COSORI Lite air fryer review

Finding the right air fryer can be tricky, especially with new brands and models cropping up all the time that you might not be overly familiar with. COSORI is one of those emerging brands vying to join the ranks of the best air fryers, and it's a little less known than the likes of Ninja and Instant. So that you know whether to invest or not, we put one of its compact (and cute!) air fryers, the COSORI Lite to the test.

This air fryer instantly impressed me with its design and excelled further when it came to putting it through its paces with cooking. It has a sleek design that could rival even the major players in the air fryer game; passing the test of whether I'd want it on my own countertop with flying colours. On top of that, it has advanced features (preheat and keep warm functions) that are often missed on even higher-end models. 

At 3.8 litres, this air fryer is recommended for one to three portions, making it a buy to consider if you're shopping for a small home and looking to save money thanks to the cheap cost to run. There's no shortage of recipe inspiration from COSORI either, with a complimentary recipe booklet and access to the app with more ideas. Below we detail our experience with this air fryer from unboxing to cleaning, so you know whether or not to spend your money.

COSORI Lite 3.8 litre air fryer specifications

• Material: Aluminium, Plastic
• Colour: Truffle Grey or White Peach
• Capacity: 3.8 litres
• Modes: 8 presets: bacon, veggies, steak, fries, chicken, preheat, shake, keepwarm
• Weight: 4.4 kg
• Power: ‎1500 watts
• Size: ‎‎37.6 x 27.5 x 32.5 cm

Molly Cleary

Molly is the Ecommerce Editor for Ideal Home and is always on the lookout for the next must-buy product for your home. Covering all things appliance related, with an emphasis on air fryers, she regularly heads to Future's Test Facility in Reading to thoroughly put products through their paces, which you can see from the photos included in this review.

Unboxing the COSORI Lite

I've had a COSORI air fryer on my wish list to try for a long time. It's a popular Amazon air fryer brand, with glowing user reviews and affordable RRPs, and different sizes to suit all kinds of homes. The Lite seemed a perfect air fryer to test out thanks to its price tag of £99.99. I wanted to see what you can get for your money for under £100 and to see how far the capacity will actually stretch. 

The COSORI arrived in a small but bright orange box, with minimal packaging. It won points early on with the included recipe book inside, and had an actual instruction manual rather than just a guide online, which is another plus for me. Out of the box this air fryer is little but absolutely lovely, with a grey blue exterior and swish control panel. If you're smart-home inclined, you can also download the COSORI app and access even more recipes online. It can't be overestimated how great these kind of resources are for air fryer newbies, and the 5 food presets are also bound to go a long way if you're not sure on how long to cook your air fryer food for yet. 

First impressions

The COSORI Lite is on the cheaper side when it comes to air fryers, which means that admittedly my expectations weren't set too high. Immediately, I was proved wrong, with the look and feel of this air fryer ticking all of the necessary boxes. The touch screen panel looks great and has an LED screen integrated while the controls are easy to use with simple buttons. 

The five presets available with this air fryer are chicken, fries, bacon, steak and veggies. When you click on each of these, your appliance will be preprogrammed to cook whatever is inside for a certain number of minutes at a set temperature. These presets take the stress out of cooking if you're new to air fryers, and while I don't find them overly useful as I'm used to using mine, I have found that my mum (who is new to the air fryer game) loves how easy they make dinners. Just be mindful that they can sometimes overshoot timings, so make sure to check at your halfway point to avoid burning.

I absolutely love that this air fryer has reheat and preheat functions, as well as a shake reminder halfway through, which is perhaps a sign that I'm too deep into air fryer culture. When the air fryer started cooking it was a little loud, but I put down to this being the sheer amount of power this model seems to have too - it may be small, but it is mighty.

Using the COSORI Lite air fryer

Cleverly, you can decide with the COSORI Lite whether you want to make use of the preheat function or not with just the touch of a button, adding a further level of convenience to this little air fryer. I used the preheat setting to begin, and found that you could really tell when it kicked in, with all 1500 watts of power coming into play, creating a very hot air fryer just minutes later. 

Cooking chips
As all good air fryer tests should, this cooking session opened with chips, which I popped into the basket. I wanted to leave space between each chip to give it a fair chance of nicely cooking, but you could definitely pack more in here if you needed to. 

