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> It’s really a badly marketed product. I think the marketing is really smart. It's positioned as a new category of product. Oven on steroids won't sell becau

> It’s really a badly marketed product. 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.

fknorangesite 4y ago
> otherwise it's competing against a full sized oven Even worse: a full sized oven that I already own.
J_cst 4y ago
Totally correct. The marketing category theory is sound
snapplebobapple 4y ago
I think you and the op are wrong (or maybe right?) for different reasons. Positioning it as a new category with less oil was right initially to get the thing off the ground but now it's maturing into a broader market with an installed base and that installed base has produced a ton of content, most of which is not for use as a less oil fryer, it's for use as a quick oven for when you aren't making enough of a dish for a family bigger than 4 people/aren't making something that will have leftovers for days. 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.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  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. 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.
  - AmVess 4y ago
    The whole point of them is that they cook quickly, and without oil. Small units are good for 1-2 people, but it won't prepare enough for a family of more than 3, thus the existence of larger units.
    - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
      I think there's a point where you need to accept that you should use a fan forced oven. Air Fryers are literally a small fan forced oven in terms of tech. 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?".
      - sgc 4y ago
        I don't know that is true. I have always presumed the air circulation in the air fryer is far higher than that in my convection oven, since when they are both preheated, the cooking times are certainly much lower in the air fryer. Not only that, but some ovens have a specific air fryer mode now, indicating it is not just a typical convection oven. Should every oven maker add an air fryer mode to their convection oven, as some have started doing? Of course!
        4y ago
jmacd 4y ago
Also, AirFryer. 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.
- izzydata 4y ago
  By definition you can't fry something without oil. The food would need to have some oils inside of it already or you would have to use at least a little bit of oil to fry the food. But you could fry something in an oven by putting oil on it too. Otherwise you are just baking it.
  - tarotuser 4y ago
    Exactly. If you ever have opened up an "air fryer", it's literally just a circular electric stove element with a metal fan above it blowing down. Any way you look at this device, is substandard, not frying, and best saving your money elsewhere.
    - nerdawson 4y ago
      If it works and is capable of cooking your food better and faster than a standard oven, who cares what’s inside?
    - seized 4y ago
      Strongly disagree. Maybe it's not "frying" in the sense of a big bucket of boiling oil, but there is a huge array of cooking that is vastly faster with my air fryer. 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.
    - majikandy 4y ago
      Haha. Funny, but doesn’t match widespread opinion. Personally it is the best money I have ever spent in my kitchen. Fantastic results. Food often even better than fried, oven baked, pan fried or grilled. I explicitly choose my air fryer for certain cooking even though all those other options available to me. So the opposite of substandard to be honest… there must be a word for that?
birdman3131 4y ago
Its not even a new product. Convection ovens have been a thing for years. But because standard toaster ovens and convection ovens look so similar people thought they were the same.
- nwienert 4y ago
  It’s much faster than most convection ovens as they existed, and so I think still smart to differentiate.
  - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    Only due to the small size though. That's literally it. You know what a larger air fryer is called? It's called an oven.
    - nwienert 4y ago
      The fan is much stronger too, so not literally it. Changing two of the most significant parameters gives it entirely new utility that ovens didn’t and don’t capture. 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.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Only due to the small size though. 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.
      - klinquist 4y ago
        >I think its not technically size at all, but: "It's not due to the size because they didn't shrink /all/ the components equally." :)
nearbuy 4y ago
I would absolutely buy a better, faster, crispier oven for $100-$200. I honestly didn't understand what they were at first and didn't bother to find out.
seydor 4y ago
or just, people love fries The real driver is the globally increasing number of single-person households tho
babypuncher 4y ago
The problem with the marketing is that every ad I've seen for it makes it seem only good for making healthier, less tasty versions of food I like. 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.
- majikandy 4y ago
  Are you sure? Feels like totally less oil than deep fried to me, even tossed in oil, it isn’t sitting in that oil… put too much and that all drips off into the bottom of the pan the basket sits over. I agree to makes fantastic chips (UK), even with oven chips without adding further oil, much better than those oven chips when cooked in an oven.
gregschlom 4y ago
This is exactly right. An "air fryer" is nothing but a small convection oven. Most people already own ovens that can do convection cooking. So this very cleverly creates a new category of appliances.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Most people already own ovens that can do convection cooking. [Citation needed] I can’t find any data about penetrations, but IME it is very common for people not to have a convection oven.
  - scary-size 4y ago
    In Germany it is. Everyone I know has one.
    - acomjean 4y ago
      If you can figure out which symbol it is. (My mom in the US bought a german oven, and each nob is a symbol, which means something fan, line, squigly line...). Once you know it makes sense, and this is a case where the internet helps. (symbols like:) https://www.ebay.com/itm/173568522355 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.
  - guntherhermann 4y ago
    I don't know of a single home in the UK that doesn't have a convection oven. Where do you live?
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Where do you live? The USA.
giantg2 4y ago
Convection ovens have been around a long time too. Some have even started labeling certain cook modes as "air fry".
switch007 4y ago
Also competing against many microwaves which function has a convection oven

fknorangesite 4y ago

> otherwise it's competing against a full sized oven Even worse: a full sized oven that I already own.

