Why do you say you will not get one that cooks well.
Some reviews mentioned are hard cleaning and difficult to use. And if things splatter canāt remove grease
I saw that, why do they not cook well?
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Another member here said he purchased one thought it didnāt act like an oven as such
Itās an air fryer, and definitely not an oven.
There are of course the bench top oven grills that have been around for decades. They are now promoted as also being air fryers.
Back in the 1980ās I recollect the bench top ovens were promoted as also being a toaster. Todays air fryers differ in being a small baking chamber with a close up intense heat source (electric resistance coil). They add a circulating fan, not included with the old style bench top devices.
Each type of design offers something slightly different. Candidly nothing fries like a pan full of hot oil or a large pot of heated oil (aka deep frying). Nothing bakes like an oven, although baking a roast, pizza or bread require very different conditions, and grilling or toasting is not the same as frying or baking.
Having just cooked a small rack of pork in the Webber, itās also fair to say not all ovens are created equal. The intense heat and conditions of the Webber set it apart. The same can be said for a wood fired pizza or bread oven.
How should we judge the modern alternatives against the originals? The modern alternatives offer a compromise, often more convenient, but arguably less equal.
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Choices review of air fryer are quite disappointing when i looked. Mostly mentioned difficulties in cleaning and bulky if storing away. Surely mentioned negatives. Regarding the older style breville brand type oven i distinctly remember. As, you say each individual appliance does each job differently. Pretty sure philt mentioned the one he purchased was not like an oven from what he gathered. It is hard to tell whqt brand or version to buy. Since reading reviews maybe it is a matter of deciding
Seems fair.
However they cook small-cut items and things that need to be crispy and cooked quickly quite well according to many users and the Choice test. This is the kind of cooking that comes to mind when I read āair fryerā.
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One of the questions we often receive about air fryers is whether they use less energy. We now have an indicator from Which? UK - it would appear that air fryers use around half or less the energy of an oven:
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The comprehensive review of air fryers in choice in November 2022 did not include information about materials, In particular the materials used on the internal surfaces. Most of fryers appear to be coated in Teflon, which does not have a great reputation for stability at high heats. I am wondering if anyone has done research on this topic, or if anyone knows where I could access information of that nature.
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A very good question to ask. Teflon is also pretty easy to scratch and then damage the coating.
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Hi @TheYoya
I have moved your request/question into the air fryer review topic. Hopefully CHOICE staff who undertake the testing will be able to help answer your question.
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Once again Choice did not include Aldi in the review.
We bought one for just under $60 about a year ago. We have enough counter space to keep it in the pantry. It uses less than 2 kW compared with our Westinghouse fan oven that uses up to 6 kW.
This is important for us as our early Tesla Powerwall 2 can only supply 5 kW, so the Westinghouse uses part grid energy, especially in combination with an induction cooktop.
The Aldi air fryer is great for singles/couples needing to heat pastries and pies without the microwave sogginess and for cooking potato and sweet potato chips (twice cooked is best)
and is faster than the fan oven.
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That seems an awful lot of power for an oven. What model is it?
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Some of the reasons are outlined here:
Choice sometimes reviews Aldi special buys if they happen to be sold at the time a product review occurs - and example being mowers. However, like many Aldi special buys, the makes and models can change each time the product is sold meaning the review has little value to someone buying the product after the special buys period finishes.
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Westinghouse WVE626S - see photo of rating plate attached. I got the 6 kW from my Tesla app. The background house standby and low power usage probably took it over 5.5 kW and then rounded up.
The Aldi air fryer was actually rated at 1 kW - see photo of rating plate attached.
When the oven is switched on, it runs at full power until it reaches the preset temperature which takes 10 to 15 minutes, then you have the cooking time of about 15 - 20 minutes for a single meat pie. During the cooking time, the oven will switch on and off to maintain the preset temperature.
By the way, we really like the oven and it is great for baking bread and family meals when the children/ grand children visit.
The air fryer gets up to temperature very quickly and heats a single meat pie in 15 minutes from switching on, so it uses about six times less electrical energy than the oven - and using battery power, it only costs the forgone solar feed-in-tariff (10 cents / kWhr) instead of the grid tariff (29 cents / kWhr).
So cost for me to heat one pie in air fryer: about 2.5 cents (1 kW for 15 mins x 10 cents).
Cost for me to heat one pie in oven: at least 20.25 cents (5 kW for 15 mins x 10 cents = 12.5 cents + 1 kW for 15 mins x 29 cents = 7.25 cents)
This means that I get the cost of the Aldi fryer back after heating 338 pies 
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Westinghouse WVE626S. Itās a dual oven!
Assume the name plate is the combined power rating with both on or peak when in cleaning - pyro mode.
What power rating is each oven?
Would one use the smaller lower power oven to heat a single pie if one did not have an alternative?
P.S.
The Westinghouse single electric wall oven from the same series WVE616 is rated at 3kW. Itās probable the lower oven/grill has a nominal 2.3kW rating making the total 5.3kW for the WVE626 product name plate.
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I have no trouble with the idea that for heating or cooking small baked food items the air fryer is more economical, possibly by quite a long way. Your conclusion that the pie is much cheaper to heat that way is almost certainly correct.
Your sums are probably wrong though. While the oven is wired for 5.3 kw it would only use that power if both ovens were on which is not required for a pie. Also both appliances switch the power on and off once they are up to temperature and we donāt know what that cycle is so while we know the peak power draw we donāt donāt know the total energy used over the period of heating the pie. So we donāt know how many pies you have to eat to get your money back.
I wish I had a source of pies that were so good that I could contemplate eating 300 of them.
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I wonder if PowerPal would reveal details of how much power a large oven uses?
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Any of the monitors would give a good approximation. Watch the real time use go up as the oven is turned on. For an exact value one needs a monitoring device for the single appliance, eg a āclampā.
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I was interested to read this review today. But Iām not too sure that the economics stack up to the point where I too would say āI am now firmly in the āI love my air fryerā campā. If we take the stated costs of the three meals cooked in a conventional oven Vs an air fryer (and assume that we live in a house that already has an oven, which I think it fair to say would be the majority), then while itās true that the air fryer is vastly cheaper to run, unfortunately it is very unlikely to pay for itself. When I put the costs into a spreadsheet and assume each of the three meals is cooked at the same frequency then it will be necessary to cook each some 275 times to break even. Thatās 825 air fryer cooked meals in total. Now unless you only live on air fryer cooked meals I believe thereās an almost certain chance that said air fryer will not only be well and truly past its warranty period but well past its useful lifetime long before you clock up 825 meals. Perhaps Iām unusual in cooking roast legs of lamb, slow cooked casseroles, curries, stir fries, barbies, salads, fresh fish/prawns/calamari, pasta in a variety of sauces, more salads, risottos, nachos, tacos, yet more salads, the occasional take-away, ā¦ and the rest of Australia lives exclusively on a diet of āsausages and roast vegetables for one personā, āfrozen snacks including chicken tenders, arancini balls and potato gemsā and āfamily-sized frozen apple pieā, and I have this totally wrong, but for me at least the economics simply donāt stack up. On the strength of the review Iām afraid I donāt find the case to buy yet another gadget, no matter how fashionable, compelling.
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