I think the marketing is really smart.
It's positioned as a new category of product. Oven on steroids won't sell because people already own ovens. It has to be a distinct appliance otherwise it's competing against a full sized oven. That's not the comparison you want a consumer to make.
The next wave of people buying these things are not going to be fryer junkies looking to cut oil, it's going to be people like me that looked at it and realized instead of waiting 20-40 minutes for my oven to heat up I could throw enough food in the air fryer to finish a dish in 7-12 minutes, which changes the dynamic of how I live my life culinarily for the better by a large margin. With the airfryer I can plan meal timing way less, have less pressure to be in the kitchen earlier, have flexibility to cook something like a roast in the oven on lower heat while polishing off fancy veg or multiple fancy veg (because the run time to cook is so low) in the air fryer, plus I save a lot on cleaning at the end because there aren't multiple big dishes to wash.
The majority of people I know have an air fryer at this point and that includes, of all things, a lot of senior citizens which is a disproportionate amount of my social circle due to my profession.
These things are out there in a big way. Lots of frozen products already have air fryer directions on them specifically.
I think it’s already the open secret that all they really are is a small convection oven.
If they were called 'tiny oven' people probably catch on a bit better.
I have an air fryer which is literally a double walled cooking pot with a fan forced heater bolted on top. It's amazingly fast to cook and trivial to clean since it is small and fits in the sink but i fear many people hearing how good 'air fryers' are might do something dumb and buy an full size fan forced oven that's badged as an 'air fryer' which defeats the whole point.
Tiny countertop (often convection) ovens (including, but not limited to, ones marketed as "toaster ovens") are very common, but a lot of them are under powered for their size compared to those markets as "air fryers", as well as having other design differences. And they existed long before air fryers, which needed to differentiate themselves from them.
> The only issue is that people may get misled into buying an oven sized air fryer which defeats the whole point since their advantage is that they are a much smaller oven.
Actually, I think it’s probably going to be pretty common for people to have multiple convection ovens / air fryers and use them for different purposes. The “whole point” of an air fryer is not the size: the convection oven + cooking basket setup has fairly great utility at all sizes. Yes, an oven with a powerful heating element relative to size is going to have the added advantage of coming up to speed faster, which has some additional utility. Yes, the particular design of the cooking pot + top fan you describe (or the InstantPot models with air-fryer lids that interchangeable with the pressure cooker lids) have some unique utility (“pressure cook & crisp” for certain recipes). But ones the size of a typical microwave (or combined with a microwave, as some are now) or a typical full-size range oven also have unique uses that smaller ones lack.
The fast heating is due to the size. A fan forced oven is the same tech but slower due to being larger. Nothing more.
So if you are buying a large air fryer that's essentially a fan forced oven i have to ask "why not use the oven?".
How's this different from a classic toaster oven? Serious question, I've never used or even seen an air fryer, but I have been using toaster ovens to bake single servings of salmon for over 2 decades.
Convection is also not common in the US. At least where I am in the Netherlands, shopping for a new "oven" almost guarantees it will be some sort of combo microwave/convection thing. Then it's also common to have a countertop airfryer as well.
Instead, they have a "deshi rehhhn-ji", which literally translates to "electric range". This will confuse people for whom "the range" is the thing you can place multiple pots and pans on to cook simultaneousely.
But a denshi rehhhn-ji actually is more like a combination toaster oven plus microwave with a single shared compartment, designed to use infrared and microwave power simultaneously. Attempts to market these in USA over 14 years ago failed, seemingly due to high prices and consumers' preconception that ovens, toasters, and microwaves are fundamentally separate devices. However, I've recently seen at a Target store in USA three different combination devices that may be similar, from different companies. Their marketing at that store was like "combination air fryer and microwave!" and "combination microwave and broiler!".
deshi reenji …but that the double 'e' is not an English "long e" but rather more like an English "short e" of double length.[Citation needed]
I can’t find any data about penetrations, but IME it is very common for people not to have a convection oven.
Where do you live?
(symbols like:) https://www.ebay.com/itm/173568522355
but in the US convections ovens are not that common.
I had in the 90s the faberware "turbo oven". It was too big for me but it was a convection oven and quite fast. Caterers that did functions at the museum I worked hauled them in to heat food.
You know what a larger air fryer is called? It's called an oven.
In effect it’s closer to a microwave meets an air sous vice. Much quicker heat up, much more even heat dispersal.
I have a convection oven too that’s the same size, we use the air fryer 5x more often and it’s almost entirely due to the fan not the size. Cuts cooking time in half comparatively.
I think its not technically size at all, but:
(1) Heating output relative to size, and
(2) Fan capacity relative to size, and a less contribution from
(3) Arrangement of heating element and fan.
Fryers have oil, right? Oh, this one doesn't. Air??? Air Fryer??
Not an oven. Not a fryer?
I don't own a fryer anyway, they are gross with all that oil.
This fryer uses no oil?????!!!!
My oven doesn't use oil either. But it's not a fryer!
And then it gets bought.
For me the USP is the slide in and out basket, ability to do a little shake. The convenience of that over a tray in the oven and the washing up and the turning and the burning one side of the items… is priceless
Any way you look at this device, is substandard, not frying, and best saving your money elsewhere.
Roasting veggies, roasted potatoes, frozen foods like fries, things like that. I can be done with a batch of fries before my oven has even gotten to temperature. Massive time savings.
Even worse: a full sized oven that I already own.
What it's actually good for is cooking some things faster than a conventional oven, reheating fried foods.
I have had success making good homemade french fries with my air fryer, but I still thoroughly toss them in oil before cooking them. The end result is not really much healthier than if I deep fry them, but it is a lot easier and less messy.
I honestly didn't understand what they were at first and didn't bother to find out.
The real driver is the globally increasing number of single-person households tho
