Save space with an air fryer toaster oven combo that can do it all.
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Air fryer toaster ovens are designed to work like the best toaster ovens with the additional benefit of air frying. They can toast, bake, broil and more just like a toaster oven; plus, they can air fry, which means they either have more heating elements on the top and a larger fan than your typical toaster oven, or they use existing hardware to make food crispier, faster. They're a great option for people who don't have the real estate to store a toaster, toaster oven and air fryer on their counter — and, like toaster ovens, they can even stand in for microwaves since they're great for reheating many foods.
In the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, we've tested more than 20 different air fryer toaster ovens, in addition to more than 40 air fryers and 40 toaster ovens.
When we test the air frying function on appliances and air fryers, we cook a pound of chicken wings and a pound of french fries in each machine to see how quickly and evenly each crisps up. When we test air fryer toaster ovens, we also test each of the toaster oven features by toasting bread, baking a cake on both the bake and convection bake settings, broiling steak and an open-faced sandwich on the broiling setting and more. We also assess several ease-of-use factors like whether the appliance has an intuitive control panel and is easy to clean.
Read on to learn more about how we test air fryer toaster ovens, what to consider when shopping, whether they really work and how they differ from toaster ovens and microwaves. Once you're ready to air fry, check out our favorite air-fried recipes like air fryer salmon flatbreads.
This air fryer toaster oven has topped our best-tested list for several years. It toasts bread quickly and evenly, bakes gently and air fries the quickest with no additional preheat time. In our tests, it made chicken wings super crispy in 20 minutes, as well as french fries in even less time.
Its power is impressive and its results are comparable to the best stand-alone air fryers. Just keep an eye on food when experimenting the first few times to prevent accidentally burning your food. We also recommend air frying at a slightly lower temperature than you're used to until you get a sense for this model – it's powerful!
In the toaster oven portion of our test, bread toasted well and cake baked quickly with just a small dome that needed to be trimmed (the best toaster ovens cook a level cake). Frozen pizza cooked in barely any time, as did broiled steak. The oven comes with a user guide loaded with cooking charts and recipes; plus, the oven is programmed with more than 10 settings, five of which are specific to air frying. The ability to program the oven for two different times and temps is a unique feature: It's useful for starting foods at a high temp to crisp them and lowering to finish cooking inside.
We liked this digital model, but the control panel can be a little tricky. The brand also offers a version with mechanical dials for a more simple-to-use interface that's also a little cheaper.
RELATED: Air Fryer vs. Convection Oven: What's the Difference?
This under-$100 model impressed us during testing, especially when it came to air frying. It has a basic control panel with three knobs that are easy to operate and a small footprint that's still large enough to fit a 12-inch frozen pizza. In our tests, it was one of the few that was able to bake a uniformly melted pizza in addition to making evenly colored toast. Wings and fries also crisped up quickly, nicely and evenly in our air fryer tests.
The air fryer toaster oven comes with a metal mesh basket for air frying, a broil rack and a baking tray. It has a 30-minute timer, a stay-on setting so you can cook food for longer than 30 minutes or set your own timer and auto-shutoff. Take note that it's a little tricky to set an exact timer because the time increments are in denoted in units of five, so there are no specific markings for the individual minutes.
All the tests we conducted in the Cosori Air Fryer Toaster Oven Combo, from air fry to bake, received top scores. It produced crispy wings and fries, toasted bread well and evenly and made a very good cake that was evenly browned and level. It even nicely browned our steak on the broil function, which is a feature that really impresses us when done well. It has a large capacity and footprint, but doesn't feel bulky compared to some others with the same capacity. It also offers an intuitive control panel that's easy to navigate.
