I tested COSORI's debut Dual Zone air fryer to see if it can compete with our favourite Ninja products - and the results were surprising

Cosori might not be a household name, but Cosori air fryers have regularly made their way onto our best air fryers lists, thanks to their excellent performance when reviewed. Until now though, Cosori only made single zone air fryers.

The launch of the Cosori Dual Drawer air fryer means the brand can now be considered by larger households looking for a family size cooking capacity. However, our guide to the best dual zone air fryers already contains some cracking options, so will it be good enough to make the cut?

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my years of reviewing, it’s that you can’t assume an appliance is going to be good just because its predecessors were. So I tried out this new Cosori Dual Drawer air fryer in my own home, to see if it performs as well as the winning single drawer air fryers from the brand.

COSORI Dual Zone Air Fryer product specs:

• Capacity: 8.5 litre
• RRP: £199.99
• Dimensions: H:30.3 x W:44 x D:39.1cm
• Cooking modes: Air fry, grill, roast, bake, reheat, dehydrate
• Dishwasher safe? Yes

Unboxing and first impressions

I have two main bugbears with this air fryer, I’ll get to the second later, but the first is that it arrived complete with two chunky polystyrene inserts to protect it in the box. I try to recycle as much as possible, but it’s hard to do your bit for the planet when a manufacturer lumbers you with this kind of packaging that inevitably has to go to landfill.

Okay, now that I’ve had my grumble, once out of the box, it looks pretty streamlined and understated. There’s nothing in its appearance that sets it apart from its competitors - which isn’t necessarily a complaint. The drawers have viewing windows in the front, so you can check on your food while it cooks, a welcome feature that we're seeing more and more in the latest air fryers.

I like the flat touch control panel, it means that when it’s switched off all the text goes dark and the appearance is uncluttered. Meanwhile it’s very intuitive to use and nicely angled, which if you’re short like me, means you don’t have to stand on tip-toes to see it properly.

The control panel features an ‘L’ and an ‘R’ button, making it super easy to select either the left or the right side when adjusting settings. The sync finish button ensures that no matter how different the timers are for each side, they’ll finish cooking simultaneously if this is selected - that’s the theory anyway. Or, by pressing the sync cook button, you can copy the settings from one basket to the other.

Other really useful features include an optional inbuilt preheat function as well as an optional reminder to shake your food mid way through the cook time. Selecting one of the six cooking functions is as simple as pressing the word. Then the time and temperature can be adjusted via the plus and minus buttons below each of the timers.

In addition to the viewing windows, each side features an internal light that you can switch on when you’re peering in. The two baskets are also labelled with an ‘L’ and an ‘R’ to avoid any confusion.

As well as the perforated crisper racks that sit in the bottom of the baskets, this air fryer comes with two other accessories. The first is a skewer rack, along with five skewers. The second is somewhat more puzzling. Cosori calls it a baking rack, but really it looks like a toast rack, and I’m not at all sure how I could or should use it.

What is it like to use?

Granola is one of my now staple air fryer recipes when the air fryer offers a bake function. In this case I made quite a big batch so to ensure it baked evenly, I split the granola across both drawers. Having adjusted the settings to 160C for 20 minutes on one side, I then hit the ‘sync cook’ button which copies the same settings to both drawers.

I opened up each drawer a couple of times to stir and mix up the granola during the bake. However, it quickly became apparent that when one side was open, only the timer on that side was paused. And consequently, because I didn’t open each side for precisely the same amount of time as the other, they became out of sync.

I stopped cooking a bit early - at 18 minutes. And the timers were only slightly out of sync, so it wasn’t a big deal. I guess I could avoid this by pulling both drawers open simultaneously and then closing them in tandem too.

For me, fish and chips is a regular air fryer meal. I followed my tried and trusted method of cutting up skin-on chunky chips and soaking them for 30 minutes in water, before drying and lightly coating in oil.

I set both baskets to air fry at 200C with the automatic preheat engaged. The timers were set to 25 minutes for the chips and 15 minutes for the frozen breadcrumbed fish fillets. And because the times were so vastly different, I made use of the ‘sync finish’ button to ensure the fish would be ready at the same time as the chips.

When I pressed start, the side with the 25 minute timer preheated for three minutes, then alerted me to add the chips. Meanwhile, the second side didn’t start preheating until the chips had been cooking for several minutes.

Once the second side had preheated, I followed the prompt to add the fish. However, when the timer started counting down for the fish, I was puzzled, because even from the get-go the two timers were a few minutes out of sync. The time difference was then amplified by the fact that I frequently opened the chips to give them a stir.

