Philips 1000 Series XL NA130/00

I saw the negative review for this air fryer and had to counter it with a positive review because IMHO if you're looking for an air fryer this size, it's a good one worth putting on your short list. It and the similar-sized Ninja have different pros and cons, and which one is "better" depends on personal preference and what you'll be using it for.

Way, way back before Ninja, Instant, and all those folks ever thought of selling air fryers, I bought a Philips to cook chips, and later cooked air fryer vegetables and chicken in it more often than I cooked chips. It was the small one, not the XL, but it looked like this one, with a temperature dial and a knob to set the cooking time, and that's it. There's no on-off button because the cook time dial serves that purpose. Zero? It's off. Turn it to some number of minutes, and it's on. Adding another button press to say "go" just wastes effort. I used my original for 5 or 6 years before deciding that the internals had gotten a bit gunky and I didn't feel comfortable disassembling i to clean it, so I'd treat myself to a new one. (I gave the old one away to a friend happy to disassemble it and clean it for his own use.) I got a new Philips. It had program buttons and other buttons to set things and ... for someone who wanted to set the time and temp for each cook, it was fancier and more blingy and modern but it wasn't as efficient to actually use as my previous one, because the one-touch settings generally required some adjustment anyway.

When it came time to get a new air fryer again, I considered the basic economy model of Philips that had two knobs on the front, but then I saw this one whose control design was exactly like my first one that had the temp dial at the top edge of the front. I bought it not because it was the cheapest Philips option (although it was) but specifically because I liked these controls better than flat membrane buttons Philips uses on most of its air fryers today. I don't need an LED countdown timer, or a membrane button to automatically set time and temperature for the type of food I'm cooking because I like to customise that myself.

Where it differs from my old one is in the design of the interior: in place of the removable basket with the mesh bottom that fit inside the outer drawer, it now has just the drawer with a non-stick flat grill plate that sits on top of the pinwheel design on the bottom of the drawer, not a separate basket that goes into the drawer. The down side to this is that the grill plate has less air circulation than the old mesh-bottomed basket, and I'm less comfortable with my food sitting on the non-stick grill plate than the old mesh that I thought was stainless steel. But the up side is that without a separate basket in the drawer, there's more space for food. Another up side is that it's easier to wash the grill plate than it was to wash the entirely separate basket.

I feel that the benefit of the unique pinwheel design on the bottom of the drawer, intended to promote more even cooking, is reduced somewhat (compared to the old design) by the grill plate that limits airflow more than the old mesh did. and wish they had a mesh grilling plate option. (Hint, hint!) And I wish it had a lower minimum temperature for more flexibility when drying fruit and veg. And it would be nice if there was a way to clean the upper interior without voiding the warranty so that I didn't have to replace my air fryer every 5-7 years, which is an issue with all air fryers having this design, not just the Philips. I've subtracted a star for those three things.

But this is an appliance that specialises in doing one thing well: cooking crispy food using a minimum amount of energy, time, and space. And it does this much like my original model from the early-mid 2010s did, so I'm satisfied with it. (Philips, please don't get rid of this control setup. For many of us, it is EXACTLY what we want, providing us with easy manual control of the cooker.)