The best dual-zone air fryer offers you two cooking compartments for your money rather than one, which is why so many busy families rely on one. Less space taken up and more food cooked is always going to be a win win in my book.
To establish which double drawer product reigns supreme, I've been reviewing a host of these larger, two-basket versions of the best air fryers. In the process, I've discovered more about their energy energy-efficient designs (as discussed in our piece on how much it costs to run a dual-zone air fryer) and how investing in one of these appliances can make your oven redundant.
Below you can find my ranking, as Ideal Home's Kitchen Appliances Editor, of the top-rated dual zone air fryers that will offer that ultimate convenience.
The best dual zone air fryers - The quick list
Not much time to spare on your hunt for the best dual-zone air fryer? That's where this quick guide comes in. Click the text at the bottom of the listing if you want to find out more before you buy.
Best overall
This is the best dual-zone air fryer on the market. Two equal-sized drawers, supreme cooking power, easy-to-use controls, 6 functions (!) and a sleek design that goes further than any other we've tried. Overall we think that the newer Ninja FlexDrawer (at #4) is the best air fryer ever, but this is the best if you want to keep it simple with just separate 2 drawers.
Best affordable
COSORI air fryers are a great affordable alternative to Ninja and Instant, and for your money, you get two cooking zones here which can cook at two different temperatures simultaneously and has handy viewing windows to boot. This particular model also features skewers, which our reviewer used to great effect. The drawbacks? Sometimes our tester found that the drawers fell out of sync when cooking.
Best with viewing windows
Our favourite feature with this air fryer is the two windows located on the front panels so that you can monitor the cooking progress without letting any heat out. This Instant model isn't quite as powerful as the Ninja at #1 and lacks the same huge temperature range, but it's great to use and the results are almost as impressive.
Best flexible
This can act as both a dual-zone model and a single-compartment air fryer depending on where you place the divider. It's a little different to the classic Ninja Foodi, but I think it's better overall, and essentially makes your oven redundant thanks to its huge capacity. You can't open each drawer individually, however, as you can with the #1 on this list, which is why for 2 zones only, it just loses out.
Best stacked
The release of the Ninja Double Stack was a gamechanger. You'll no longer need to be limited to side-by-side drawers - instead save space on your worktop with the drawers placed one on top of the other. During testing, we found that the included wire racks can maximise cooking space hugely, though there is some hindrance to the evenness of the cooking.
Best alternative to Ninja
If you feel like you're seeing double, that's because this is very similar to our air fryer at #4, but is more affordable. Its capacity isn't as big as the Ninja, but it's equally as easy to use, and the cooking times will beat your oven easily. With an 8.5 litre capacity, however, it'll be too big for single persons to use.
Show 2 more products
Best uneven drawers
The design of this air fryer is a bit quirky, as it has one drawer that's much larger than the other so that the split is more 2/3 to 1/3 across the drawers. Our reviewer was skeptical at first, but eventually won over by the fact that she could use the bigger draw for a chicken. It's faster than your oven at cooking whatever you'd like and was endorsed by Jamie Oliver in his air fryer television show. You can't say fairer than that.
Best air fryer oven with 2 zones
When I think of a dual zone air fryer I usually picture two drawers but with this Breville oven you get so much more. It's an air fryer oven style product which means it has a huge cavernous capacity and includes a central divider to allow you to control two zones at different temperatures for different times. It also comes with the best air fryer accessory set I've seen including a mesh basket insert that's simply magic for crisping foods. The only reason it's lower in this list? It does have longer cooking times than higher picks.
Best dual zone air fryer overall
The Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone air fryer has a huge fan following. You can use it to cook two different foods in two different ways at the same time, and then sync them up to finish at the exact right moment so that everything will arrive at the table still hot. Perfect for catering for fussy eaters. It's the best product I've found for crisping foods at home without using a deep fat fryer.
Our expert tester called this 'one of the best ever' air fryers she'd tried (after testing around 30 of them). She loved just how high the temperature could be set - up to 240 degrees. The only thing to note with the controls is that it can take a second to adjust to the super quick cooking times, so don't be afraid of a little trial and error.
Though perahps too hefty for small kitchens, this is the air fryer you should opt for if you can stretch your budget. If cost is your only concern, then do take a look through our Ninja Kitchen discount codes to make sure that you're getting the best deal possible.
Read our Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone AF400UK air fryer review for the full details.
Best affordable dual zone air fryer
This air fryer is our affordable dual-zone go-to. It's RRP might be £159.99, but I've seen it on sale for far less. Features include viewing windows to check your food's cooking progress and a dehydrate mode, as well as fast heat-up times. It's also nice and spacious.
Full disclaimer, it's not quite as quick as the Ninja on this list when it comes to cooking, but other than that, our tester and home economist Helen had little to complain about after trying it out for a week. She used it to air fry and bake a variety of foods, including a batch of granola, fried fish fillets, chips and veggies. With this air fryer, you also receive skewers, which Helen used to serve succulent chicken and halloumi sticks.