If I’m being honest, the finished result of the food is what matters most to me. And given that the chips were golden and fluffy on the inside, while the fish was moist and flaky with a super crunchy crumb, I could work around the few minutes difference in the finish times.

The flip side is that I’ve tried lots of dual drawer air fryers, so I know there are plenty that have a faultless sync finish function. I even doubted myself at first and tested it out again to check I hadn’t done something wrong, but the same thing happened again.

To roast some vegetables, I preheated it on the roast function, it took six minutes to preheat to 190C. I removed the crisper plate and placed sliced and seasoned tomatoes directly on the base of one drawer. Then I added slices of mushroom that were lightly drizzled in oil, to the other drawer.

I gave the mushroom drawer a couple of good shakes during roasting and left the tomatoes alone. And in just 15 minutes, both sides were beautifully roasted and ready to add to my, somewhat healthy, fry-up.

In my opinion, anything that has a breadcrumb coating is at its best when cooked in an air fryer. And my frozen chicken goujons were no exception. Following the automatic preheat, I air fried them at 200C and they were ready in just 12 minutes. Perfectly succulent on the inside, with an unbeatable crunchy crumb on the outside.

While I remained flummoxed by the baking accessory disguised as a toast rack, I couldn’t review this air fryer without giving the skewer rack a test run. I decided to make chicken skewers and after marinating chunks of chicken, I began threading them onto the metal skewers.

Once I’d threaded up the first skewer and rested it on the rack, it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to cook five chicken skewers side-by-side. You’d have to be skewering something pretty teeny if you want to fit all five skewers on the rack at once.

So that they would comfortably fit on the rack, I ended up making three chicken skewers. I also cut up some halloumi and put it in the second basket. My intention was to grill both the halloumi and the skewers, but that wasn’t to be. I discovered that the grill can’t be used in both sides simultaneously.

My compromise was to grill the skewers and air fry the halloumi. I used the automatic preheat to get the grill to 220C and the air fryer side up to 200C. The cooking was all going well, but when the timer went off I could tell that my initial cook time of 10 minutes for the chicken and six minutes for the halloumi was a tad ambitious.

In my haste to get dinner on the table, I quickly added a couple more minutes to both timers, but I forgot to deselect the automatic preheat. This meant it was actually on preheat for the last few minutes, which was a bit fierce.

Everything worked out okay despite my error. The chicken skewers were tasty and succulent, meanwhile the halloumi was golden and soft with some crispy bits on the outside.

What's it like to clean?

The non-stick coating meant I found the baskets pretty quick to wash by hand, which is how I tended to clean them if I’d cooked up something that wasn’t too messy or greasy. However, they are dishwasher safe, so if they looked particularly greasy or grimy, I took the easy option and chucked them in my dishwasher

The shiny touch control panel needs a bit of a buff with a damp microfibre cloth occasionally, otherwise you’ll notice the greasy fingerprints building up on the most frequently used buttons. Otherwise though, it’s pretty straightforward to keep clean.

How does it compare to other air fryers?

The Instant Vortex Plus Dual Basket air fryer is a standout dual zone air fryer that is frequently available on offer for £100 - £130, which makes it excellent value for money. It offers the same five cooking modes and includes viewing windows in the baskets. We couldn’t fault the sync function, however the capacity is marginally smaller at 7.6 litres.

Alternatively, if it’s a whopping capacity you’re after, you’ll need to spend a bit more for the roomy 10.4 litre Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer. This clever design means the cooking drawer can be used as one big space, or divided into two. Performance is hard to fault, and better yet, its price has come down since the launch and we’ve seen it available for close to £200 in some sales, so hunt around for the best deals.

Should you buy the Cosori Dual Drawer Air Fryer?

As you’ll have gathered, this air fryer only has one real flaw. The sync finish can become out of sync, is it a deal breaker? No, it’s just annoying. But if you can get over the fact that the two sides might finish a couple of minutes apart, then on every other level, this is an excellent air fryer.

It cooks well, is easy to use, easy to clean, and includes pretty much all the settings and functions I’d want to see when buying a dual zone air fryer. My advice? Look out for a deal or a seasonal sale, it’s likely to be reduced, and that’s when it offers the best value for money.

About this review, and the reviewer

After completing a Home Economics degree, Helen went on to work for the Good Housekeeping Institute and has been reviewing home appliances ever since. She lives in a small village in Buckinghamshire in the UK, where she reviews all sorts of home and garden appliances using her wealth of experience.

Helen set up the Cosori Dual Drawer air fryer in her own kitchen. She used in place of her usual air fryer - which after the kettle and coffee machine, is probably her most used kitchen appliance. She tried out a variety of foods that would test out its speed and evenness of cooking, as well as the overall ease of use.