The $120 Cosori is the winner, and it earns it by
having no weak category: second-fastest to heat a steel block to 200°F at
5:59, the fastest cookies at 6 minutes with a genuinely good result, perfectly
even bacon in 6.5 minutes, and the juiciest chicken in the test. It also
reaches 450°F, higher than most of the field, and is among the easiest to
clean. The trade-off is noise at 61 dB.
The Ninja takes second at 4.4 and is the pick for anyone who mainly wants
fries — it produced the best in the test, tied for the fastest at 8 minutes,
and heated the block quicker than anything else at 5:01. But that speed comes
from aggressive airflow and a machine that runs hot: set to 400°F, its
interior reached 464°F, it blew bacon strips on top of each other, it
scattered parchment paper under cookies, and at 66.2 dB it is the loudest
appliance here. The Oster, Instant Pot, Philips, and Cuisinart tied for third,
and the Instant Pot is the sensible alternate if the Cosori is unavailable.
The design split is the practical lesson. Basket fryers heat faster and crisp
better; toaster-oven styles bake better — the Breville, Black+Decker, and
Cuisinart took the top three cookie ratings, and the $400 Breville's cookies
were the best in the test. But the Breville was also slowest at everything
else by a wide margin, needing 11:23 to heat the block and 21 minutes for
fries. At the budget end, the $53 Black+Decker is the quietest machine here
at 45.9 dB and bakes well, but it took 44 minutes to cook chicken and dried
out fries. The $60 Chefman is the better cheap pick if capacity for two is
enough.