Basket air fryer

The reference machine: one deep drawer, a perforated basket, element and fan above the food.

What changes in this appliance

This is the baseline every cooking page on AirfryerHQ is written for. Times and temperatures are stated for a single layer in a drawer of this kind, so no adjustment applies. The one thing worth knowing about it is that the usable area is much smaller than the advertised litres suggest — the depth is mostly headroom, and food still has to go in one layer.

Every cooking page on AirfryerHQ is written for a single-drawer basket machine. This is how to read those figures if yours is different.

How it is built

The design most people mean by 'air fryer'. A drawer pulls out of the front, food sits in a perforated basket, and a fan directly above drives heated air down through it. Small chamber, fast recovery, very high air velocity.

Chamber: Deep drawer
Independent zones: 1
Element and fan: Element and fan both above the food
Preheating: Comes up to temperature quickly

Typical specifications

Ranges for this architecture, not a claim about any particular machine. Your own manual is the authority for yours.

Advertised capacity: 3–6 litres
Usable single-layer area: 400–700 cm²The number that actually decides how much food you can cook well. Manufacturers do not publish it.
Power: 1300–1700 W
Temperature range: 80–200°C
Adjusts in: 5°C steps
Usually offers: Air fry, Roast, Bake, Reheat, Grill

Does it genuinely air-fry?

No standards body defines air frying, so these are AirfryerHQ’s own assessment criteria. They are published rather than applied silently, so you can disagree with the reasoning instead of taking a verdict on trust.

Air moves fast, not just around — met
Air reaches every surface of the food — met
Recovers temperature quickly after loading — met
Fat and moisture drain away — met
Reaches genuine browning temperatures — met

Good at

Fastest to temperature of any architecture, so preheating rarely matters much
Highest air velocity, which is what produces the crisping
Fat drains through the basket and away from the food

Not good at

Usable area is small relative to advertised capacity — a 5-litre drawer holds about two portions of chips in one layer
Only one temperature, so a whole meal has to be cooked in stages
Fat collecting under the basket is the commonest source of smoke

Models of this kind

Tower T17067 4L Digital Air Fryer — A 4-litre single-basket machine, 1400W, SUBJECT TO A 2025 FIRE-RISK RECALL. Owners should stop using it.
Instant Vortex 4-in-1 Air Fryer — A 3.7-litre single basket with the clearest published mode data of any model here: default AND settable range for every programme.
Instant Vortex 6-in-1 Air Fryer — The 5.7-litre sibling of the Vortex 4, sharing its manual and its temperature ranges but not its default set points.
Philips Airfryer XXL HD9650 series — The originator's large single basket, and the source of the most complete cooking chart in this catalogue. Runs most foods at 180°C where others use 200°C.
Tower T17023 2.2L Air Fryer — A 2.2-litre single-drawer machine, and one of the six Tower models recalled in 2025 for a fire risk.
Cookworks 5L Digital Air Fryer KDF-596D — A retailer own-brand 5-litre basket machine that publishes a default temperature and a default time for every one of its ten presets.
Cosori Dual Blaze 6.4L Smart Air Fryer — A 6.4-litre single-basket machine with twelve named functions, and the clearest published answer to what a new appliance's plastic smell means.
Philips Essential Airfryer HD9252/91 4.1L — The plain single-basket Philips, and the first one in this catalogue — which matters because Philips originated the category and the catalogue held only its oven-shaped XXL.
Philips Airfryer Series 5000 XXL HD9285/93 7.2L — The same manufacturer's table at nearly double the capacity, which is the cleanest published demonstration in the catalogue of what quantity does to time.
Tefal Easy Fry Classic EY501827 4.2L Air Fryer & Grill — A basket machine with a separate grill mode that requires a FIFTEEN-MINUTE preheat, published in the table alongside the air-fry rows that require none.
Tefal Easy Fry Max EY245B40 5L Air Fryer — Carries the only published bacon row for a basket machine in this catalogue, and a courgette row that is one of very few sourced vegetable figures outside a single chart.
Instant Air Fryer 3.8L AFB4002BK — The smallest fully specified machine in the catalogue, and the only manufacturer anywhere in it that separates black smoke from white smoke.