Tower T17076 10-in-1 Digital Air Fryer Review
A clever air fryer that can cook rotisserie chicken
Verdict
The Tower T17076 Xpress Pro Combo 10-in-1 Digital Air Fryer can tackle an impressive range of cooking tasks, assisted by plenty of accessories. Some of these can be fiddly to use and store, but they enable the appliance to work as a grill, griddle, toaster and mini-rotisserie. The Xpress Pro Combo is straightforward to operate and features a selection of automatic programmes, covering common foods as well as a function for dehydrating fruit. While the maximum temperature of 200°C felt a tad low at times (leading food to crisp, but not necessarily brown), a longer cooking time and a little more oil usually did the trick.
Pros
- Excellent selection of accessories
- Easy to operate
- Automatic programmes
Cons
- Some accessories are fiddly
- Maximum temperature 200ºC
- Takes up space/storage issues
Availability
- UKRRP: £139.99
Key Features
- Cooking capacityThis air fryer can hold a huge 11 litres of food
- Cooking modesRotisserie, pizza, chargrill, kebabs, air frying, toast, bake, dehydrate, grill and roast
Introduction
Air fryers are a healthier option over frying for crisping food, allowing you to use less oil during cooking. In addition to air-frying, the Tower T17076 10-in-1 Digital Air Fryer can be used as a rotisserie oven as well as for grilling, roasting, baking and dehydrating various foods.
An update of Tower’s previous T17039 5-in-1 Air Fryer, the 10-in-1 model comes with a range of extra accessories. While some of them may be a bit fiddly to set up, the appliance itself is very straightforward to use and features handy automatic programmes for common foods.
Design and Features
- Plentiful accessories, but their assembly can be tricky
- Oil-drip tray and removable door make cleaning easy
- Easy-to-use controls and auto programmes
The first to set the Tower T17076 10-in-1 apart from other air fryers is its rotisserie oven-style window. Being able to view food while it’s cooking is a boon, even if you’re not grilling a whole chicken.
At 382 x 324 x 339mm, it’s a fairly average size for an air fryer – albeit at the larger end – and it has quite a boxy shape. It will definitely makes its presence known on your countertop, particularly since it requires at least 10cm of free space on the back, sides and top. However, its 11-litre capacity is impressive, and it can be deemed compact next to your average rotisserie oven.
Accessories are plentiful, comprising three air-flow racks (which allow you to cook food on three levels at the same time), a rotisserie fork with handle, 10 skewers with rotating wheels, a wire rack, a reversible grill plate (functions as a hotplate and a griddle), two heat-proof silicone mitts and a drip tray.
While welcome, storing all of these accessories is a challenge. The actual assembly and placement of the rotisserie fork and the kebab skewers also proved quite fiddly – instructions for neither is particularly well explained by the manual.
On the other hand, the manual is very good for cooking suggestions for various foods in terms of timings and temperatures. The appliance also comes with a 72-page recipe book that has ideas for each course and category of food (Meat, Vegan & Vegetarian, Sides, Desserts, and so on).
The wire rack functions as a stand for the reversible grill plate as well as a toast rack, having enough space for bread to be inserted into its slots. The small silicone mitts are handy, although they could be a little thicker; they didn’t allow me to hold hot items for very long.
The oil-drip tray is useful for gathering any excess oils through the cooking process, and was very easy to clean. Also making cleanup less of a chore is the fact that the appliance’s door can be pressed all the way down or removed entirely, allowing for better access to the cavity of the air fryer.
The control panel consists of a screen and touch buttons, which take up a wide slab of very shiny, fingerprint and scratch-prone plastic on top of the air fryer. Nevertheless, the Tower T17076 10-in-1 proved very straightforward to use, thanks to touch buttons for temperature, time and mode selection, as well as for turning on the cavity light and setting the rotisserie mechanism on rotate (without activating a specific cooking programme).
Time selection happens in 1-minute increments, with a minimum cooking time of 1 minute and a maximum of 60 minutes. Temperature goes from 30°C to 200°C in 5°C increments.
The mode selection is a menu of eight pre-set programmes, consisting of those for frozen fries or chips, steak/cutlets, chicken fillets/drumsticks, fish, prawns, roast chicken (up to 1.3kg), rotisserie and dehydration (for dried fruit).
The touch buttons produce a beeping sound when pressed, which can become annoying when you’re having to select a much longer cooking time (the default is 15 minutes). Holding down your finger works somewhat to avoiding the beeps, but it takes the appliance a good few seconds to figure out what’s going on. The air fryer’s overall noise level will depend on the temperature selected, but in general there will be some sound because of the need for the internal fan to distribute hot air.