Helen did find that the drawers on this air fryer can go out of sync when cooking, and was let down by the fact that you can't use the grill function in both drawers at the same time. On the whole though, this air fryer joins the ranks of impressive COSORI air fryers that we've tried, all with palatable prices.
Read our COSORI Dual Drawer Air Fryer review for the full details.
Best dual zone for ease of use
The Instant Vortex Plus Dual Drawer air fryer deserves more hype than it currently has. This pick is a real contender to the Ninja for the crowning glory of being the best dual basket air fryer out there, with a design that is understated, clever and better looking than the Ninja (or so we think). It's also so easy to use that anyone could manage it.
The front of both baskets has 'ClearCook' see-through windows that allow you to check on the progress of whatever is inside without losing any heat at all, a feature that no Ninja beside the Crispi currently has. The interface is a dream to work with too.
The bake function is ideal for bread, the reheat function works for leftovers and you can even dehydrate oranges inside with the ability to set the temperature low for a long period (up to 12 hours). This is an air fryer that I used at home for over a year without issue. For a rival to Ninja, look no further than Instant's fab range of products.
Read our Instant Vortex Dual Zone air fryer review for the full details.
Best flexible dual zone air fryer
If you know you want a dual-zone air fryer but don't necessarily need to use two sections all of the time, then the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer Air Fryer is the one for you. You can insert a divider when you want to use the two drawers separately or keep the mammoth single drawer for cuts of meat and larger portions. It's no surprise I think it's the best Ninja air fryer ever.
Our reviewer and home economist Helen was impressed with everything she cooked in this air fryer, the crowning glory being the leg of lamb that fit spaciously inside. She also made a cake and several easy lunches, like a toastie, proving that anything your oven can do, a Ninja can do better.
This will be too large for single-person households, and you'll need to reserve a lot of space for it on your worktop or in a cupboard if you do invest. Once you've done that though, you'll find this air fryer is wholly worth it, even though it's the most expensive Ninja air fryer out there.
Read our Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer Air Fryer review for the full details.
Best stacked dual zone air fryer
A complaint often levelled at dual-zone air fryers is that they can be serious space hoggers, and limit you to cooking only two foods at a time. The Ninja Double Stack is the answer to your prayers if those conundrums have prevented you from purchasing a dual-zone air fryer so far.
With its innovative design, the Double Stack flips the side-by-side status quo on its head, with the drawers stacked one on top of another to give you that precious worktop space back. It also comes with two wire racks, so that you can stack foods up inside easily. During testing, our reviewer was won over by the design, which solves plenty of space-related problems, but in the end, she thinks that the performance of the original and ever-popular Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone air fryer (our #1 on this list) pips it at the post performance-wise.
Depsite that, if you are set on the Double Stack, you'll be happy to hear that our reviewer still thought the performance of this air fryer was fairly solid, with a 4 star rating. She used it to bake brownies and air fry meat, chicken and veggies to great effect, even if the cooking was a little less even than she was expecting from Ninja.
Read our Ninja Double Stacked air fryer review for the full details.
Best Ninja alternative
Our expert reviewer Helen said she 'couldn't think of many reasons not to buy this air fryer', which is high praise indeed from our hard-to-please expert.
The premise of the VersaZone is very similar to Ninja's FlexDrawer, with the choice of either one mega compartment or two smaller zones when air frying. After testing, Helen concluded that this is a top-notch air fryer with a capacity that’ll be ample for most families.
The flexibility to use it in either single or dual zone mode immediately solves the dilemma of whether to buy a single or double-drawer air fryer and gives you the best of both worlds.
Another thing I love about this air fryer is its affordability. Though it has an RRP of £199.99, it's often reduced to far less, which is excellent value for money. The only downsides Helen could find are that it might be a tad big for 1-2 person households and that in our review process, it couldn’t fit a chicken in it whole. But all-in-all it cooks well and is easy to use, with a quality that's Ninja-eqsue without the price tag.
Read our Instant Vortex Plus VersaZone Air Fryer review for the full details.
Best dual zone air fryer with uneven drawers
Tefal is a reliably good cookware and appliance brand, and in this vein, it's no surprise. that this is a reliably good air fryer. It's got a quirky USP too, with one larger drawer with a capacity of 5.2 litres and one smaller drawer of 3.1 litres.
At first, our reviewer Helen was sceptical as to the point of this split but quickly found that it was very useful for cooking large cuts of meat and a side of veg in one fell swoop. She showed that by cooking a whole chicken in the large drawer with ease, alongside some veggies. It certainly gives a different edge to normally split two-drawer air fryers.
It's also equipped with a grill function, which Helen found to be effective for cooking sausages, which emerged well-browned without being dried out. And if you're happy with the grill on your oven, then don't worry as you can also pick up a version of this air fryer without the grill for a bit cheaper too.
