Please help me understand!
Has to do with the fan’s placement. This Good Housekeeping article explains it.
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We have a toaster oven with convection setting, and while it’s fine as a toaster and oven, it doesn’t work well as an air fryer. When we have used it to cook stuff like mozzarella sticks or chicken fingers, they come out just baked - not extra crispy, if that makes sense.
big broad brush strokes . . . various models may not all ‘conform’
a toaster oven - has resistance coils that heat and glow red, emitting ‘heat radiation’ that hits the food surface and makes it hot.
“convection” option on toaster or wall ovens have a fan that circulates hot air - heated by being passed over glowing red coils… - in addition to the radiant heat/cooking from the exposed coils.
‘air fryers’ do not (usually) have exposed glowing red hot coils ‘cooking by radiant heat’ - but use a fan to circulate air heated up by very hot coils throughout the ‘cooking chamber.’
one can envision this as “deep frying in air” vs “deep frying in oil” - same idea - immerse the object to be cooked in really a hot fluid (air being technically also a ‘fluid’)
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Chiming in with an anecdotal review:
We recently purchased a Breville “smart” counter-top convection oven. Has an “air-fryer” setting. TBH: I used one of these for several years at my office (before they called them “air-fryers”) for re-heating leftovers and loved it.
Here, at home, and replacing our toaster: love, love, LOVE the oven for short veggie roasting options, and for reheating/crisping up leftovers. As a toaster - it sucks. But I’m willing to make the trade-off, as I don’t have room for both.
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I should add why I think it sucks as a toaster: uneven browning, and takes twice as long.
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Echo all your sentiments - I have the Breville convection oven, but the toasting part is slow and sometimes uneven, but I’m also not willing to give up counter space for a separate toaster.
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Ditto that. Love the convenience of the Breville convection oven and while it’s not great at toasting, I’ve figured it out enough that it works for me, and I definitely don’t need an additional toaster in my galley kitchen.
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I have a toaster and a toaster oven. Latter was bought when I needed an apt for work due to distance, and was cooking for 1. Didn’t make sense to turn on the big oven. I roast in the toaster unless something is big or messy, like fruited waffles. So besides the air fryer maybe getting some things a bit crispier like fried frozen stuff, what if any benefit would there be to buy an air fryer? It sounds like perhaps no benefit?
Dunno, we really like both the one we have at home & the one in the Philly pad. The one at home has two racks, which works great for fries, pizza, wings — especially if you wish to keep those separate. The one in Philly is a big ole drawer that’s been working like magic for salmon filets, sausages, and pizza slices.
I want to try a chicken breast next (a member of my WFD group swears by it for coming out crispy and juicy), but the real test would be a steak. I can’t quite wrap my head around it, but we have no way of grilling here. Would be interesting, at the very least.
I have had various counter-top convection ovens and now air fryers for at least 40 years. In essence, an air fryer is a convection appliance on steroids., i.e. higher heat and stronger air flow. There is no other hard and fast distinction point that I know of. Designs vary. But if it says air fryer it will likely have more heat and stronger air circulation flow, and in general cook whatever you’re cooking a lot faster, which presumably makes them better at cooking things that you might otherwise fry, like french fries for example. Note I’m referring to “air fryers” of the oven type, not the pod type, none of which I have ever tried, although the same appears to apply to them, just smaller basically.
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This video does a great job of explaining air fryers and how they compare to other methods of cooking. Apparently, an air fryer is closer to an impingement oven than anything else.
