Ninja is the biggest name in air fryers, and for good reason – it makes many of the best air fryers around – but there are so many models to choose from, you might be struggling to know where to begin.
That’s where I come in. I’m TechRadar’s kitchen appliance expert, and I’ve had my hands on a lot of air fryers over the last few years. Each time I put them through the same battery of tests, I prepare fries, chicken, vegetables, and muffins to see how well each one performs against its rivals and which ones produce the most consistent cooking results.
After extensive trials, and bucketloads of fries, these are my three top recommended Ninja air fryers that you can buy right now. There’s something for every size kitchen and all appetites, so there should be one that suits you. Happy cooking!
Ninja Crispi
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The little Crispi is one of Ninja’s most unusual air fryers – and one of the best. Most air fryers are designed to be confined to your kitchen, and Crispi is made for use on the move, and really comes into its own if you’re at work or college.
Whereas most Ninja air fryers have drawers, the Crispi opts for reusable glass containers that you use to store your food until you’re ready to start cooking (just like regular Tupperware). Stash them in the fridge until lunch time rolls around, then clip the PowerPod lid on top and let the hot air flow. No more soggy leftovers or having to face the horror of a communal microwave.
In our tests, the air fryer, max crisp, and reheat modes all worked very well. Our vegetables cooked particularly well, turning out perfect with just a tiny spritz of oil. It’s surprisingly quick, too. Veggie nuggets, falafel balls, and protein waffles “turned out wonderful and crisp on the outside, tender on the inside”, and didn’t require any extra oil at all.
It’s not the best-looking appliance I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t really matter since it’s not going to be hanging around on your kitchen counter for any length of time. It’s portable and practical, and that’s what matters. You’ll be the envy of the office.
Read our full Ninja Crispi review
Ninja Double Stack XL
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The Double Stack XL took the prize for best air fryer in last year’s TechRadar Choice Awards, and it remains one of Ninja’s top models thanks to its two-tier design that lets you cook as much food as a standard twin-drawer fryer, but with a much smaller footprint. Need even more cooking space? Each of its drawers comes with an extra rack, so you can cook two items in each one.
It’s not just a thoughtfully-designed fryer, either – in our tests, it delivered consistently great results, helping us prepare crisp fries, tender chicken, and tender salmon with barely any effort, and in a fraction of the time they’d take in the oven.
It doesn’t have as many cooking modes as some air fryers we’ve tested over the years, but it has all the essentials covered (air fry, max crisp, roast, bake, dehydrate, and reheat) and you can customize each one by holding the time and temperature buttons together for a moment, then making your changes.
You can use a different cooking profile for each drawer, and we noticed barely any transfer of heat between the two when they were set to vastly different temperatures. Its baskets are dishwasher-safe too, which is always welcome (we’ve spent far too much time scrubbing air fryer components after cooking chicken wings).
You won’t be able to fit a pizza inside (for that, you’ll need a fryer with one large drawer and a removable divider), but for all your other everyday air-frying needs, the Ninja Double Stack XL is hard to beat.
Read our full Ninja Double Stack XL review
Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer
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The 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer is one of Ninja’s priciest models, but it’s also one of the best, and even if you’re not usually confident in the kitchen, it’ll soon have you air frying, grilling, roasting, and even baking like a pro.
During testing, we made good use of its temperature probe, which lets you quickly check the internal temperature of meat and fish, so you can be certain that your dish is properly cooked without being overdone.
It worked particularly well with frozen foods, and we were able to prepare perfect sticky, smoky BBQ chicken fillets from frozen in just 25 minutes. Fries and veggies turned out nicely following the directions in the manual, and we were particularly impressed by how well the Ninja 5-in-1 can bake. We’ve had a lot of sad experiences trying to make muffins and cake in air fryers, but this is a rare exception to the rule.
We wish that its cooking pot had a handle, which would make it easier to shake our fries for even cooking. However, the biggest downside of the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer is that, at the time of writing, it’s only available in the UK. If you live elsewhere, consider the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer as an alternative for indoor grilling.
Read our full Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer review
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