Tefal Easy Fry air fryer oven review

Air frying devotees who long for more capacity, keen entertainers who often need additional oven space, and busy households: all are sure to find Tefal’s Easy Fry Air Fryer Oven a brilliant buy. In essence, it’s a small oven that heats up quickly, enabling it to do everything your big oven can (eg roasting, pizza, reheating), but on a smaller scale and faster.

Unlike a conventional oven, it comes with accessories that give it more versatility, including an air fry basket for making healthier homemade chips and cooking frozen goodies, as well as dehydrating meat, fruit and veg.

Although it won’t be as cheap to cook in as a smaller air fryer, as an 1800W appliance, it’ll still cost far less than using your oven.

Design & Build

• 41x35x35cm
• Seven presets
• Comes with cooking accessories

While its air frying function is the headline feature, Tefal’s Easy Fry Air Fryer Oven is distinctly bigger than a standard air fryer, with a 20-litre capacity, and takes up a good chunk of worktop. It’s 41cm deep, plus you’ll need to allow space at the front for the drop-down door, with a width of 35cm and a height to match. In addition, it requires at least 15cm around it for air circulation, so there’s no tucking it in a corner or below wall units.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy on the eye. When off, all you’ll see is its glossy black finish and metallic control dials: only when it’s turned on is the display visible.

There are seven preset programmes, including bake, grill, roast and pizza, as well as two manual modes for toasting bagels and reheating, plus an automatic keep warm following a programme. These are easily selected using the control dials: one scrolls through the programme menu, while the other alters time and temperature, with a touchscreen button to switch between the two.

Four accessories – a baking tray, air frying basket, crumb tray and wire rack – will slide onto three shelf supports inside the 20-litre cavity, meaning you can cook more than one type of food at once. However, none of them are dishwasher safe.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Performance & Features

• 20 litre capacity
• No shake function
• Harder to clean than a standard air fryer

From an air frying point of view, what theEasy Fry Air Fryer Oven offers most of is space: its basket allows a large amount of food to be spread out in a layer, negating the need to turn it as often as you might in a standard air fryer.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

The oven’s cooking guide advises you can make up to 700g of homemade fries this way. We prepared a batch of fresh chipped potatoes, tossed in a small amount of oil and used the air fry programme to cook it for 30 minutes at 180°C – a lower temperature, longer duration setting than most air fryers. 

There was no alert to turn the chips halfway through the cooking time but we did so with tongs, which was more time-consuming than a quick basket toss. The underside of the potato looked pale, and we turned the basket around at the same time as it looked as if the pieces at the back were beginning to burn. Once cooking had finished, the results were mixed: some chips were nicely crunchy, while others remained soft. All were thoroughly cooked, but the underside of the potatoes didn’t appear to receive as much heat despite the basket being made of wire.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

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The stated position for the air fryer basket was at the top of the oven, suggesting that this is where most of the heat is generated when using this programme. With fewer pieces and adjustment of the time or temperature, this could be a good option for making a family sized batch of chips.

Next, we used the toast mode with the settings for a bagel: a browning level of 2 rather than 4, set for four minutes. This toasted the bagel halves well: browning the top adequately without toasting the outside too much, like a toaster can.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

We liked that the crumb tray below kept the interior of the oven cleaner than without, but felt that the oven’s ability to toast would be more useful when browning several pieces of bread or bagels rather than just one. Plus, when toasting bread, you’ll need to be present to flip the slices over just like under a grill.

We also tried the roast programme, placing chicken legs on the wire rack with the baking tray (we managed to fit five comfortably). For this, the advice was to position the tray at the bottom of the cavity, and to cook at 200°C. We adjusted the suggested time for a whole 1.2-1.5kg chicken (45-55 minutes) to 30 minutes. The legs emerged with golden brown, crispy bubbled skin, and were cooked through at the thickest part.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

There were a lot of splashes of fat and juices in the cavity though, which had to be wiped away once the oven had cooled. This meant clean-up took longer than an air fryer: most of which have drawers or baskets that can be popped in the dishwasher. While the cavity was easy to wipe out, the need to clean it after every use and wash the accessories by hand makes keeping the Air Fryer Oven spotless more of a chore.

Price & Availability

Tefal’s Easy Fry air fryer oven has an RRP of £249.99, which makes it more expensive than most air fryers. However, it’s not outrageous, given its huge capacity and number of uses. But, while it’s widely available in the UK, its price varies from retailer to retailer. At the time of writing, the best price is from AO.com (£189), then Amazon (£200), Argos (£230) and John Lewis (£249.99). We’d recommend it as a flexible option for families who need more cooking space.

Should you buy the Tefal Easy Fry air fryer oven?

While the Easy Fry Air Fryer Oven does indeed work as an air fryer, it’s all its other functions that earn it a (substantial) place on your kitchen worktop. Thought of as a multitasking mini oven that also air fries food, it’s equally ideal for those who enjoy entertaining as well as busy households who may not want to splash the cash on heating up a full-sized oven for chips or pizza.

Although you’ll spend some of the time it saves you on cleaning it up afterwards, in other ways, it’s a great buy: efficient, flexible and even repairable thanks to Tefal’s 15-year parts policy. From slices of toast at breakfast, snacks of dried fruit, to grilled veggies and fish at lunch and delicious dinners, the Easy Fry Air Fryer Oven can be your go-to gadget throughout the day.

Not the right air fryer for you? Have a look at our round-up of the best air fryers we’ve tested for more recommendations.