Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300UK review

Eager to see just how well this dual air fryer works in a bustling family kitchen, we trialled it over the course of a few months.

Air fryers are known for being a speedy, healthier alternative to the deep fat fryer, so cooking a batch of frozen chips seemed an obvious way to test the Ninja’s effectiveness. Plus, this Ninja Foodi air fryer claims to cook foods with up to 75% less fat than a standard deep fat fryer, so we were keen to see if we could produce tasty results with little or no oil.

To find out how well the AF300UK performs when cooking meat, we also followed the online Air Fryer Chicken Tenders recipe and rated our results. We also tried this Air Fryer Cauliflower and Broccoli recipe.

Finally, we assessed how easy the Ninja Dual air fryer was to use and clean, how quickly it cooks, its versatility, and how stylish the overall design looks on the worktop.

Taking the Ninja Foodi air fryer out of the box, plugging it in and cooking food was straightforward and simple.

It comes with a panel that clearly highlights each of the cooking functions and has temperature and timing arrows that we found ourselves intuitively navigating. Within minutes of plugging it in, we had loaded each drawer with a batch of chips, set them to air fry mode and confidently pressed the start button.

Included in the box are two “crisper” plates that need to be inserted into each drawer so that any excess oil drains away from your food. There’s also an instruction booklet and “inspiration guide” to get you started.

With its stylish black finish, this air fryer looks and feels premium in finish. It’s suitably styled to match other Ninja appliances in the range and we think will subtly blend into both traditional and modern kitchens.

It has a clear control panel that has easy-to-use buttons highlighting the pre-set functions for air frying, max crisping, dehydrating, baking, roasting and reheating.

The two side-by-side cooking drawers are easy to pull out and load up, with comfortable cool-to-touch handles. The LED display shows you how much cooking time is left, which we found useful. 

At 31.5cm tall (14 inches), we found the air fryer a little bulky. Its height could be an issue with lower-slung kitchen wall units, so we advise carefully measuring your worktop space before buying.

But with its ample overall capacity, this air fryer does offer enough space to conveniently cook up to four portions in each drawer, so it’s good for larger households.

On the other hand, while each drawer can easily fit a batch of chicken nuggets, we found space was tight for larger cuts of meat. You wouldn’t be able to air fry a whole roast chicken as you could in the Ninja Foodi 9-in-1 Multi-Cooker 6L OP350UK (view on the Ninja website), for example.

While we were impressed overall with this design, we think it could be improved with a viewing window – a little like the one shown on the Instant Vortex Plus with ClearCook.

This would minimise the need to pull out the drawer to check on your food, which interrupts the cooking cycle.

There’s no denying that this air fryer is easy to use – even when you’re trying to sync two separate foods with different cooking times. Within minutes of unboxing it, we had prepped our chicken tenders with onion, garlic, olive oil and paprika and inserted them into one drawer. 

When you press the air fryer setting it automatically suggests 200°C (392°F) for 20 minutes, but  this can easily be adjusted using the arrows either side of the main digital display. Our chicken tender recipe suggested 205°C for 10 minutes, advising us to flip them halfway through. 

The AF300UK goes up in 10-degree increments so we chose 200°C for 10 minutes. Luckily there is no heating-up time to wait around for, and they started to cook instantly.

After five minutes we opened the drawer to give them a shake, and after 10 minutes we thought the chicken tenders looked a little undercooked so gave them an extra five minutes for a bit of crunch. What’s great about air frying drawers such as these is that the device stops when you pull out the drawer and automatically resumes once you reinsert it. 

In the second drawer we loaded a 350g (12oz) portion of frozen chips. Having had previous experience cooking chips in an air fryer we knew that a little experimenting is needed to get the perfect crisp, so we opted to lower the temperature to 180°C for 12 minutes to prevent them burning and ensure an even cook. Halfway through the cooking cycle we opened the drawer and gave the chips a shake.

While 10 minutes didn’t leave the chips as crispy as we’d have liked, we did find it easy to add a few more minutes to brown them up. 

We synced the compartments so that although they had different cooking times and temperatures, they stopped at the same time. The air fryer beeps at the end of the cycle to tell you the food is ready.

There isn’t, however, an indicator to nudge you halfway through the cycle when it may be time to shake the drawers – as found on models such as the Instant Vortex Plus air fryer. We think an addition like this would make the functionality on this Ninja Foodi air fryer even better. 

Next up, we used the air fryer to cook a mix of broccoli and cauliflower florets, seasoned in olive oil and sea salt. We set the temperature at 180°C for 10 minutes and shook the drawer halfway through.

We were impressed at just how quickly the florets cooked, creating veggies with a nice crunch and charred flavour. 

We think the selection of pre-set cooking modes do well to turn this appliance into much more than your standard dual air fryer. These controls are clearly marked and, unlike some air fryers we’ve tried, well explained in the accompanying instruction booklet. 

If you want to give your food that extra crispy crunch you can opt for the “max crisp” setting that cooks at 240°C. The roast setting works up to 210°C degrees for browning vegetables and meat, while the dehydrate setting is optimised to work from 40°C, which is ideal for making vegetable crisps.

The bake function also makes it simple to prepare a delicious batch or two of cookies and cupcakes, ideal for when you don’t want to turn on your whole oven.  

While it’s not the loudest appliance you can expect to use in the kitchen, we could tell when the Ninja was on and measured it at 59 decibels on our Decibel Meter app, which is just about average for a standard air fryer.

Reassuringly, the sides of the Ninja Dual air fryer don’t get too hot during use and remain comfortably warm to touch, as do the drawer handles. 

Over time, we noticed that the insides of the air fryer drawers started to look a little grubby with baked-on food and oil stains, despite our washing efforts. The crisper plates and drawers are dishwasher safe, but we needed to use a little elbow grease and bicarbonate of soda to clean the more stubborn, burnt-on grease. 

With its premium design and finish, we think the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300UK is reasonably priced and great value for money.

It works well to offer extra cooking space and many of the useful functions you’d expect from a conventional oven.

The Ninja AF300UK stands out from standard air fryers because of its two cooking zones.

Unlike with single-basket designs, this gives you the flexibility to cook two separate foods independently, limiting flavour transfer and potentially doubling your cooking capacity while minimising energy costs on those occasions when you only need to use one drawer.

That said, there are other dual air fryer designs available online.

If you want bigger, but at a cheaper price, you can’t go wrong with the Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer (view at Lakeland), which at 9 litres is 1.4 litres bigger than the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300UK. A good buy for big families on a budget, it’s also £70 cheaper.

This air fryer comes with different size baskets as well. A larger one who bigger items such as a joint of meat and a smaller one for sides, which might suit some families better than the same size baskets of the AF300UK.

While it comes with eight pre-set programmes, these are mostly for food types, such as steak or frozen fries so not as comprehensive as those on the Ninja.

The Salter EK4548 Dual Air Fryer (view at Amazon) not only has two independent 4.1 litre frying baskets, but it also has looks that rival the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer. According to Salter, their air fryer will save you 59% on your energy bills compared to traditional oven cooking.

Just like the Ninja Foodi, it has several settings including one to dehydrate food. It also has a “sync and match” feature to ensure both baskets of food are ready at the same, so if you want to save some cash, this is great alternative to the Ninja Foodi.

When air frying frozen chips and cooking chicken tenders with a crispy finish, the Ninja Foodi Air Fryer AF300UK did not disappoint.

With its stylish good looks and 6-in-1 functionality, we found it to be a useful addition to the kitchen.

We think it’s an excellent choice for anyone wanting to create enticing meals in half the time of a conventional oven, and without compromising on taste.