have larger oven cavities, which typically means you can cook more food at once. 
Here are some tips for cooking some common dishes in a convection toaster oven. 
We filled each model with as many slices of white sandwich bread as they would allow and used the toasted results as a heat map: Uneven browning alerted us to any hot spots in each oven.
(Youll also encounter a few outliers with especially gimmicky features, such as the Oster DuraCeramic Air Fryerwhich looks like something out of an 80s sci-fi movieor the Ninja Foodi, a combination air fryer and pressure cooker.). However, all three models did a poor job of maintaining a set temperaturethey ran about 40 to 50 degrees below their setting in our tests. You prefer a more casual approach to cooking your food, and you find tossing it in a basket to be less cumbersome than turning it by hand.
In reality, the tray was just one more item we had to clean after cooking, so we wouldnt recommend using it. Like all pod-shaped air fryers, this Philips model isnt good for baking or making toastits fan is too powerful and produces overcooked, irregularly shaped cakes and wonky, unevenly browned toast. However, Philips discontinued it just before releasing the Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 model we now recommend, which performed similarly to the Avance HD9641/96 in our tests. The Hamilton Beach Sure-Crisp Air Fryer Toaster Oven had a weak fan that was unable to circulate air through the oven as effectively as those of some of the other models we tested. You dont mind having a single convection fan speed that you cant adjust or turn off. Other models we tested ran so cool that it was hard to tell whether they were even on. They took about 12 minutes to cook in each appliance. Though not specifically billed as an air fryer, the Cuisinart Chef's Convection Toaster Oven TOB-260N1 remains the best appliance weve tested for air frying food. You have a family or larger household, and/or want to be able to cook larger portions of food at once. Fat naturally drains to the bottom of the air fryer whether you use the fat-reducing tray or not. It is, however, pretty loud while the convection fan is runningits about as loud as a hair dryer (whereas the Cuisinart convection toaster oven barely makes a sound). In our tests, a convection oven and a convection toaster oven prepared frozen fries as well as an air fryer. You dont need to buy an air-frying basketa regular quarter-sheet pan will give you similar air-frying results in a convection oven (though you may want to line the pan with aluminum foil for faster cleanup). Smaller households that plan to make only one or two portions of food at a time may also prefer this model. You dont mind turning your food to achieve even browning while cooking. If you want a pod-shaped air fryer that costs less than the Philips model, we recommend the Cosori Pro Air Fryer. We also have general advice on how to adjust air-fryer recipes for your convection toaster oven. It also has the best accessories of any model weve tested, including a 13-inch ceramic pizza stone, two oven racks, and an enamel-coated steel baking pan. If you manually enter the time and temperature, the reminder beeps arent activated, either. If you dont plan to bake, and if you intend to make only one or two portions of food at a time, the Philips Premium Airfryer HD9741/96 may align better with your needs than a convection toaster oven, and its the best pod-shaped model weve tested. We independently review everything we recommend. However, we wish the reminder were programmed for all settings, since its hard to remember which ones have this feature and which ones dont (its activated only for the shrimp, frozen food, frozen fries, vegetable, and root vegetable settings). You dont need to buy any special equipment to bake in the Cuisinart oven, as you do with air fryers; an 8- or 9-inch cake pan or a standard loaf pan will fit with room to spare. Overall it produced the crispiest, most evenly browned food of any pod-shaped models we tested. In our tests, the rotisserie spit worked well and produced a nicely roasted chicken, but you have to know how to truss a bird in order for it to cook evenly, and afterward we had to soak the spit overnight to get the gunk off. Some air fryers ran so hot and had such powerful (and not adjustable) fans that vegetables came out burned on the outside and still raw in the center. Overall, this model seemed to run cooler than the set temperature, which would account for its longer cook times. The cake also came out rippled on top, apparently from the force of the fan, which was especially loud while running. In our tests, bits of food stuck to the "fryer" basket, and a pool of grease sat at the bottom of the container, which made it more cumbersome to