Air fryer formats

"Air fryer" covers at least three mechanically different appliances. Of the 38 models on file here, 24 are single-basket, 7 are dual-basket and 7 are oven-style. They are not size variations on one design: the median capacity runs 5 L, 9 L and 17 L respectively, and the food sits in a deep drawer in one and on a flat rack in the other. Format is also the axis people actually ask about — far more than a model code — which is why the calculator asks for it before it asks anything else.

Which one do you have?

You can tell without looking anything up, and the answer decides which cooking chart on this site applies to you.

• Single basket. One drawer that slides out of the front, usually with a removable crisper plate in the bottom. One dial or one panel. You shake or turn the food by pulling the whole drawer out. This is the classic shape: 24 of the 38 models here are single-basket, spanning 1.8–7.6 L and 900–2020 W.
• Dual basket. Two separate drawers side by side, each with its own heating element and its own temperature and timer, plus some way of making both finish together — Ninja calls it DualZone, Tower calls it Smart Finish, Midea calls it Sync Finish. The headline capacity is the sum of two smaller spaces, not one big one.
• Oven-style. A front-opening door, an interior light, and wire racks or a tray rather than a drawer — a countertop convection oven with an air-fry setting. These are much bigger (14.2–28.3 L here, median 17 L) and they go hotter: every oven-style model on file tops out between 230 °C and 249 °C, against 200–232 °C for single baskets.

A product name is not a reliable guide. Cosori's CAF-DC601-KUS carries "DC" in its model code, but its manual never mentions a second zone or a second basket anywhere in the document — it is a single-basket unit, and that is what we record. Midea's MF-CY110A1 goes the other way: it is sold as a dual-zone appliance and it genuinely is one, except that its two zones are a basket on top and a small oven underneath. Check the shape, not the marketing.

Every figure above is read off the appliance records, which are themselves checked against each manufacturer's manual or official product page. Capacity is the manufacturer's own headline figure, which for a dual-basket model is the sum of both drawers.

Two of those columns matter more than the rest. Capacity is the real divide: an oven-style unit holds roughly three times what a typical single basket holds, which changes how much food you can cook at once far more than it changes how long any of it takes. Maximum temperature is the other: the oven-style models here all reach at least 230 °C, while several baskets stop at 200 °C — so a recipe written at 220 °C is simply not reproducible on some of them.

Preheat is less clear-cut than it looks. 6 of the 7 oven-style models declare a preheat step, against 15 of 24 single baskets — a real tendency, not a rule. It matters because a chart that assumes a hot cavity and a chart that includes warm-up read differently even when they print the same number.

What format changes in the cooking charts

Specs are one thing; the times manufacturers actually publish are another. We compared them directly, holding the displayed temperature fixed so the comparison is about the appliance rather than about whether the manual was printed in Celsius or Fahrenheit.

• Basket vs oven-style — the question asked most often when someone moves a recipe from one shape of appliance to the other. Short version: the oven-style charts in this corpus are never quicker than the basket charts at the same temperature, but they are only slightly slower, and most of the time they land inside the range the baskets already publish.
• Dual basket — what the second drawer actually changes. Short version: in these manuals, almost nothing. The brands that sell both formats mostly print the same chart for both, and the one manufacturer that does publish separate settings per zone shows the two zones are not interchangeable.

What format does not tell you

Format is a better predictor than a model code, but it is not a cook time. Two other things move the number at least as much, and both are documented on this site with the manufacturers' own figures: how much wattage really buys you (Tower sells the same design at 1000 W, 1400 W and 2600 W, and prints identical charts for the first two), and how far apart two brands land on the same food at the same temperature, in the same format.