What the settings on an air fryer actually do

Questions this answers

• What do the buttons on an air fryer mean?
• What is the difference between Air Fry, Roast and Bake?
• What does Max Crisp do?
• What is Steamfry, or Steam & Airfry?
• What do Sync, Match and Smart Finish do?
• Are air fryer presets worth using?

Four kinds of button

A different way of heating. The machine uses something the plain setting does not — steam from a water tank, a microwave, a second element. These are the only buttons that can do something you could not reproduce by setting a temperature and a time yourself. They are rarer than the panel suggests.

A stored time and temperature. The button recalls numbers somebody chose in advance. Where a manual publishes those numbers, you can see exactly what you are getting, and you can get the same thing by entering them by hand.

A control feature. The button does not change how the food is heated at all. It changes when: starting two drawers at different moments so they finish together, copying one drawer's settings to the other, reminding you to shake.

Not published. The manufacturer names the setting and says nothing checkable about what it does. This is common, and the useful response is to treat the button as a starting suggestion and judge the food.

One caution runs through everything below. Where a manual gives two settings different default temperatures and says nothing more, that is all we know. It does not show that the two are identical underneath, and it does not show that they differ. This page reports what is printed and stops there.

Air Fry, Roast and Bake

On the machines whose manuals publish the numbers, these three are distinguished mainly by temperature. Ninja's Foodi MAX Dual Zone presets Air Fry to 200°C, Roast to 190°C and Bake to 160°C, each adjustable. Russell Hobbs' SatisFry multicooker starts Air Fry at 215°C, Roast at 190°C and Bake at 175°C, each with its own settable range.

So the names track what cooks have always meant by them: baking is gentler heat aimed at cooking through, roasting is hotter with browning in mind, air frying is hottest. If your recipe says 180°C, it matters far more that you set 180°C than which of the three buttons you pressed first.

There is one published difference that is not temperature. The Russell Hobbs manual answers the preheat question per mode: preheat for Grill and Bake, do not for Air Fry and Roast. That is a manufacturer saying the modes behave differently on that machine, without saying how. It is a multicooker with heating at the top and bottom, and nothing here should be read across to a drawer machine.

Whether fan speed changes between Air Fry, Roast and Bake is the question people most want answered, and no manual we have read publishes a fan speed for any mode. It may well differ on some machines. It is not documented, so this page does not say.

Max Crisp

A Ninja label, and one of the few settings where the manual is specific. On the Foodi MAX Dual Zone it is preset to 240°C, and the manual states there is no temperature adjustment available or necessary. Time is settable up to 30 minutes.

That makes it a fixed, very hot setting intended for frozen food — forty degrees above the same machine's Air Fry preset. It is the highest air-frying temperature in any manual we have read. It is not a setting to borrow for fresh food, or for anything thick: at that heat the outside is finished long before the middle.

If your machine has no Max Crisp, its top temperature is the nearest thing, and most stop at 200°C. A recipe written around Max Crisp will take longer on a machine that cannot reach it.

Reheat

A stored setting, and a good illustration of how little the word fixes. Ninja presets it to 170°C. Philips' two-drawer steam model stores it as 150°C for 20 minutes with steam. Philips' Megabasket publishes the one Reheat button three ways for 850 g of food: 6 minutes at 180°C with hot air, 22 minutes at 160°C with steam and hot air together, or 16 minutes with steam alone.

Three sets of numbers behind one word, on one machine. So a Reheat button is a reasonable place to start and tells you nothing about whether the food is hot through. Reheated food has a safety target that no button checks — see the reheating rule linked from this page.

Dehydrate and Keep Warm

Both are low-temperature stored settings. Ninja presets Dehydrate to 60°C and lets it run for up to twelve hours in fifteen-minute steps, which is what distinguishes it in practice: a much longer timer than the cooking modes allow. Instant's smallest drawer machine fixes its Warm setting at 76°C.

Neither is a different way of heating so far as any manual we have read says. They are the same hot air at a temperature too low to cook, for a long time. Dehydrating is drying, not cooking, and it does not make raw meat safe — the page on jerky strips says why.