Read our Tefal Easy Fry Dual Air Fryer & Grill review for the full details.
Best dual zone air fryer oven
This two-zone air fryer oven from Breville surprised me when I tried it out, with its huge range of accessories giving it huge cooking power. There are two drawers (so that you can cook anything you'd cook in a standard air fryer), two mesh baskets, two smaller cooking trays and one large cooking tray. There's a central divider with this air fryer that you can take out whenever you want to cook with one large zone.
The versatility of these accessories meant that I tried out so many new combinations with this air fryer. I made what might have been my best ever chips, as well as grilling chicken to perfection using the aforementioned mesh baskets. You can load in multiple trays (up to 4) at one time, which means that you can get so much cooked at once for family meals.
The controls took me a little while to get a grip with (you have to push the buttons quite forcefully and get to grips with which side you're programming at once) and the handle for the baskets is a little fiddly. Aside from that however, this is a dream oven-style air fryer with those all-important two zones for cooking.
Read our Breville Halo Flexi Air Fryer review for the full details.
How we tested the best dual zone air fryers
Every air fryer in this buying guide has either been tested at home, or at our test facility by one of Ideal Home's reviewers for several weeks so that we can adhere to our testing protocol, and reliably tell you what's good and not so good about these products.
To give you the best sense of what an air fryer will be like immeadiately after you purchase it and for years to come, the team spends weeks getting to grips with each product. The process begins when it arrives at the door, with our reviewers evaluating how easy it is to set the air fryer up and how much worktop space it takes up. We then use them in an everyday capacity (to cook our normal run of meals) as well as setting up specific food tests, including trying out chips, veggies, cakes and using any equipment that comes with an air fryer (like skewers) or trying out specialist features (like a dehydrate mode).
In each of these food tests, we're looking for how long cooking takes (especially compared to a built-in oven), the level of crispiness achieved, how loud the appliance is and whether there are features that help you along (like a preheat setting or a flip reminder). After the food has cooked, we also look at how easy to clean the air fryer is, whether its dishwasher safe and how it lasts over time (especially any non-stick elements).
Value for money is another crucial factor that runs through our testing process. Where an air fryer is more expensive, we look at whether certain features or the overall performance will make it still worthwhile to invest in and interrogate whether cheaper models will still be worth buying in the long-term.
FAQs
How to choose a dual zone air fryer
There are two factors you can't much change when picking an air fryer – how much you have to spend and how much space you have. These will guide your initial stages of picking out products you like the look of. From there, look at the capacity of each fryer and how many people it can feed at once. If you can, size up, as chances are you'll want to use your air fryer to cook essentially everything once it arrives.
It's easy to be swayed by brands offering more functionality for your money, but if you won't actually use a dehydrate mode or bake mode that often, they're not worth spending your money on. Conversely, if you're feeding fussy eaters, features that allow you to sync up the cooking of two different foods to be done at the same time will be worth it for easier dinnertimes.
It's key to know what you like in terms of controls too. If you hate complicated appliances, avoid an air fryer that has a screen full of buttons or Wi-Fi controls. Take heed from which kind of microwaves or ovens you know you like to use and look for similar features in whichever air fryer you choose to invest in.
When's the best time to buy a dual zone air fryer?
You won't need me to tell you that air fryers are immensely popular, with sales skyrocketing in the last few years.
In that time, there's been one month of the year far better than any other to invest in a dual-zone air fryer. Yep, it's the month in which Black Friday and Cyber Monday fall, particularly near the end of November. If you want to learn more about the sales event itself, our Black Friday deals page has everything you need to know year-round. Another advantageous time to shop is Amazon Prime Day, with the retailer often holding a Prime-style event in July and October, giving you a chance to snap up a bargain if you have a subscription.
How do dual zone air fryers work?
Dual-zone air fryers do everything your usual air fryer can do, times two. So you can cook with the same time and temperatures across both drawers (effectively doubling the capacity of a single drawer use) or you can control either drawer independently.
This means you can air fry your roast vegetables in one drawer, and your chicken breast in an entirely different setting simultaneously.
To do this you can make the most of Sync or Match modes, which will either sync the finish times of your food to make sure everything is ready at the same time or use Match to duplicate the cooking settings from your first drawer across to the second.
How much does a dual zone air fryer cost?
Typically, they are pretty pricey. The models with the cheapest RRPs in this guide are still over £100 - a hefty price to pay for many. However, the bigger price tag of dual zone models is because you get more back from your investment - more space, greater functions, and improved settings to make use of, such as ones that allow you to sync up cooking times.
That's not to say that dual-zone models out there won't be overpriced. Retailers can massively inflate prices past the RRP to sell what they've got, meaning that you can pay well over the odds if you're not careful. Always be aware of the actual RRP of the product by going directly to the retailer (Instant, Tower, Ninja) and checking the price that you're about to pay at Amazon or any other retailer beforehand.
