Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone Air Fryer AF400UK Review
The perfect air fryer for large families
Verdict
Super-sizing last year’s Dual Zone model, the Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone Air Fryer AF400UK provides a huge 9.5 litres of cooking space, split between two drawers. Each compartment can be controlled individually, or you can just double-up to cook a larger quantity of one item. Provided you have space to store this beast of a fryer, it’s a brilliant choice.
Pros
- Plenty of cooking room
- Cooks beautifully
- Clever use of dual controls
Cons
- Huge
Availability
- UKRRP: £229.99
- USAunavailable
- Europeunavailable
- Canadaunavailable
- Australiaunavailable
Key Features
- Cooking capacityEach drawer holds up to 4.75 litres of food, for a total of 9.5 litres
Introduction
The problem with most air fryers is that once you come to love what they do and become used to them, you then have to work out how to cook different items at the same time. Last year’s Ninja Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300UK solved that issue by including two individually controlled drawers. This year, we have the larger model the Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone Air Fryer AF400UK, presenting even more cooking room.
Effectively, this model delivers all the great features of last year’s model, only with a 9.5-litre total capacity. For larger families, or simply for cooking bigger items, this is a great fryer – provided you have the room to store it.
Design and Features
- A huge air fryer with large-capacity drawers
- Clever cooking controls
- Lots of modes
There’s no getting around the fact that the Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone Air Fryer AF400UK is a beast of a model. Measuring 325 x 415 x 270mm and weighing 8.8kg, you’re going to need a fair amount of space to store it.
Of course, the benefit of its size is capacity. In total, this air fryer offers 9.5 litres of space, split evenly between its two 4.75-litre drawers. That’s almost a litre of extra space per drawer than the smaller AF300UK model.
According to Ninja, that’s enough space for 1.4kg of chips per side or even a 2kg chicken. The drawers are fairly narrow, so the overall size of your chicken, rather than pure weight, will determine if it will fit in.
As with the older model, the AF400UK excels for cooking options. Each drawer can be controlled individually, with a choice of Max Crisp (240ºC heat for crisping up chips, for example), Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Dehydrate (perfect for saving herbs) and Reheat. You can control the temperature for each mode and select a cooking time.
If you want to use the two drawers together, you have a choice of two modes: Match and Sync. Match applies the same settings to both drawers, letting you double-up portions. Sync allows individual settings, but the AF400UK ensures that both drawers complete cooking at the same time.
Food cooks best in air fryers if you give it a shake mid-cooking, resulting in an even finish. With many models, you’ll need to dig out a pair of oven gloves to do this. The AF400UK makes this simple by including handles on the outside of its drawers. Pull one out and the air fryer stops (both drawers stop in Sync or Match modes), so you can shake away and reinsert.
Ninja provides a handy cookbook in the box, which provides rough cooking times for raw and frozen ingredients, plus a few recipes with which to get started. As a rough guide, I usually reduce oven cooking times listed on items by around 20%.
Everything here can be cleaned in the dishwasher once you’re done, meaning there’s very little clearing up to deal with.
Performance
- Cooks thoroughly
- Drawer space means items are crispy
- Max Crisp helps boost frozen food
I started by cooking some chips in the air fryer, using the 200ºC setting. Although I had to shake the contents of the drawer two or three times during cooking, it’s all the interaction the AF400UK required.
At the end of cooking time, my chips were perfectly cooked – evenly crisp throughout, without any sign of being burnt or overcooked.
To accompany the chips, I cooked some sausages. Using spray oil to give them a light coating fat, I placed them in the AF400UK at 180ºC with the timer reduced by 20% compared to the cooking instructions. After the time had elapsed, the sausages were perfectly cooked: crisp and browned evenly all over.
To give the Max Crisp function a go, I used it to cook frozen hash browns – which all too often come out of a regular oven slightly soggy. Although they’re supposed to be cooked in the oven for around 20 minutes, I set the cooking time to 11 minutes because of the high 240ºC temperature.
At the end of the cooking time, the hash browns were super-crispy on the outside, yet evenly cooked and still fluffy on the inside. This is a vast improvement over cooking them in the oven.
Reheating food items in the air fryer works brilliantly, too, particularly for pizza. Rather than a soggy mess, you can maintain the crisp base.
Should you buy it?
If you want generous capacity and the option to cook different items at different temperatures, then this is the air fryer for you.
If you don’t have much space, then this air fryer will prove cumbersome. It’s also missing some features included on rival products, such as a grill.
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Final Thoughts
I was a huge fan of the AF300UK – and Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone Air Fryer AF400UK is just as good, and bigger. If you regularly cook large quantities of food in your air fryer – say, for a large family – then the AF400UK provides both the flexibility and the capacity. If you’d like some other features, such as a grill, then check out my guide to the best air fryers.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every air fryer we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main air fryer for the review period
We cook real food in each air fryer, making chips, frying sausages and cooking frozen hash browns. This lets us compare quality between each air fryer that we test.
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FAQs
It’s big: it measures 415 x 270 x 325mm.
Each drawer has a capacity of 4.75-litres, giving a total of 9.5-litres. That’s enough space to cook for four to six comfortably.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
