Proscenic T22 air fryer review: smart, but not sleek

The Chinese brand Proscenic covers a range of home appliances, most notably vacuums and robot vacuum cleaners. However, it's also made the shrewd decision to apply its smart-tech experience to the air fryer market, using the same app that could control your robot vac to also monitor your air fryer from afar.

The Proscenic T22 air fryer is the latest air fryer launch from the brand –I tried the T21 a year ago –, so I put it to the test for a few weeks to see how it compares to the already-crowded best air fryer market. One thing's for sure, and that's that the T22 still offers something interesting that other air fryers don't: an app with in-built recipes and the ability to start the air fryer remotely. Unfortunately, it lacks something that, in my opinion, is far more important: a sturdy, user-friendly design.

Proscenic T22 Air Fryer

Specs:

• Material: Plastic
• Colour: Black
• Capacity: 5 litres
• Modes: Fries, Chicken, Steak, Vegetable, Fish, Shrimp, Pizza, Bacon, Onion Rings, Cake, Toast
• Weight: 4.54kg
• Power: 1500 watts
• Size: ‎40.6 x 37.9 x 33.5 cm centimetres

Getting started with the Proscenic T22 Air Fryer

My first impression of the Proscenic T22 Air Fryer was how light it was. This is because it's all pretty much made of plastic. Sure, many air fryers are made of plastic, but models from Cosori or Ninja are usually fairly sturdy in build, perfect for opening that frying basket and slamming it shut again hundreds, if not thousands of times. The Proscenic T22 feels flimsier, but it did make it very lightweight at just 5.41kg.

The top of the air fryer is covered in an expansive recipe map. The pre-sets are extensive: bacon, fried chicken, frozen food, even onion rings and pizza, and they're pretty easy to distinguish using the images of the various foods.

There is also a pre-heat setting (not all air fryers have this, but it's something I'm a big fan of), a keep warm mode, and controls to toggle the timings and temperatures of your recipes manually.

When using the air fryer you need to press from the on-top control panel, which looks very similar to the design of the Cosori Pro LE Air Fryer L501. The big difference is that the Cosori has a thicker glass top which feels quite durable. The Proscenic needs quite a firm press to get going, and I do worry that over time the buttons would rub away from the top of the air fryer with so much tactile control needed.

The hero to this hypothetical is the app: it's actually quite easy to set up (from someone who dreads setting up smart appliances) and it does let you scroll hundreds of interesting recipes and work on timings and controls with added guidance. You can gear your air fryer up for use by turning on the pre-heat remotely, and even pair it with Alexa. It's a nice thought, sure, but given how hands-on cooking ultimately needs to be, it won't save you a great deal of time. You will still need to get up and add your food to your pre-heated air fryer, and you'll still need to go back to the machine when it prompts you to shake or turn whatever you're cooking.

Cooking in the Proscenic T22

The Proscenic T22 comes with a nice recipe book, full of ideas and inspiration of different recipes. I had a go at the Hasselback potatoes, which looked very compelling. The recipe was in Fahrenheit, which wasn't massively helpful for a British user who works in Celcius, but it is easy enough to convert to about 180°C.

These potatoes came out nice, but they did take about 40 minutes to cook which is a lot longer than other air fryers on the market, which can speed up cooking time. They were also quite soft on the outside, and lacking in the crunch and crispiness I would usually expect from air-fried potatoes. Tasty? Of course. After all, it's potatoes and cheese. However, I think another air fryer would've done a better job.

Making fajitas in the Proscenic T22

A simple fajita filling is one of the easiest things to make in an air fryer. I simply cut up some chicken and a red pepper, tossed it in some fajita seasoning, and put the air fryer on to pre-heat before adding to the basket. Although my potatoes took a long time to cook, I was pleased that my chicken was done in under 10 minutes. I was also happy with the finish, which was even across the entire basket.

One thing I found with the Proscenic T22, and this may be specific to the one I tried, was that the drawer was very hard to fully close. There is a button on the top of the handle that you need to press down before yanking out the basket. Sometimes I found it best to keep a hand on the air fryer so it didn't move while I opened the basket, but shutting the drawer again took quite a lot of force.

Cooking bacon

I always cook bacon when testing an air fryer, because when done right it should result in evenly crisped rashers without any chewiness. Most take between 8-10 minutes to finish cooking, and while it's handy to turn the bacon halfway through, I've found that it's not essential.

The bacon preset recommended 12 minutes at 160 degrees, which felt far too low to cook my bacon how I like it. In others I do 8 minutes at 190 and this is enough time to render out the fat without drying the meat out. I did try this pre-set, but quickly realised that I preferred my own higher temperature and shorter timings, so that's what I did with my test batch.

The bacon I cooked in the Proscenic T22 had some tasty crispy bits, but I found that the front of the air fryer cooked a bit more than the back, which left some of the fat un-rendered from the back side of the basket. Perhaps it would've benefitted from turning the bacon halfway through. The air fryer also took 12 minutes to reach this result, which is a bit longer than the average air fryer I've tried.

Cleaning

A plus of any air fryer is when it has a removable insert at the bottom, which the Proscenic T22 thankfully does. It's a notable improvement to the T21, which had a basket that had to be lifted out of the handle. The insert is very easy to clean thanks to a nonstick coating over the inside of the basket and the insert itself. Just scrub with some dish soap and warm water and let it dry.

Should you buy the Proscenic T22?

If you like the idea of pre-sets, the Proscenic T22 is one of the few air fryers on the market you can choose from. I would caution that this pre-set game is a bit hit-and-miss, but it's a good way to get into air fryers if you're nervous about cooking different dishes. Another advantage is the app-compatibility. This is quite rare in the air fryer game, and while I don't think it made a massive difference to my life I'm also admittedly more tech-averse than some, and therefore not the ideal Proscenic T22 customer.

In terms of the quality of the build, I'm unconvinced that this air fryer would last very long. It has a very thin plastic exterior and the markings on the controls and presets feel like they would rub away easily. The basket was also pretty tricky. In short, for an air fryer with an RRP of £129 (although at time of writing, it's down to a much lower £79) it's just not worth the money if you don't plan on using the smart functions. In its place I'd recommend you take a look at the Philips Essential Air Fryer review for an example of an air fryer with pre-sets, that also air fries very well.

About this review, and our reviewer

Millie Fender is Ideal Home's small appliance and cooking editor, and the team's resident air fryer enthusiast. She's tried each and every one of the air fryers we recommend at Ideal Home, which means she's able to compare directly between models.

The Proscenic T22 was tested over the course of two weeks which allowed Millie to put it through its paces for not only cooking quality, but build and user experience.