Cosori have released a dual basket air fryer competing with Ninja’s very sucessful Dual Zone & Dual Zone Max air fryers. How does it compare to the competition? I’ve had it on trial for the last couple of weeks and you can see it in action in the video below.
Transcript
The Ninja Dual Zone air fryer was one of the runaway successes of 2023. The biggest selling air fryer on Amazon and a sell-out on Black Friday, so it’s not surprising to see Cosori, one of the other big manufacturers in this market coming out with their own Dual Basket air fryer. The Ninja & Cosori are a similar price, a similar size, and do similar stuff, so which one should you go for?
So first up, quick disclosure. This air fryer was gifted to me by Cosori but no money changed hands and you’ll get my honest opinion of it … out of interest Cosori gave me another air fryer a few months ago which I wasn’t entirely complimentary about and they still gave me another one!
So first of all let’s look at the difference between the two rival big brand Dual Basket Air Fryers.
The Cosori is 8.5L capacity, so it sits right between the 7.6 litre Ninja Dual Zone and the 9.5 litre Ninja Dual Zone Max. That is clearly no accident. Cosori have worked out what the market wants and they have put it all into this model as you will see when I tell you about the other features.
Now, the first thing you’ll notice is that Cosori have added something to their air fryer that the Ninja doesn’t have, a really significant addition…. Windows in the drawers! As for how useful those are in practice when you are in your own kitchen at home, well we’ll find out in a moment when I show you some of the cooking that I’ve done with it.
Cosori has also realised a great way to add value to their product is by throwing in some accessories as part of the package. They have seen the success of all those third-party sellers doing well with on Amazon and they have worked out which items people are buying to go with their air fryer and have put them as part of the package, so with this air fryer you get a baking rack, skewer rack and skewers
Another big difference, although Ninja has always said you don’t need to pre-heat their air fryer, Cosori has recognised that people want that function so they’ve added it as an automatic part of most of the programs on this model AND there’s also a built-in shake reminder halfway through a lot of their programs too
You can set the Cosori to do really long slow cooks for up to 48 hours if you want to
So this is a feature-packed air fryer with everything that families have been asking for for a pretty competitive price, but what’s it like to use?
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So I’ve been using this Cosori dual zone in place of my Ninja dual zone for the last couple of weeks. We did the obligatory roast chicken test which you guys always ask for. Cosori says the drawers take a chicken up to 1.8kg and we tried out a 1.6kg chicken. Now this isn’t a cooking video, but you may notice I now start cooking my roast chicken upside down and then turn it after half an hour which gets it crispy all over, the legs do still stick up a bit and have to be maneuvered so they don’t come into contact with the heating element above, but the crucial thing is that 1.6kg chicken did brilliantly in the Cosori and we got a very nice crispy juicy chicken with no problems with it making contact with the heating element
So about those windows on the drawer! The big special feature. Well there’s a light inside both drawers which is on at the start of any cooking cycle and then turns off automatically after 2 minutes. There’s also a button on the console for each drawer so you can press to turn the light on again when you are halfway through cooking and that automatically times out as well.
The windows themselves ARE really nice to have, I would rather have them than not have them, but mostly I don’t really use them. You have to bend down to see inside, the window of course is partially obscured by the drawer handle and what you can see isn’t terribly clear. I can see the point of having the windows so that if you are checking up on something to see whether it is rising and you want to see whether that is happening without letting the heat out, but beyond that, it is frankly just easier to just pull the drawer out and have a look from above.
Now, the control panel on this Cosori is really nicely designed. I like the way it is very sleek and completely black except for the power button when it’s turned off and I like that the controls are at a 45-degree angle which makes them easier to read, BUT it’s a high gloss finish, so you know what I’m going to say. It attracts every little bit of dust or dirt in your house and you will notice this particularly when your standing over it and you’re cooking and you will find yourself wiping it down constantly and of course it being a touchscreen the moment that you try and wipe it when running as a cooking cycle you run the risk of accidentally turning it off which is infuriating
Now that little annoyance aside, using this air fryer is very intuitive. I always try and use any air fryer I review without reading the instruction booklet first because I think that’s how most people start out with them and then I read the instruction booklet afterwards. This one passed the test of don’t read the instruction booklet first, it’s very easy to use! So first of all you select a drawer using the L or R button, it’ll be on L automatically when you switch it on, then select a program and then you toggle between time and temperature to increase or decrease them. Some programs have that built-in pre-heat option or shake warning halfway through and if you want you can turn those off with the touch of a button.
Now program wise you have a choice of Air Fry, Roast, Reheat, Bake, Grill and Dry. That dry setting is actually more versatile than it might seem and it’s quite badly named, it’s essentially a long cooler cook with a slow fan which you can set as low as 35c and as I mentioned before you can leave it for up to 48 hours running and it is great for joints of meat as well as the more conventional uses like dehydrating meat and fruit and the grill setting can only be used in one basket at a time.
This air fryer also comes with a lot of standard functions that you will see on the Ninja dual zone. There’s sync cook which means you can set one drawer up with a cooking time, temperature, and program and then easily duplicate all the settings to the second drawer at the touch of a button. The Cosori also has a Sync Finish where you set both drawers to cook for different lengths of time and different temperatures if you want and they automatically start so that they both finish cooking at the same time
The crisper plates in this model are made of aluminium with a non-stick coating and as you would expect they can be removed to create extra space in the drawer for cooking and also for washing
The accessories that you get with the air fryer are a nice touch, the rack can be used for meat or toast. If you’ve never tried toast in an air fryer give it a go on air fry for a couple of minutes and it’s the crispiest toast you’ve ever eaten. The skewer rack and skewers can be used for kebabs. There’s only a few of them, so if you want to do more kebabs it’s worth knowing that any accessories that fit the Ninja will also fit this machine. I’ve included some links to compatible accessories in the description below, including loaf tins that fit the drawer of this model of Cosori.
Now a couple of little niggly bits about this air fryer that I don’t like so much….
First up that grill setting that I mentioned can only be used on one drawer at a time
The crisper plates are quite a tight fit, tighter than the Ninja, and you have to push them down into the drawer and then pull them out again, it’s a little bit stiff. Now they do have those silicone protectors on the corners so that isn’t a problem in terms of scratching the drawer it’s just a little bit of a frustration
Another weird one is that I can’t find a way to stop cooking in just one drawer midway through the cycle. I’ve read the instruction booklet, I’ve tried a few things and although I can pause cooking in one drawer while the other one is running, I can’t stop it before the time is up. Maybe this is just me! So if you know the answer please do leave it in the comments below
And a couple of things worth knowing from the instruction book…
First one which is pretty standard for most air fryers. You need to leave 5 inches at the back of the air fryer and 5 inches above it for the air to circulate, so you just need to think about that in terms of where you locate it in your kitchen.
And also If you want to switch the air fryer from Celsius to Fahrenheit that is really easy to do, you just do it by pressing and holding the temperature button.
So the big question is after a couple of weeks of having this Cosori on trial in my kitchen which dual zone air fryer is now sitting on my worktop as our family air fryer and…. I’m amazed to say it is the Cosori! I think it’s the touchscreen even though it’s a dust magnet, it has cemented it for me. So this is the current choice in our kitchen… until of course something else comes along and topples it from its throne? Who knows! But I do love this machine.
Links
This air fryer on Amazon UK
Accessories that fit this air fryer https://geni.us/6iwWZS
Amazon 1lb loaf tin for air fryer https://amzn.to/49zzlCd
Amazon 2lb tin that fits https://amzn.to/3sQOb6L
Oil sprayer https://amzn.to/49Jjzox
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