Grill, or Broil

This one varies by machine more than any other label, so it is the one to look up for your own model. On Russell Hobbs' multicooker Grill is the hottest general setting, starting at 230°C, and the manual requires a preheat. On Tefal's dual-drawer machine Grill launches a preheat automatically on its first drawer and tells you when to add food. Ninja's health grill is a different architecture again, with a grill plate the food sits directly on.

What these have in common is a preheat — the surface or the chamber is brought up to temperature before food goes in, which the same manufacturers do not ask for when air frying. Broil is the North American word for the same idea, and appears on machines sold there.

Steam, and Steam with Air Fry

Here the hardware really is different, and the manuals say so. Philips' two steam models carry a water tank of about 800 ml, a pump, and a steam generator that the plain air fryer does not have. That is a different medium doing the cooking, not a different number on the same heater.

Steam on its own is fixed at 100°C. The two-drawer manual says so in words — the temperature is not adjustable — and every steam entry in the Megabasket's tables reads 100°C. That is what steam at kitchen pressure is; no setting could make it otherwise.

The combined mode goes by two names for one idea: Steam&airfry on the two-drawer model, Steamfry on the Megabasket. The manufacturer defines it as hot air and steam together, and it is adjustable — the published tables use 160°C to 200°C. Whether it suits a food is a matter of taste that we have no evidence on; what is documented is that it runs hotter than steam and wetter than air frying.

The practical consequences are documented too, and they are the things to know before buying. Steam works in one side of the machine only: the big pan on the two-drawer model, the right-hand side or the undivided drawer on the Megabasket. The tank must be filled first and emptied afterwards. A descaling programme of about fifty minutes is due after every ten hours of steam, vinegar is prohibited for it, and one manual says that skipping it voids the warranty. And the manuals ask for more clear space around the appliance than usual, because the steam has to go somewhere.

Sync, Match, Smart Finish and other timing features

These are control features. They exist on machines with two cooking zones and none of them changes how food is heated.

A synchronised finish holds back the start of the quicker zone so that both end together. Philips calls it the Time function and describes exactly that: each pan starts at a different time and they finish at the same time. Philips' manuals attach a caution worth repeating for any machine with this feature — be careful using it with food that spoils easily. The food in the delayed zone is sitting in a closed drawer at room temperature while it waits, sometimes beside a drawer that is already hot.

Ninja's dual-zone machines carry both a Sync and a Match button, and Tefal's dual drawer carries Sync. We hold those names from the manuals and have not recorded what each manufacturer's wording says they do, so this page does not describe them beyond the general idea: one family of features aligns finishing times, another copies settings from one zone to the other. Smart Finish is a label used on machines we have not read a manual for. For any of these, your own manual is the authority.

Food presets — Fries, Chicken, Fish and the rest

A food preset is a stored time and temperature for an amount of that food which the manufacturer had in mind. Where the amount is printed, the preset is genuinely useful. Philips' Megabasket publishes every one as a weight: Frozen fries is 1.3 kg at 200°C; Fish is 2.2 kg. Cook 400 g on that button and it will run far too long.

The same manual shows why presets do not travel between machines. It prints its preset table twice, for two versions of the same appliance with different wattages. Frozen fries takes 26 minutes on the higher-powered version and 29 on the lower. Same button, same food, same weight, same manufacturer — three minutes apart because of the heater.

Several manufacturers name their presets and publish nothing else: no temperature, no time, no quantity. Tefal's Easy Fry Max has ten of those. A button like that is not wrong, but there is nothing to check it against, and a chart figure for your food at a stated weight is a better starting point.

How to use this with your own machine

Find what the button stores. If your manual has a table of presets with temperatures, you now know what each label does and can enter the numbers yourself when a recipe needs something in between. Each model page on this site shows that table where the manufacturer publishes one.

Follow temperatures, not labels, when using advice written for another machine. 'Air Fry at 200°C for 12 minutes' transfers. 'Use the Roast setting' does not, because Roast is 190°C on one machine and something else, or nothing published, on another.

Take preheat instructions from your own manual and per mode. They differ between manufacturers and, on at least one machine, between buttons on the same panel.

Treat steam as a separate appliance that happens to share a box. It has its own water, its own cleaning, and its own side of the machine.

Evidence and confidence

Cooking pages this relates to

• Frozen chips
• Chicken jerky strips

Appliances

• Basket air fryer
• Dual-basket air fryer
• Flex-drawer air fryer
• Multicooker with air fry