The best air fryer toaster ovens combine a toaster oven's versatility and generous capacity with an air fryer's crisping capabilities and efficient cooking. This "best of both worlds" design saves valuable counter space and lets you cook larger items, like whole chickens, that wouldn't fit in a standard basket air fryer.
To find the best air fryer toaster ovens, I extensively tested 25 models and interviewed air fryer experts. The Ninja Foodi XL Air Fryer Oven emerged as the clear top pick. It delivers uniform cooking results, precise temperature control, and a spacious interior. For those seeking a more budget-friendly option, the Cosori Air Fryer Toaster Oven provides good value for almost $200 less than the Ninja. Its temperature control isn't as precise, but it still cooks evenly and preheats quickly.
If you're looking for dedicated toaster ovens or air fryers, we have recommendations for those too: check out our guides for the best air fryer and best toaster oven. We also reviewed air fryer microwaves, but we prefer the models in this guide.
Learn more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and researches kitchen products.
Our top picks for the best air fryer toaster ovens
Best overall: Ninja Foodi XL Pro Air Fry Oven - See at Amazon
Best compact: Ninja SP101 Digital Air Fry Countertop Oven - See at Amazon
Best budget: Cosori Air Fryer Toaster Oven - See at Amazon
Best splurge: Café Couture Oven with Air Fry - See at Amazon
Best overall
With its massive 26-quart size, the Ninja Foodi DT201 10-in-1 XL Pro Air Fry Convection Toaster Oven is one of the largest countertop air fryers you can buy, large enough to fit a 12-pound turkey.
- Comes with useful extras and presets
- Sleek design with large front window and interior light
- Maintains consistent and accurate temperature
- Cooked chicken and frozen fries evenly
- Preheats slowly
The Ninja Foodi XL Pro Air Fry Oven (DT201) is more than a pretty face. Not only does it look sleek on any kitchen counter, but it has intuitive controls built into the handle, which frees up space for the large front window. Combined with the interior light, you can easily watch your food cook.
The Ninja performed the best in our temperature variance test, coming the closest to maintaining the 350-degree set point. During the two hours, it ranged from 349 to 352, at most only 2 degrees off our goal. It also produced perfectly cooked chicken in an hour and 10 minutes, on the fast end of the fryers we tested. French fries were evenly cooked and tasty, though the cooking time on fries and pizza was average.
It has an extra wire rack and is spacious enough to cook two dishes or pizzas simultaneously. I also like that it features several useful presets, including dehydration. The $290 Ninja does take a while to preheat: it took over 9 minutes to reach 400 degrees and nearly 8 minutes to reach 350.
One Ninja Foodi XL Pro version has a built-in probe thermometer for monitoring your food's internal temperature. We haven't tested it yet, but it might be worth considering if you don't have a meat thermometer, especially since it's occasionally cheaper than the non-thermometer version.
Check out our full Ninja XL Pro Air Fry Oven review.
Best compact
Ninja is one of our favorite small appliance brands, especially for its air fryers and toaster ovens. This one combines 8 functions into a single compact appliance: air fry, air roast, air broil, bake, bagel, toast, dehydrate, and keep warm.
- Takes up minimal space while still fitting a 13-inch pizza
- Easy to clean and use
- Interior light
- Preheats quickly
- Did a great job of cooking pizza
- Maintains consistent temperatures
- Too narrow to fit a chicken
- Runs hot
The Ninja Foodi Digital Air Fry Countertop Oven is the best compact air fryer toaster oven because it has a low-profile design, allowing it to fit tight spaces. You can even store it vertically to save counter space. Despite its small size, it can accommodate the largest pizza (13 inches) of my top air fryer toaster oven combo picks. The bottom opens up to make the interior easier to clean.
The Ninja Countertop did the best in my preheating tests, reaching 425 degrees in just over 4 minutes. In the temperature variance test, it maintained a consistent temperature, within a degree or two of 389. Unfortunately, this was much hotter than the 350 I set it to.
Another shortcoming is that it's too narrow to fit a whole chicken, so I couldn't perform that test. However, it was the fastest to cook pizza (7 minutes), which came out evenly browned and crispy. It did less well with frozen fries but was still in the middle of the pack for speed and quality.
It's a good option if you want a multifunctional small appliance without giving up a lot of countertop real estate. It even made the list of the best small air fryers I tested.
Best value
The Cosori 13-Quart Air Fryer Toaster Oven does an outstanding job making frozen fries and comes with useful extras, including a rotisserie basket.
