Lakeland Digital Compact Air Fryer review

We’ve tested a host of large and small air fryers here at Exceptional, trialling them over the course of a few months. The humble air fryer is best known for being a quick and healthy alternative to cooking in the deep-fat fryer, so preparing a batch of chips using little to no oil seemed the most obvious thing to do in the Lakeland Digital Compact Air Fryer.

The compact footprint of this air fryer is its USP and we wanted to see if its small design could match up to the mighty results of a standard air fryer. 

There are five pre-sets on this air fryer, including one for poultry and one for meat, so we also used it to test this delicious Air Fryer Chicken Tenders recipe. We rated the results on taste and cooking time. There’s a vegetable function too, so we also attempted this Air Fryer Broccoli and Cauliflower recipe.

We also rated the air fryer on how easy it was to clean, how simple the controls were to navigate and whether we thought its design and capacity were well realised and convenient for two.

Design-wise, this air fryer was one of the least imposing designs we’ve come across, which made a refreshing change from some of the very bulky air fryers we’ve tried.

With its sleek, black finish, the compact model is good looking and comes with a crisper drawer that is easy to take out and place back inside.

Inside the drawer is a small crisper tray that is designed to drain away excess fat while cooking. This is neatly tucked into the drawer and feels secure but it can be pulled out when you need to wash the drawer.

We found the drawer felt sturdy and smooth and safe to pull out securely without spilling over the countertop.

The drawer handle didn’t get too hot when the air fryer was on either. It gets warm to touch on the sides when operating, but we didn’t think it felt dangerously hot.

Cleaning the air fryer was straightforward. The manual doesn’t say if the crisper drawer and tray are dishwasher-safe, so we used hot soapy water to clean by hand before and after use, which was effective.

The black body can be easily wiped down without leaving smudges and smears. Need more cleaning tips? Read our how to clean your air fryer article.

Like many air fryer designs you can buy, the Lakeland Digital Compact Air Fryer comes with both automatic pre-set cooking modes and a manual setting that ranges from 60 to 200°C.

This is more than enough to rehydrate food on a low temperature, or crisp things up on a higher temperature. We noticed that while it comes with five pre-sets covering all the main food groups such as meat, poultry, baked goods and fresh and frozen fries, it doesn’t have a separate fish setting like some air fryer models we’ve seen.

You probably won’t miss it, though, as you can simply set the temperature and timing for any fish dish yourself – which we found simple to do.

We also noticed that unlike some air fryers we’ve tried that have preheating built into the pre-set cooking modes, the Lakeland Digital Compact doesn’t.

In the instruction manual, it suggests you preheat the air fryer with no food in the crisper drawer for three minutes at the required temperature before use.

You’ll find this lack of automatic pre-heat function either a blessing or an inconvenience. There are times when we’ve wanted to cook food in an air fryer such as the Ninja Foodi Max Health Grill & Air Fryer AG551UK and have found the automatic pre-heat time unnecessary, for example.

We have managed to work out how you bypass this pre-heat stage to get straight to cooking, which is sometimes all you need. With this in mind, we think that as you get to know how much time you need to cook certain foods in the Lakeland Digital Compact air fryer, pre-heating will seem unnecessary. 

To find out how well the air fryer did at cooking a 350g (12oz) portion of frozen chips, we loaded the basket and pressed the specific pre-set mode.

This setting suggested 180°C for 25 minutes, which we found was a little too long for our chips. We opened the drawer to shake the chips halfway through and noticed they were browning nicely.

With seven minutes left on the pre-set cycle, we decided to stop the air fryer as they looked more than ready. So, within 17 minutes, each chip was cooked nicely – crunchy and fluffy in the middle and without us needing to add any oil while cooking.

Our next task was to cook a mix of broccoli and cauliflower florets, seasoned with olive oil and sea salt, in the air fryer. We pressed the vegetable setting, which gave the same temperature and time as the fries at 180°C for 25 minutes.

After 10 minutes we shook the basket and noticed that the vegetables were browning quickly, so we stopped the cycle at 12 minutes. The vegetables were nicely cooked and had quite a bit of crunch to them. 

Our final test was to see how well the air fryer could cook meat and poultry. The basket is really quite small and while you can get a whole broccoli head in it, there’s only really space to house one small frozen burger flat inside.

The website states you can fit a dozen chicken wings inside at a time, but seeing as the instructions state that you shouldn’t fill the basket up more than halfway, we decided to cook far fewer chicken tenders at one time.

We placed our four chicken strips inside – coated in oil and seasoned in paprika and garlic – and placed it on the poultry pre-set that suggested 200°C for 20 minutes.

There’s no midway beep to let you know when to shake your food, but after 15 minutes we noticed they were looking nicely done so we turned them over.

The cooking cycle seemed gentle enough so we left them in for the full cycle without fear of them being burnt. When we tasted the chicken we were pleased with just how evenly it was cooked both inside and out.

We found the cooking results on this air fryer surprisingly good. While you can’t fit as much in as your standard air fryer, it does cook food evenly, with a nice crisp and crunch too.

We like the flexible temperature settings that range from 60 to 200°C and the flexible time setting that goes up to one hour, which is perfect for a jacket potato.

What we found slightly annoying in the performance of this air fryer is that you can’t adjust the temperatures when the air fryer is on.

Unlike some air fryers we’ve tried that allow you to adjust timing and temperatures during a pre-set cooking cycle, this model won’t let you. Although the instructions state that you can (and forgive us if we’re wrong, Lakeland), we couldn’t work out a way to do this.

What’s also worth noting is that the cooking cycles automatically start within a few seconds of you pressing them – even if you haven’t pressed the start button. This is something that caught us off guard when we were first using the air fryer, but it’s something we soon got used to. It just means that you need to be ready for the model to start as soon as you programme the air fryer.

We were pleased at how discreet the air fryer looked on the worktop and just how quietly it performed when in use. We measured it at a very meek 55.7 decibels when cooking chips, which makes it one of the quieter models we’ve come across.

We were amazed at how well this compact air fryer performed when cooking chicken and chips considering it’s affordable price tag.

If you’re after something simple to use and that can be packed away in a large kitchen cupboard after use, this design is worth a look.

Type small air fryer into Google and you’ll be limited in finding a design that is as neat as the Lakeland Digital Compact Air Fryer.

Both Asda and Wilko sell small capacity air fryers, which are cheaper at under £50, but at a glance we don’t think that the features and finish of either of these seem as premium as this Lakeland model.

Overall we were very impressed with just how crisp and even the cooking results of the Lakeland Digital Compact Air Fryer were.

Its small size certainly doesn’t make for a less adequate cooking performance than your standard size air fryer.

While the control panel could be improved to offer a more flexible way of changing the timing and temperatures mid-cycle, the pre-set modes are ideally set for their food groups.

The manual control modes are a good way to experiment with certain meals and get the best from the air fryer.