- Three, two, one.
(humming)
I made my own song.
Hey, I'm Alix.
So today I'll be testing and reviewing
the Ninja Air Fryer Max XL.
We'll be seeing how well it works.
If the food it makes tastes good,
especially in comparison to a conventional oven,
and if you should consider buying it yourself.
So today we're gonna be testing out
some french fries and some chicken tenders
to see how well this air fryer works.
All right, let's fry away!
(upbeat instrumental music)
All right, let's crack this baby open.
Oh my god, it looks like a spaceship or something.
All right, I'm just gonna rip this thing open.
Beautiful.
It looks really nice actually.
There's a little mirror on top.
Looking good.
It looks like it's pretty straightforward
and it tells you the cooking times for,
it looks like chicken, fries.
Steak?
A cupcake?
For best results reduce cook times and shake food often.
Oh, there we go.
So this is like the contraption
that I'm guessing you put the food in.
We've got a little bit of like a baking rack here.
That should be nice.
Probably for good like airflow getting all around.
It seems you know pretty straightforward.
Well, it's all looking pretty promising.
I'm excited, so let's get cooking.
Ninja.
So we're gonna be cooking a pound of fries,
which is about half of this bag.
It says here that frozen fries will go on max crisp
for 13 to 16 minutes.
It also mentioned in the book
that you need to preheat the air fryer.
There is no preheat button on here,
so I'm just gonna add three minutes to the cook time,
get it going and then I'll pull it out
and we'll start the cook time.
I'm gonna go for about 15 minutes total,
because that falls a little bit in the middle.
So let's turn this baby on, the max crisp, it's at 450.
I'm just gonna make sure you can push the time up,
so if we're going for a 15-minute cook
I'm gonna start it at 18 minutes
'cause we get a three-minute preheat.
And starts.
Okay, we're on.
It's making some noise.
Mirror's not doing anything.
Still looking good.
(laughs)
Now the vents are going, I feel some air for sure.
I feel like this is pretty well protected though,
so I don't feel like this will get too hot which is nice.
So we're almost there.
I wonder like, I guess I should open this now.
We're gonna pull the basket out
and put these fries in there, okay.
Oh, it's definitely hot.
So about half the bag.
(beeping)
Starts right up again.
So we'll check back in five minutes
and give it a little shake, a little fried shake.
All right, we're five minutes down,
I'm smelling the fries already.
I'm gonna take them out and give them a little shake.
Whoo!
They almost look like glossy from oil,
that's so interesting.
So just shake them up.
♪ Shake, shake, shake ♪
♪ Shake the fries ♪
In a normal oven bake
this would take 22 to 24 minutes to heat through.
So we actually have a batch of fries in the oven
so we can compare.
But, I love this thing.
I wanna take this one home.
He's my new best friend.
All right, so in a few minutes we'll give it one last shake
and then we'll finish them off and see how they fried.
Check them out.
Now I'm gonna put it back in for the final fry.
Five minutes 30 seconds on the clock.
All right, we're about 30 seconds away
from these fries being fried.
I'm excited, I hope there's like a nice
little tune that plays or something.
Oh no, I'm nervous.
(fryer beeping)
No song.
Whoo!
They're crispy though.
You hear that?
We'll plate these babies.
They're looking pretty good, they seem pretty crispy.
I'm gonna hit these with a little bit of salt.
I like my fries pretty salty.
It looks like a good amount of color on there I have to say.
Definitely got golden brown.
I like that.
It's a good fry.
Crispy fry.
Hot.
The center is hot.
Crispy outer, and that's all you can really ask
with a fryer, right.
So I think these are pretty good,
but let's get our batch from the conventional oven
to see how they compare.
And I'm also gonna have a special friend
come and help me try them.
All right, we've got our two batches of fries,
all I need now is my special friend.
- Hello, I'm your special friend.
- [Alix] Do you know what this food is?
- Yes.
(laughter)
French fries.
- One of the batches was made in this air fryer
and another one of the batches was made in an oven.
- Okay, so I'm gonna--
- Well, yeah.
You like ketchup?
- I love ketchup.
This is crunchy outside.
I kind of like it already.
- Oh, I think you just do the comparison.
- Still hot.
- Yeah.
- Kind of both same.
(laughs)
Is it kinda same?
- Kinda same.
- It's so subtle, I cannot tell the difference.
- Which one would you say is crispier?
- I think outside it's a little bit crunchier
but it's very similar.
- Honestly, it's a tie to me.
I have to say I'm slightly disappointed
just 'cause I really had really high hopes for this.
I didn't want it to tie.
I just like really wanted amazing results.
- Yeah.
- Thank you, Rie.
- Thank you for the fries--
- And baby.
- Bye.
- Did the baby liked the fries?
- Mm-hmm.