- Made perfect fries
- Takes up minimal counter space
- Comes with useful accessories and presets
- Preheats quickly
- Nearly accurate temperatures
- Interior light
- Only fits pizzas up to 9 inches in diameter
- Didn't cook chicken evenly
- Higher than average temperature variance
The Cosori 13-quart Air Fryer Toaster Oven's performance rivaled my top pick. However, it lost points because its small interior only fits 9-inch pizzas, smaller than most frozen ones, and it had a higher-than-average temperature variance.
The boxy design doesn't take up much space on your counter, though it isn't small enough to fall into the "compact" category. At $100, it barely qualifies as the best budget air fryer toaster oven. Yet, it performed much better than the three cheaper models I tested.
The Cosori 13-Quart has a rotisserie basket that helped it produce the best fries in our tests. Unfortunately, the basket's opening was too small to fit a chicken, so I cooked one in the baking pan. The skin was burned on top when the chicken reached a safe internal temperature, but the meat underneath was flavorful and moist. The pizza came out quickly and was more evenly cooked.
Preheating was fast, taking under 5 minutes to reach 350 degrees and 7 minutes to achieve 425. The temperature variance was higher than most models I tested but still within reason. It averaged 7 degrees less than the set point and didn't vary by more than 6 degrees higher or lower.
If you're looking for an even cheaper toaster oven and don't mind sacrificing performance, the Black+Decker Crisp 'N Bake Air Fry Toaster Oven is about half the price. However, I didn't like that it doesn't have an oven light, and you can't adjust the temperature in air fryer mode.
Best splurge
The Café Couture Oven is user-friendly offering on-unit and in-app controls. It preheats and cooks food quickly, producing crispy golden fries.
- Made perfect fries
- Cooked pizza and chicken quickly
- Fast preheating
- User-friendly
- Maintained fairly accurate and consistent temperatures
- App connectivity
- Pizza toppings cooked faster than crust
- Chicken could have been juicier and more evenly cooked
- Can't preheat the oven from the app
The Café Couture Oven with Air Fry is incredibly user-friendly, similar to the brand's Café Affetto, which we rank as one of the best espresso machines. The on-unit controls are intuitive: Simply turn the dial to the cook mode you want, turn the time and temp dial to your desired setting, and press start. The oven connects to your phone via the Smart HQ app (iOS and Android). For safety reasons, you can't start preheating the oven from the app, but you can choose your settings and then press the on-unit start button to begin cooking.
The Couture Oven excelled at cooking quickly; even preheat times were faster than the average air fryer toaster oven combo. It made fast food-caliber fries in 12 minutes. A whole roast chicken took a smidge over an hour, and frozen pizza was ready in eight minutes. Of these, the fries came out the best. The chicken was slightly drier and less evenly cooked than I would have liked. The pizza's toppings cooked faster than the crust. Yet, I've found these issues can be easily remedied using the bake function rather than air fry.
The oven ran hot in the temperature variance test yet did better than most units. On average, it was 13 degrees hotter than the 350-degree set point but didn't vary more than three degrees from that point. Lastly, clean-up was a breeze. All the accessories are dishwasher-safe except for the crumb tray, which is easy to remove and wash by hand.
Our best splurge air fryer toaster oven is available in three colors: matte black, matte white, and stainless steel. We're not the only ones singing the praises of the Café Couture Oven. It recently earned a spot on Oprah's Favorite Things list.
The Breville Joule Air Fryer Pro Smart Oven is also a good splurge option. It did an outstanding job of cooking evenly and maintaining consistent temperatures. However, it took longer than most toaster ovens to preheat and cook. Plus, it's about $160 more than the Couture Oven.
What else we tested
For this guide, we tested 25 air fryer toaster ovens. Here are some we still recommend that just didn't make the cut.
Ninja Smart Double Oven: Ninja's double oven is a great product. It features a regular-sized main oven and a low-profile top oven, so you can simultaneously cook two dishes with different settings. The food cooked quickly and evenly, though it was slow to preheat.
Dash Chef Series 7-in-1: We liked the Dash model, but it wasn't the best in any category. It has convection cooking/air frying and did an outstanding job baking cookies and pizza. The Dash oven was one of the fastest to roast a chicken and one of the most even toasters, but it had the largest temperature variance during our tests.
Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360: We appreciate the rotisserie spit that comes with the Emeril Lagasse oven. The Power AirFryer 360 preheated quickly and did a good job with chicken, pizza, and cookies, but it took a long time to toast and was uneven. It also struggled to maintain steady temperatures.