clean. Cake layers rose unevenly and ended up overbaked, especially in the Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven, which produced a cake with a dark patch on top in the exact same shape as the fan. You cant adjust or turn off its powerful convection fan, which means its not great for baking and you cant use it to make toast. But you might be better off with a Lodge Dutch Oven. The Black+Decker Purifry Air Fryer HF110SBD was the best budget pod-shaped model we tried back in 2017, but at the time it had the smallest max-fill capacity of all the fryers we tested. Whether it's finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we'll help you get it right (the first time). In April 2022, Best Buy recalled 770,000 Insignia air fryers modelsincluding digital, analog, and air fryer toaster oven modelswhich amounts to roughly 3 percent of all air fryers sold in the US over the past two years. https://www.tiktok.com/@cuisinart_official? (Since cramped, pod-shaped air fryers heat up quickly and keep food so close to the heating element, things would overcook if you didnt reduce the temperature.) It shares some of the design features of the Philips model, but it doesnt cook as evenly, and its settings arent quite as accurate. Grease and baked-on bits of food cling to the fryer basket screen, and gunk gets in grooves and crevices of the pan. We also conducted all of the same tests in the now-discontinued Philips Avance HD9641/96the pod-shaped air fryer that in our 2017 tests performed the bestso that we could compare the results. Note: We could fit only a 3- to 4-pound chicken in the Philipss small oven cavity, but the other models could fit a 5-pound roaster. The Cuisinart produced crispier, more evenly cooked food in our tests, and it easily accommodates much more than a typical pod-shaped air fryer doesincluding up to nine slices of toast, a 6-pound chicken, a 9-inch pie or cake, or a 13-inch pizza. Compared with other pod-shaped air fryers we tested, the Philips cooked food the most evenly, aside from the occasional soggy french fry; on average, it cooked faster than most other models we tried and with better results. We think thats a trade-off well worth the few extra minutes of your time. Generally, if youre following an air-fryer recipe but plan to cook it in a convection toaster oven, you need to increase the cooking time and temperature to compensate for the toaster ovens larger cavity. The french fries we cooked in the GoWISE USA GW22621 turned out badly burned at the top of the cooker and undercooked at the bottom. You mainly want to cook frozen food or smaller portions of food. ), The term air fryers is now often used for two main types of appliances: small, pod-shaped models (which usually resemble weird, futuristic dinosaur eggs waiting to hatch) and larger models that look like a typical high-end convection toaster oven. They suffer from the same major pitfalls as pod-shaped air fryers: The cooking chambers tend to be pretty small, producing less evenly cooked and less browned foods. If youre not sure whether you want a convection toaster oven or an air fryer, weve written a helpful checklist so you can better understand the trade-offs for each appliance. The rotisserie spit in the Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360 struggled to make a full rotation while roasting a chicken. Like the Philips, the Cosori has a square-shaped basket that fits more food than the round baskets in other models. It also comes with more useful accessories than any air fryer we tested, because it includes a baking tray, a ceramic pizza stone, and two oven racks (a rarity for most toaster ovens). Like the Philips models basket, the Cosoris square basket allows you to comfortably fit four chicken thighs instead of three. Also, when you reinsert the basket, the air fryer slides across the counter because it doesnt have enough weight or grip to stay in place. That said, its slightly slower cooking time often produced more evenly cooked food that was better tasting. Overall, the nine toaster-oven air fryers we tested performed better than the pod-shaped air fryers we evaluated. This air fryer isnt an eyesore like some oddball machines weve tried over the years, so it wont look like an alien spaceship has landed on your kitchen counter. In our tests, the speed convection setting created cooking conditions that were the most comparable to those of the air fryers we evaluated in terms of the time it took to cook and the results it yielded. Also, you can adjust the fans speed if you want a gentler circulation of air, when youre baking cakes, for instance. We found that pod-shaped air fryers often had more powerful fans, too, but this wasnt necessarily a good thing, since they could produce dried-out foods and overcooked, ripply cakes.