The control panel consists of a screen and touch buttons, which take up a wide slab of very shiny, fingerprint and scratch-prone plastic on top of the air fryer. Nevertheless, the Tower T17076 10-in-1 proved very straightforward to use, thanks to touch buttons for temperature, time and mode selection, as well as for turning on the cavity light and setting the rotisserie mechanism on rotate (without activating a specific cooking programme). Millie Fender heads up all things small appliances at Future. There’s nothing she loves more than testing out the latest and greatest cooking gadgets, for indoor and outdoor use, from toasters to air fryers. She reviewed the Tower Vortex from her own kitchen, testing it rigorously for a month before writing this review. If you want to learn a little more about how air fryers work, and what benefits they have compared to a standard oven, then have a read of our handy explainer here: What is an air fryer? How much should I spend? I turned the temperature up to 200°C for some frozen hashbrowns. Even following 20 minutes in the air fryer, they weren’t that brown – but they were some of the crispiest hashbrowns I’d ever had. After 15 minutes at 180°C, having rotated the corn on occasion during cooking, it was evenly golden and starting to shrivel slightly. Since I normally have to use more oil to cook the cobs in the frying pan, having to constantly rotate them, this was both an easier and healthier way to prepare them.

Time selection happens in 1-minute increments, with a minimum cooking time of 1 minute and a maximum of 60 minutes. Temperature goes from 30°C to 200°C in 5°C increments. With its Vortx technology and rapid air circulation, you need no more than a drop of oil for evenly-cooked results and fresh, crispy textures. With reduced oil usage, you lose the fat, not the flavour, cutting your food’s fat contents down by 99% to dramatically improve your diet. Not only healthier, the air fryer is able to cook food 30% faster than a conventional oven to save you time in the kitchen. On the whole, the resulting chips came were nicely browned and crispy on the outside, with a few pale bits, and fluffy on the inside. While this wasn’t the fastest result, I did go for the maximum amount of chips suggested by the manual and initially skimped on the oil. However, I felt that 200°C was a better temperature than 180°C, and if it had been possible, I’d have probably cranked up the heat past 200°C.The ability to use different modes in each basket – for example, grilling bacon in one drawer while air frying hash browns in the other – gives the Instant Vortex Plus a real edge for people seeking to make whole meals in their air fryer. READ NEXT: Are air fryers healthy? Tower Xpress Pro Combo 10-in-1 air fryer review: Should you buy it? Air fryer technology is improving all the time. Older models might take a while to get going, and can require more oil than newer designs. Cheaper models may also require you to parboil chips, which might not be ideal if you’re looking for fast cooking times. The oil-drip tray is useful for gathering any excess oils through the cooking process, and was very easy to clean. Also making cleanup less of a chore is the fact that the appliance’s door can be pressed all the way down or removed entirely, allowing for better access to the cavity of the air fryer. Its compact dimensions will fit neatly into smaller kitchens or onto already crowded countertops, and the controls couldn’t be simpler: two physical dials allow you to set the cooking temperature between 80ºC and 200ºC and set a timer of up to 30 minutes.

Most also come with a recipe booklet for culinary inspiration, which is ideal if you’re new to air frying.

An air fryer with some great features at an attractive price

Cook a variety of delicious dishes, including crispy pepperoni pizza, mouth-watering sizzling steaks and golden brown sausages Instructions are included, but they could be more thorough. Figuring out how to use the rotisserie function took some significant guesswork. It would also be nice if Tower included some recipes with this air fryer, which is something you'll find with many other market contenders. Cooking in the Tower Vortex air fryer The metal structure houses a stainless steel interior cavity, providing ample cooking space for individual and family meals, with a viewing window to monitor the food. Delicious fried food has never been healthier; using no more than a spoonful of oil, your meals are cooked with up to 99% less fat In our testing, the FlexDrawer proved to be just as efficient as the Dual Zone and we found the addition of the removable divider incredibly useful. Foods cooked faster and more evenly than in both our oven and some other models of air fryer. It’s an excellent all rounder for large capacity cooking.

Please be aware that we currently cannot arrange for delivery of this product to the following postcodes: AB, FK, HS, IV, KA, KW, PA, PH, ZE, LL58-LL78, IM, TR, BT, PO30-41. While welcome, storing all of these accessories is a challenge. The actual assembly and placement of the rotisserie fork and the kebab skewers also proved quite fiddly –instructions for neither is particularly well explained by the manual. The Dual Zone’s Max Crisp function is also worth shouting about, as it cooks thinner frozen foods such as chips, onions rings, and nuggets in a fraction of the time it would take a standard convection oven. During testing, one portion of frozen potato lattices came out perfectly crisp and golden in just six minutes, compared to the recommended 15-minute oven cooking time stated on the bag. This air fryer can also bake, roast, dehydrate, and reheat, making it a versatile tabletop multi cooker. Air fryers work by convection, meaning they circulate hot air around your food, ensuring every bit of surface area is exposed to the oil and heat. You simply need to spray or pour a little oil onto whatever you’re cooking before switching on the appliance – although you don’t always have to use oil if you don’t want to. Add just a dash, however, and a clever chemical process called the Maillard reaction creates a crispy result with far less fat – up to 99% in some cases. Rapid air circulation creates crispier textures across your mealtime favourites, 30% faster than a conventional ovenLike its predecessor, the FlexDrawer comes with an array of thoughtful functions including its match and sync settings, the former of which allows you to match the time and temperature of both sides of the fryer without having to input all the information twice, while the latter syncs up both sizes of the fryer, so they finish at the same time, even when at different temperatures of cook times. You’ll also recognise all the classic settings for air frying, roasting, baking, reheating, proving and dehydrating, as well as the Max Crisp setting, which allows you to crank up the heat to a whopping 240ºC. READ NEXT: What is an air fryer? Tower Xpress Pro Combo 10-in-1 air fryer review: What’s good about it? With the included mesh trays, you can cook up to 3 different foods at once, adding more options and versatility to your mealtimes