After testing for 4 weeks, here is our review of the Power Airfryer XL, including both PROs and CONs.
Power Airfryer XL Review
We’ve been using the Phillips air fryer for 3 years, and loved it so much we bought one for my Mom. She loves to fry fish in her air fryer, which produces crisp, perfect cooked fish without any oil or any of the pungent cooking smell.
Our air fryer mostly used with sweet potato fries, and any other “brown” foods that you normally associate with unhealthy cooking, like chicken nuggets, onion rings and tater tots.
Large Capacity
We tested the Power Airfryer XL for the past 4 weeks, and really love the large size of the basket. There are 2 sizes – a smaller, 3.4 quart unit for 2-3 people, and the larger, family sized version that holds 5.3 quarts of food.
PRO: I highly recommend the larger unit – the generous basket also comes with a removable divider so that you can cook different types of food at once.
CON: I wish the unit would come with a rack that divided the basket into upper and lower levels. Because the air fryer works by circulating hot air, I’ve found that sometimes the food doesn’t cook evenly when stacked too closely on top of each other. I removable rack would create 2 levels, with plenty of room between.
Lots of Recipes
One of the problems with new appliance categories is usually the lack of recipes (especially video recipes). In fact, I have an $800 counter top induction oven sitting in a box in my garage, just because there were only a handful of recipes online and it was just too complicated to retool existing recipes.
PRO: The great thing about the Power Air Fryer, is that they’ve been selling via informercials. That means YouTube is rich with video recipes that will show you step by step how to make different dishes with the Air Fryer.
Confusing Digital Controls
CON: Sometimes product manufacturers get too minimalistic with their controls, creating icons instead of using words. Presets are not always helpful, and in the end, can be even more confusing. For example, the General Tso’s chicken recipe uses the French Fry preset.
Powerful & Fast
PRO: The Power Air Fryer XL preheats very fast, and cooks food much faster than in a conventional oven. With 1700 watts of power, it’s a little less powerful than the Philips Avance XL Digital Airfyer, but we didn’t notice any difference in performance or consistency in heat.
For one of our tests, I made a batch of my Mom’s Famous Egg Rolls from scratch. Normally, I would deep fry the egg rolls in vegetable oil for a few minutes. I don’t usually make egg rolls often because of all that oil. It’s such a hassle to clean up and store 4 cups of oil after frying!
We tested with the Power Air Fryer XL – these were freshly rolled egg rolls. All I did was spritz a little cooking spray directly on the egg rolls.
After a few minutes, I opened the basket. They weren’t quite done yet, so I turned them over for a new 2 minutes of air frying at 400F.
Perfect.
Crisp-crunchy outside. Not greasy, much healthier than deep frying.
There was no mess to clean up (the Air Fryer basket just went into the dishwasher). No batch of used oil to store and no oily smell in the house.
Power Air Fryer XL is sold via their website as well as on Amazon. On Amazon, both sizes are available and there is a deluxe version that includes tongs, baking insert and pizza pan for an additional $10 (3.4 quart size) and $25 (5.3 quart size).
The price of the Power Air Fryer XL ($140) is excellent, compared with Philips Avance XL ($299)
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