J_cst 4y ago

Totally correct. The marketing category theory is sound

snapplebobapple 4y ago

I think you and the op are wrong (or maybe right?) for different reasons. Positioning it as a new category with less oil was right initially to get the thing off the ground but now it's maturing into a broader market with an installed base and that installed base has produced a ton of content, most of which is not for use as a less oil fryer, it's for use as a quick oven for when you aren't making enough of a dish for a family bigger than 4 people/aren't making something that will have leftovers for days. 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.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago
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. 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.
- AmVess 4y ago
  The whole point of them is that they cook quickly, and without oil. Small units are good for 1-2 people, but it won't prepare enough for a family of more than 3, thus the existence of larger units.
  - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    I think there's a point where you need to accept that you should use a fan forced oven. Air Fryers are literally a small fan forced oven in terms of tech. 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?".
    - sgc 4y ago
      I don't know that is true. I have always presumed the air circulation in the air fryer is far higher than that in my convection oven, since when they are both preheated, the cooking times are certainly much lower in the air fryer. Not only that, but some ovens have a specific air fryer mode now, indicating it is not just a typical convection oven. Should every oven maker add an air fryer mode to their convection oven, as some have started doing? Of course!
      - 4y ago

jmacd 4y ago

Also, AirFryer. 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.

izzydata 4y ago
By definition you can't fry something without oil. The food would need to have some oils inside of it already or you would have to use at least a little bit of oil to fry the food. But you could fry something in an oven by putting oil on it too. Otherwise you are just baking it.
- tarotuser 4y ago
  Exactly. If you ever have opened up an "air fryer", it's literally just a circular electric stove element with a metal fan above it blowing down. Any way you look at this device, is substandard, not frying, and best saving your money elsewhere.
  - nerdawson 4y ago
    If it works and is capable of cooking your food better and faster than a standard oven, who cares what’s inside?
  - seized 4y ago
    Strongly disagree. Maybe it's not "frying" in the sense of a big bucket of boiling oil, but there is a huge array of cooking that is vastly faster with my air fryer. 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.
  - majikandy 4y ago
    Haha. Funny, but doesn’t match widespread opinion. Personally it is the best money I have ever spent in my kitchen. Fantastic results. Food often even better than fried, oven baked, pan fried or grilled. I explicitly choose my air fryer for certain cooking even though all those other options available to me. So the opposite of substandard to be honest… there must be a word for that?

birdman3131 4y ago

Its not even a new product. Convection ovens have been a thing for years. But because standard toaster ovens and convection ovens look so similar people thought they were the same.

nwienert 4y ago
It’s much faster than most convection ovens as they existed, and so I think still smart to differentiate.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  Only due to the small size though. That's literally it. You know what a larger air fryer is called? It's called an oven.
  - nwienert 4y ago
    The fan is much stronger too, so not literally it. Changing two of the most significant parameters gives it entirely new utility that ovens didn’t and don’t capture. 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.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Only due to the small size though. 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.
    - klinquist 4y ago
      >I think its not technically size at all, but: "It's not due to the size because they didn't shrink /all/ the components equally." :)

nearbuy 4y ago

I would absolutely buy a better, faster, crispier oven for $100-$200. I honestly didn't understand what they were at first and didn't bother to find out.

seydor 4y ago

or just, people love fries The real driver is the globally increasing number of single-person households tho

babypuncher 4y ago

The problem with the marketing is that every ad I've seen for it makes it seem only good for making healthier, less tasty versions of food I like. 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.

majikandy 4y ago
Are you sure? Feels like totally less oil than deep fried to me, even tossed in oil, it isn’t sitting in that oil… put too much and that all drips off into the bottom of the pan the basket sits over. I agree to makes fantastic chips (UK), even with oven chips without adding further oil, much better than those oven chips when cooked in an oven.

gregschlom 4y ago

This is exactly right. An "air fryer" is nothing but a small convection oven. Most people already own ovens that can do convection cooking. So this very cleverly creates a new category of appliances.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Most people already own ovens that can do convection cooking. [Citation needed] I can’t find any data about penetrations, but IME it is very common for people not to have a convection oven.
- scary-size 4y ago
  In Germany it is. Everyone I know has one.
  - acomjean 4y ago
    If you can figure out which symbol it is. (My mom in the US bought a german oven, and each nob is a symbol, which means something fan, line, squigly line...). Once you know it makes sense, and this is a case where the internet helps. (symbols like:) https://www.ebay.com/itm/173568522355 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.
- guntherhermann 4y ago
  I don't know of a single home in the UK that doesn't have a convection oven. Where do you live?
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Where do you live? The USA.

giantg2 4y ago

Convection ovens have been around a long time too. Some have even started labeling certain cook modes as "air fry".

switch007 4y ago

Also competing against many microwaves which function has a convection oven