Cosori Air Fryer Lite 3.8L review

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How easy is the Cosori Air Fryer Lite 3.8L to use?

Whether you’re familiar with air fryers or you’ve never used one before, this Cosori model is a doddle to use. A confident tug of the handle is all that’s needed to open the main drawer and the control panel sits on top of the machine with clear, easy-to-read labelling. The touchscreen panel is responsive and intuitive, and connecting the air fryer to your phone is simple and easy too.

The five presets are easy enough to access, but should you want to use a manual setting, simply press any of the preset buttons twice and adjust the temperature and time using their respective up and down arrows.

Usefully, this model has a preheat function, which takes between two and five minutes depending on the temperature. Plus, there’s a keep warm setting, should you not be able to get to your cooked goods straight away. For any items that need to be shaken during the cooking process, namely chips and other veggies, this Cosori will let out a loud beep when it’s time to shake the contents.

Default cooking times and temperatures accompany each of the presets. Although a comprehensive recipe book comes with this air fryer, we would have benefitted from some specific preparation instructions for the preset foods to ensure we gave this model the best chance. As a result, some of the food we cooked in testing was a little overcooked. (Please note, this model no longer includes a recipe book).

This air fryer is easy to clean. A rack sits inside the basket that can be easily removed once the basket is cool. Both the rack and basket are dishwasher safe, though both are also non-stick, so a simple wash and wipe was all that was needed to clean them after use.

Results

This air fryer is impressively quiet; it hums away as it heats up and despite a couple of beeps here and there, it’s relatively quiet when cooking, too. We utilised the preset settings when cooking our chicken, chips, bacon and aubergine. For the halloumi, we used a manual setting.

A decent-sized chicken breast cooked very well in this air fryer. After just 13 minutes of cooking it remained impressively moist and evenly cooked throughout. The outer portion of the chicken breast was drying out slightly, but we believe this is in part due to the 210C cooking temperature.

Chips were well cooked: even and cooked through in the middle, though the browning on the outside could have been a little more consistent. We had no complaints about the result of our bacon test. We should point out, however, that we checked the progress of each of these ingredients and stopped the cooking process a couple of minutes before the timer ended. We recommend reducing the cooking time or temperature to account for the cooking power of this model.

We cooked thick aubergine slices on the veggies setting, putting a slice in each quadrant of the air fryer. The veggies setting comes with a shake alert, so at the halfway point we flipped the aubergine slices for an even cook. After cooking, the slices were evenly cooked, though we found that the bottom right hand corner of the air fryer cooked a little hotter than the rest, resulting in a darker slice of aubergine.

Once all of the ingredients were cooked, this Cosori lets out three beeps.

How sustainable is the Cosori Air Fryer Lite 3.8L?

We let this Cosori model run for 10 minutes on the manual air fry setting – it cost just 2.2p to run, making it one of the more cost-effective models we’ve tested. It comes with a two-year warranty and customer support via email and phone is available. This model’s slight downfall, however, was the amount of packaging that it comes in.

Conclusion

For someone after a compact, simple-to-use air fryer that’s relatively cheap to run, this Cosori model is a brilliant choice. It’s easy to use, takes up very little space on the kitchen counter and is whisper-quiet.

It cooks very well, but don’t be too reliant on the presets: experiment and check the progress of your foods during your first few uses. The timings and temperatures should serve as a guide as they’re a little too powerful.

Cosori Air Fryer Lite 3.8L specifications

Components: Main unit, grill rack
Wattage: 1500W
Dishwasher safe components: Main basket and grill rack
Capacity: 3.8L
Made in: China

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All costs-to-run calculations were done against the variable tariff at the time of testing (31.8p/kWh), which may have since changed – read more on the current energy price guarantee rates.