- All right, for our next test
we're gonna try to make some air fried chicken tenders.
We're gonna be comparing our air fried chicken tenders
to a classic dip fried chicken tender.
But first things first, let's bread these bad boys.
So I'm just gonna hit my chicken with some salt and pepper,
give that a little mix, straight into the flour,
shake off excess into the egg and then into the panko.
So I think this is gonna be the ultimate test.
Because with the fries
we just did a bake versus air fry comparison.
For this we're doing a full-on
deep fried versus air fried comparison.
And deep frying can be pretty intimidating for people.
So, if this works and is as good or better
than the deep fried chicken tenders,
I'll give this a win.
I'm gonna tee up the air fryer to preheat, starting now.
I was really hoping there would be some sort of song
like a little beep beep song, like a.
♪ Doo doo doo doo doo doo ♪
♪ We just have fried these ♪
Or something.
Sadly, there was no song on this one.
But you know what?
Maybe I'll make my own air fryer
and it'll have all my noises that I make in life.
I'm gonna go ahead and give it a little spray
just to maximize our crispiness here.
Okay, I'm also gonna be using this rack
just so we can maximize the layer of chicken,
because we actually don't have too much space in here.
This is losing a little points to the oven
just because you can do a lot more in the oven.
But to be fair, you can't crowd a deep fryer either.
All right, in we go.
Unlike the fries, we are not shaking these babies,
so I'm just gonna let it go for the next 12 minutes.
See you in a few.
Ninja.
All right, we've got five seconds.
Five, four, three, two, one.
(humming)
I made my own song.
Oh, okay.
They moved.
They moved to the other side of the rack.
What happened?
Probably like when I shoved it in there.
Interesting.
First thoughts.
Not like a perfectly golden brown
all the way around type of deal.
Some spots are clearly darker than others,
which kind of is like an uneven cooking situation.
Definitely looks more like an oven baked chicken tender
than like a deep fried chicken tender.
Deep down we're getting even less color, like,
I think they're cooked through
but it's just like there's not much browning going on.
Definitely the top ones got way more brown.
To be safe I'm just gonna check the temperature.
We're at like 180.
So it definitely cooked through
but definitely some differences in color
versus the top and bottom.
They smell good though.
All right, we've got our tenders on the plate.
We've got our friend Air2-D2, time to try it.
I'm gonna go for one of the like the crispier ones.
Give a little ranch dip.
Not bad.
I have to say the chicken is a little dry,
like it might be a little overcooked,
but it's a good crispiness on the outside
considering we didn't use any oil.
I'm gonna try one of the bottom ones.
This one's a little juicier for sure,
but you don't have the golden brown crispier.
You kind of would like got to choose what you value more.
The juice or the crisp?
What are we gonna take?
I kind of like hesitate bringing these out,
but these are the deep fried ones.
Definitely the real deal.
Obviously, there's a big color difference here
but we cook these in oil so there's that.
Although they don't have the color
like the crispiness is still there on both.
It just like looks can be deceiving.
I'm gonna give the deep fried one a try.
It's really good.
The chicken is juicier.
I don't know, it's a tough call.
You know, these just look better, they taste better.
I gotta go with the deep fried version.
But, here's the thing.
A lot of people don't like deep fried.
It can be hard, it can be scary,
so you still can get a good crisp with there,
and it tastes all right.
Yeah, it completely does.
All right, both of our tests are done,
let's break it down.
Did the air fryer work?
Yes.
Was it easy?
Yes.
The instructions were easy, the timer works,
the modes are great, it's fairly straightforward.
The food tasted good.
Was I expecting more?
Yes.
So the air fried fries were just about the same
as the oven baked version.
The preheat was quick,
but the overall cook time was pretty similar.
The chicken tenders also worked
but they weren't that much crispier
or much different than a baked version.
And then when you compare it into a deep-fry,
there really is no competition except for maybe health-wise.
This is just like a mini oven, I guess.
So we paid a whopping 140 bucks for this guy.
And, if you for some reason don't have access to an oven,
I guess, this might be your best bet.
But if you do have an oven and are cool with using it,
I would just say stick to your oven.
140 bucks?
That's a whole gym membership.
So deep fry and let's just go to the gym.
(man laughing)
You know, as much as I would love
to give our old boy Air2-D2 a whopping two thumbs up.
I'm gonna do this guy.
We're hitting in the middle.
It didn't really live up to the hype.
I really hyped this up in my mind though,
so maybe that was my mistake.
Also, it didn't have a song,
and I will always go back to that.
All right, well that's it for this one.
Let us know in the comments
if you want us to review anything else.
Or if you have an air fryer,
and how you like it.
Other than that, I'll see you next time.
Good fry.
Ninja.
- [Man] Oh yes.
(upbeat instrumental music)