[Kirby64]

This seems like you’ve never used an air fryer. They aren’t a replacement for a deep fryer, of course, but they can certainly crisp many different foods much differently from a traditional oven. The high cfm convection of an air fryer makes food behave much differently than a regular oven or a standard convection oven.

[D-Machine]

Air fryer cultists must administer lidocaine prior to eating or something, air fryers can't even get close to proper deep or shallow frying, unless you are re-warming something pre-packaged that was already deep fried prior. The "crisp" achieved from air frying is woefully inferior, and no serious chef or anyone with basic cooking experience defends them for anything other than trivial use-cases. They do not behave meaningfully different in any way from a good convection oven, countertop or otherwise, and are less versatile (and yes, cheap convection ovens do have worse circulation, but good ones do not have this problem, or even just have an air fry mode anyway).

EDIT: So to be clear, yes, there is a narrow use case for people who can't afford e.g. a good countertop convection oven (same thing as an air fryer but more versatile) or decent convection oven, and for whom cooking consists mostly of store-bought and pre-cooked small meals for 1-2 people max, and definitely for people that don't care about the dramatic textural difference from actual fried food, or that aren't attempting to emulate fried food with it.

But air frying was mentioned by GP as an alternative for restaurants in place of deep frying, which is woefully out of touch with the most basic facts of reality.

[Kirby64]

> They do not behave meaningfully different in any way from a good convection oven, countertop or otherwise, and are less versatile (and yes, cheap convection ovens do have worse circulation, but good ones do not have this problem, or even just have an air fry mode anyway).

Chris Young, of Modernist Cuisine and Chefsteps fame, disagrees with you. There’s a difference in the physical construction of actual air fryers vs just fast convection ovens. Every convection oven/air fryer combo I’ve ever seen has the fan on the side, so the behavior and performance is different.

See: https://youtu.be/yw--NLjZBNk