It comes with high-quality accessories, including an extra-large baking/broiling pan, an air fryer rack and a rotisserie spit for chicken and other roasts. It also has the ability to dehydrate — i.e. cook on low temps for a long time — and to ferment, which allows you to keep the oven at one low temp for a long time so you can make things like yogurt (though we'd recommend using an oven thermometer, too, if you plan on using it for yogurt to play it extra safe.) The one downside is wings took about 20 minutes longer to cook than other air fryer toaster ovens we tested, plus it requires an extra six minutes to preheat. The results, however, were worth it: Crispy, juicy and even chicken wings.
The popular Breville Smart Oven Air got an even smarter upgrade with the ability to connect to an app. Breville leveraged its partnership with ChefSteps, the brand that first introduced the Joule sous vide, to make an app (for Apple and Google) loaded with air fryer recipes and videos. It also offers unique "autopilot" settings so you can cook foods like a rotisserie chicken while it does all the work for you in terms of cycling through different temperatures and settings to get the most perfect, tested results.
In our tests, the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro made toast that was almost entirely even and a gorgeous, golden cake. The air fryer setting took longer to crisp wings than most of the other air fryer toaster ovens we tested, but the results were similar to the results we saw in the Smart Oven Air that consumers love — we just find them to be less crispy than we think air fried wings should be. Nonetheless, it was amongst the easiest to use with an intuitive control panel plus the ability to follow along on the app. It can even be controlled with Alexa if you want to adjust your cook time or temperature.
The Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro comes with many accessories, including two wire racks, a broiling rack, a baking pan, a pizza pan and an air frying/dehydrating rack. It offers many settings, including "Proof" so you can proof your bread dough, a setting we're seeing more and more in air fryer toaster ovens that offer low temps.
Designed to match other stylish Café brand appliances — like the Café fridge, coffee maker and more — this Couture Oven with Air Fry will make a statement on your countertop. In addition to the matte black design with rose-gold colored knobs, it also comes in white and stainless steel.
Aesthetics aside, this air fryer toaster oven performed well in our tests. Air-fried wings took 20 minutes to crisp evenly, released from the air fryer basket easily and stayed juicy. We were pleased that there wasn't any smoking during air frying and that the oven was easy to use overall with a digital control panel. In our toaster oven tests, bread turned out golden and, while cake took a little longer to cook than others, it baked evenly and level. The air fryer toaster oven comes with an air frying rack, cooking rack and baking pan.
The Ninja Foodi Air Fry Oven has one of the largest air frying racks we tested, measuring in at 13 by 13 inches. It offers a large amount of cooking space, including being able to comfortably fit nine pieces of toast at one time, but the machine is squat and can't fit an entire chicken like most of the air fryer toaster ovens and toaster ovens we tested. The most appealing feature is that it swivels upward for storage so it won't take up your counter space. Plus, when stored upright, the bottom of the oven can be released for cleaning so you can easily wipe it down.
In our tests, the Ninja Foodi Air Fry Oven air fried crispy, evenly cooked wings and fries. It also toasted bread evenly and made a gorgeously browned and level cake. The control panel is simple to operate with easy-to-read settings.
In the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, we tested 20 different air fryer toaster ovens for their ability to air fry, bake, broil and, of course, toast. That means we cooked more than 20 pounds of wings to see how quickly and evenly they crisped up.
When we test wings, we simply sprinkle them with salt and place them on the rack. We don't add any oil, so we can see whether they brown nicely and/or stick on their own. We assess how quickly and evenly they cook and whether they are juicy or dry. We also use this test to help us evaluate whether the oven is prone to smoking and how easy it is to clean afterward.
We also air fry french fries and take the same criteria as wings into consideration. We score how quickly and evenly they cook as well as how crispy but tender they turn out.
One of our most important and telling toaster oven tests is making toast. We fill the rack with bread three times and toast each batch on a different setting. We evaluate how evenly and consistently the oven toasts as well as how much the low, medium and high settings differ from one another. We know that an air fryer toaster oven must be able to toast well since it's one of the most commonly used features. Some claim toaster ovens don't toast as well as standalone toasters, but we've found that many toaster ovens work great and don't require buying a separate toaster.