Air fryer toaster oven vs. pod air fryer
Pod air fryer | Air fryer toaster oven | |
Best for | Cooking fast and crisping foods with less oil | Versatile functions and larger quantities |
Design | Controls, presets, and timers on top, a removable basket to hold food with a handle | Front door to insert trays and dishes, plus a window to monitor cooking progress |
Price | $40 to $250 | $60 to $400 |
What to look for in an air fryer toaster oven
Size and capacity: Since many toaster ovens are a pain to move around, choose one that easily fits on your counter. We provide our picks' exterior and interior dimensions (capacity) so you can check for a perfect fit. The capacity determines what bakeware and pizza sizes you can fit.
Functions: Several picks in this guide feature dehydration and proofing functions. These are great if you'll use them, but they may not be worth the additional cost if you won't. Similarly, toaster ovens often have preset buttons for fries, pizza, and other common items. These are useful starting points; just know that they don't guarantee that your food will be cooked well.
Cost: Air fryer toaster ovens are more expensive than the classic basket air fryers. If you don't need the extra capacity and versatility of a toaster oven, consider one of the best air fryers. That said, I've found the price of toaster ovens doesn't always correlate with performance. For instance, I've tested several expensive Breville air fryer toaster ovens that didn't cook nearly as well as our guide's Ninja picks that cost half as much.
Racks and accessories: All toaster ovens should have a rack, crumb tray, and baking pan. We prefer ones that come with an air fryer basket, which promotes airflow around your food items for even browning. Some common accessories that may come in handy are pizza pans and stones, roasting racks, extra wire racks and baking pans, and more.
How we tested air fryer toaster ovens
The main factors we considered when testing the best air fryer toaster ovens are how well they cook various foods, how quickly they preheat, and temperature consistency and accuracy. Below are highlights from our tests. For more details, check out this article on how our experts test air fryers.
Ease of use: Units with interior lights got extra points because they make it easier to monitor your food. Generally, the toaster ovens with WiFi connectivity took longer to set up and were harder to use.
Temperature variance: I set each unit to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and took readings every 15 minutes for 2 hours. Units received high scores if they stayed within 15 degrees of the target temperature.
Preheating: The best air fryer toaster ovens preheat faster than your standard oven. In separate tests, I timed how long each model took to preheat to 350, 400, and 425 degrees. Most reached 350 in under 8 minutes and only needed a minute more to reach 425.
Cooking performance: I cooked one pound of frozen fries and evaluated how evenly cooked, crispy, and fry-like they tasted. Then, I made a frozen pizza in each oven to see how long it took to cook at 425 degrees and how evenly it cooked. Finally, I used a recipe from "Toaster Oven Takeover" to cook 4-to-5-pound chickens in each unit. I evaluated how long the chicken took, how evenly cooked it was, and how it tasted.
Cleaning: I clean all units inside and out, noting how easy it is to reach and remove debris. Most toaster ovens have a crumb tray, making cleaning much easier. Appliances with dishwasher-safe components (racks, baskets, etc.) earned bonus points.
Air fryer toaster oven FAQs
Are air fryer toaster oven combos worth it?
A toaster oven with air fryer capabilities gives you more flexibility in making your meals, including faster cooking. For example, baking frozen fries in a traditional toaster oven would take longer and wouldn't come out as crispy as with an air fryer toaster oven, which utilizes the browning Maillard reaction. Plus, since most of today's toaster ovens come with air frying, the price is similar to those that don't.
Samantha Erb, the creator of Everyday Family Cooking, said the best air fryer toaster ovens are worth it when you cook for a group because their spacious interiors allow you to cook large batches of food or several items at once.
How do air fryer toaster ovens work?
Air frying relies on the Maillard reaction, which crisps or browns food by blowing hot air over it. Air fryer toaster ovens have a heating element and a fan to achieve this reaction and produce food that tastes almost like fried, though you'd never mistake the results for deep-fried food.
Are air fryer toaster ovens healthier?
"Healthy" is a loaded term that means different things to different people. That said, air frying appliances create crispy food while using less cooking oil than if you were to use a deep fryer. Also, some accessories do not have a nonstick coating, a plus since microplastics from nonstick cookware may end up in your food.
How do I clean an air fryer toaster oven?
After each use, you should clean every piece that comes in contact with food, including the crumb tray, basket, wire rack, and roasting pan. Even though some models feature dishwasher-safe elements, it is ideal to hand wash with warm water and a mild detergent. Check your user manual to find out what pieces are dishwasher-safe. Wipe your unit's interior and exterior with a damp sponge to avoid grease and oil buildup.
Consider picking up one of our guide's best silicone air fryer liners to make cleanup easier.
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