Performance
- Cooks decent chips, both from scratch and frozen
- Hashbrowns don’t brown but become very crispy
- Halloumi doesn’t stay on skewers, but great when cooked on the griddle
I started by cooking 800g of homemade chips, having parboiled them for 7 minutes for a fluffier texture. I added some oil for crispness. Initially, I cooked them for 20 minutes at 180°C, as suggested by the manual. The chips filled two airflow racks that I rotated 10 minutes into cooking – the manual advises that the top of the three levels will give the fastest and most crisp results. After 20 minutes, the chips still looked a little pale – although it was apparent that they were crisping up. I added a tiny bit of extra oil and gave them a stir, raising the temperature to 200°C for a further 10 minutes. Again, I rotated the racks halfway through.
On the whole, the resulting chips came were nicely browned and crispy on the outside, with a few pale bits, and fluffy on the inside. While this wasn’t the fastest result, I did go for the maximum amount of chips suggested by the manual and initially skimped on the oil. However, I felt that 200°C was a better temperature than 180°C, and if it had been possible, I’d have probably cranked up the heat past 200°C.
Next I tried the automatic programme for frozen fries/chips – which coincidentally comes with the same cooking time and temperature as the manual’s suggestion for homemade chips. However, the weight limit here is lower at 550g.
I cooked 300g of chips, which were nice and crispy. A lot of the extra oil already on the chips ran down to the drip tray – leaving me with a healthier meal.
I turned the temperature up to 200°C for some frozen hashbrowns. Even following 20 minutes in the air fryer, they weren’t that brown – but they were some of the crispiest hashbrowns I’d ever had.
I also had great success cooking slightly oiled corn on the cob using the grill plate on top of the wire rack. As recommended in the manual for using the grill plate, I first preheated the air fryer for 3 minutes. There’s no preheat function, but it’s easy enough to add a couple of extra minutes to the cooking time – or simply set the appliance to cook for 3 minutes, after which it will alert you at the end of the programme with a beep.
After 15 minutes at 180°C, having rotated the corn on occasion during cooking, it was evenly golden and starting to shrivel slightly. Since I normally have to use more oil to cook the cobs in the frying pan, having to constantly rotate them, this was both an easier and healthier way to prepare them.
To try out the rotisserie function, I put halloumi, courgette and pepper pieces onto the skewers fitted into the rotating wheels. After a few minutes, some halloumi had already fallen off the skewers, forming a layer at the bottom of the drip tray. Part of the problem was that the skewers weren’t firmly in place – the way they fit into the wheels means there’s some movement that may have contributed to halloumi falling off the skewers. Having said that, this problem is unlikely to occur with thicker-textured foods, such as meat; most of the veg stayed on the skewers until the end.
A better way to cook halloumi was on the griddle – using the ridged side of the reversible grill plate. Ten minutes at 180°C was all it took for the halloumi to begin crisping up, although there were some paler pieces in the middle. I flipped the strips around and cooked them for a further 3 minutes, after which they’d developed excellent grill lines on both sides.
Finally, I tried the automatic dehydration setting, with slices of one banana cut to 5mm, as directed by the manual. This process took four hours at 45°C and resulted in a slightly chewy treat, perfect for adding to breakfast foods. Interestingly, underneath this setting, the manual suggests keeping the middle of the rack clear to facilitate the circulation of hot air. This piece of advice seems quite pertinent for any use of the appliance, since I often noticed the food in the middle of the racks remain slightly paler.
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Should you buy it?
The Tower T17076 Xpress Pro Combo 10-in-1 Digital Air Fryer is great for someone looking for an affordable air fryer, and would make good use of the rotisserie, grill and griddle functions.
This air fryer takes up a fair amount of worktop space and comes with a range of accessories, so it isn’t for those with small kitchens.
Final Thoughts
For those new to air-frying, the Tower 10-in-1 is a straightforward appliance that can easily prove its usefulness. Price-wise, it’s pretty affordable, considering the range of accessories and functions it offers. While it doesn’t have fast-crisping programmes, such as the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone 7.6L Air Fryer’s Max Crisp mode, it boasts a larger capacity, being able to fit in a whole chicken. If this model sounds a bit too big for your needs, then check out the 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, appropriate to each model, such as 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 200ºC, which is a little low, so food won’t cook quite as fast or come out quite as crispy as with air fryers that have a higher temperature.
This air fryer has a rotisserie spike for turning food, and kebab skewers that are rotated automatically to even out the cooking results.
It has an 11-litre capacity, which is massive: big enough to fit in an entire chicken.
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.