In addition to air fry and toast, we test the air fryer toaster ovens' baking ability by making frozen pizza (to see how evenly the cheese melts and whether the crust is done) and baking a boxed-mix cake (to see how evenly it cooks and browns). We score the results on cooking time and evenness.
Lastly, we test the broiling function with open-faced sandwiches and steak since a good air fryer toaster oven should be able to melt cheese nicely and broil foods quickly.
✔️ Size: Most toaster ovens can fit a whole, 4-lb chicken, but if you're tight on space, you might not need the extra height. If you mostly plan to use your toaster oven for bread, reheating leftovers or one- or two-person meals, a compact model is sufficient. If you're looking to cook in it or use it as a second oven, consider a larger model; some are big enough to fit a whole turkey.
✔️ Type of controls: Toaster ovens can have digital or mechanical controls. We recommend digital for more precise options when it comes to setting the temperature and the timer. If you don't mind guessing or keeping an additional timer close by, mechanical dials will save you money.
✔️ Racks and accessories: At a minimum, all toaster ovens should come with at least one rack and one baking/broiling pan. Air fryer toaster ovens usually include an additional basket or rack for air frying. The baskets usually sit on the baking/broiling pan and allow safe cooking at high temperatures as well as easy maneuverability and cleanup. But sometimes the air frying rack slides directly into the toaster oven slots and grease can drip directly onto the bottom heating elements if you don't position a pan below it. Some air fryer toaster ovens offer the option to purchase more air fryer racks (that can also be used for dehydrating in most cases) to use at the same time, and some include a rotisserie attachment.
Yes, air fryers toaster oven really work. When rounding up our list of the best toaster oven air fryers, we made sure to weigh the air frying results heavily so people could feel confident about buying an air fryer toaster oven to stand in for their air fryer. Almost all of our picks are specially designed to air fry with a concentrated heat source and powerful fan located on the top of the unit. The results of almost all of our picks are comparable to those of a stand-alone air fryer, and some can crisp foods up just as quickly.
All of these picks also excelled in basic toaster oven tests like toasting, baking and broiling.
✔️ An air fryer is a stand-alone appliance that can crisp up food quickly. The heat source is located on the top of the unit and is paired with a large fan that circulates the hot air. There are two main air fryer styles to choose from:
✔️ An air fryer toaster oven is a toaster oven that's also designed to air fry. The functionality is either built into the design of the product itself or into the settings. This type of air frying takes place on a shallow basket that's set atop a tray or on an air fryer basket. Like oven-style air fryers, the air frying parts are less bulky to clean.
A good air fryer toaster can double as an air fryer and a toaster oven. Not only can it air fry wings, fish, veggies, frozen foods and more, but most can also toast, bake, convection bake, broil and reheat.
Some standalone air fryers tout that they, too, can perform all of these functions, but air fryer toaster ovens are equipped with heating elements on the top and bottom of the unit so they can truly perform these functions. (A standalone air fryer usually just has heating elements on the top.)
The functions on air fryer toaster ovens are also designed to carry out those functions in an optimal way. For example, if you're toasting, the temperature is usually high, and you can pick from different shade settings; if you're baking, the heat is gentle and doesn't use a fan so you can get even results. Some new air fryers have built-in functions like this, but it's hard to know which models can truly perform these functions, and the cooking area in a standalone air fryer is typically smaller than in an air fryer toaster oven.
Nicole Papantoniou is the director of the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, where she oversees all testing related to cooking and drinking. She has tested more than 20 air fryer toaster ovens herself and, when she worked in product development, helped developed one of the best-selling air fryer toaster ovens on the market. She's been using them daily ever since.
Nicole (she/her) is the director of the Good Housekeeping Institute's Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, where she has overseen content and testing related to kitchen and cooking appliances, tools and gear since 2019. She’s an experienced product tester and recipe creator, trained in classic culinary arts and culinary nutrition. She has worked in test kitchens for small kitchen appliance brands and national magazines, including Family Circle and Ladies’ Home Journal.
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