It depends on which country one is in and whose advertisement and product naming you are being exposed to.
Some use the term convection for what others call fan. Fan forced in a ‘small chamber’ is essentially air frying. To reinforce confusion some products use the term ‘convection’ to denote a mode when the fan feature is not used. From our SMEG one can hopefully understand when the fan is and is not used, and whether the fan runs at low or high speed vis a vis what SMEG calls the functions.
We also have a Ninja XL ‘Foodi Pro Air Fryer Oven’ - no microwave - we use it much more than our SMEG. My initial review is here.
The XL has an ‘air fryer’ mode that is quicker than any of the other modes but in practice is slower than an air fryer. My educated guess that is related to the internal volume of these ‘mixed mode’ products.
The XL is as close to impossible to clean as it could be. There may be a way but.
Choice also mentions cleaning as something to pay attention to in the Buyer Guide. The How We Test initially appears to be only about microwaves but it gets to the ‘convection microwaves’ a few paragraphs in.