To operate, I used the arrows on either side of the LED, and set the cooking time to 60% of what the packet recommended (this is my golden air fryer cooking rule - and almost always yields the results I want). Once I'd put in the time, I also made sure to press the shake button (which is the one in the middle), so that the air fryer would beep when my chips needed to be turned. 

As you can see from the photos, I was thoroughly impressed with the cooking of chips in the COSORI Lite. They emerged golden yet fluffy on the inside, and took even less than the 60% timing I'd estimated, which I discovered thanks to the half-time shake reminder. Full marks all around for me. 

Cooking Quorn bites
Beige foods come into their own in an air fryer and vegetarian beige foods are not an exception to this rule, as I discovered when I popped these southern-fried 'chicken' bites in as part of my tests. From frozen, these bites took far less than the 15 minutes I allocated for them, and were piping hot when I retrieved them. 

If you love quick work-from-home lunches like this or even post-night-out snacks, then the COSORI is a great choice. That's due to the fact that it is so quick to heat up and that it has a huge amount of power behind it. Another success for the COSORI Lite!

Cooking broccoli
Thinking that you'd need rather some greens to break things up? Us too, which is why we fried up some Tenderstem broccoli for five minutes (with a spritz of olive oil and some salt and pepper for good measure). 

Air fried broccoli probably isn't to everyone's tastes, as it's vastly different from boiling, but if you like your stems to have a good crunch, it'll be massively up your street. These greens emerged with a pretty perfect browning, and there was plenty of space in the basket for more, too, which is good if you've got your eye on this model for family use.

Cooking bacon
Quick breakfasts have never been easier than with an air fryer. We opted for bacon in this particular test, but sausages, toast and even oats are all excellent candidates for a speedy start to the day. A speedy five minute blast in the air fryer yielded the results you can see below, and though there is some curling, this is probably down to the fact that the bacon needed to be flipped rather than left. 

One unique thing about this air fryer is that it seems to extract maximum amounts of grease and oil from foods. During the process of cooking this bacon, a large pool of oil had gathered below the grill line, which I think is a testament to just how powerful this air fryer is. It's also great to know if you want a healthier way to fry foods.

Cooking greek-style cheese
Cheese is a versatile food that excels in an air fryer, whether it's greek style grilled cheese to add to a salad or creating a great filling for a toastie. In this instance, I popped in this halloumi alternative for five minutes at first, accompanied with a spritz of olive oil. 

I went for a low time as I wasn't sure how the air fryer would work its magic at first, and found that I needed around 8 minutes overall to get the kind of browning that I'd like. I'll admit that I did not have super high hopes for this cheese, as it looked lacking in substance when it first went in. The COSORI still excelled despite my doubts, and the results were probably the best cheese-related cook I've seen with an air fryer yet. 

Cleaning 

This air fryer is absolutely fantastic at reducing oil in the foods it cooks, which is a huge benefit if you're looking to eat healthier. The downside? It means that cleaning is a little more challenging. When it came to packing away, I had to get rid of the oil pool by using kitchen roll first to soak it all up, and then going back in with a second lot to make washing up less painful. 

I washed up the basket and grill by hand for reasons of pure speed, which was all very easy with my Dishomatic scrubber, but both of these elements are actually dishwasher friendly if you'd prefer that method.

I absolutely love the exterior of this machine, especially the interface, but I must admit that the buttons were a little bit fingerprint-mark-prone. Regular cleans will mean this isn't really a problem, but definitely something to note for a busy family home. 

How does it compare to other air fryers on the market?

The main selling points of the COSORI Lite is that it's compact and affordable - which a range of other popular air fryers right now are also excellent for. We recently tried out the Lakeland Digital Compact air fryer and loved it, but felt that it was expensive (£89.99) for its 1.6 litre capacity. 

By comparison, with the COSORI Lite you get 3.8 litres for £99.99 (and that's without it going on sale, which it likely will in the future). It's not hard to see then, with those comparisons in mind, that the COSORI is better valued, as well as yielding superior cooking results in my opinion, and looking a whole lot nicer on a countertop. 

Should you buy the COSORI Lite air fryer?

I've tested a lot of air fryers by now, and I'd be wholeheartedly happy to snap up the COSORI Lite for my flat, which I share with two other people. It has great user features, which would make me want to use it more than my oven, and is unbelievably speedy thanks to the sheer power it holds. For larger homes, it's undoubtedly going to be a less useful size, but it could still be good for cooking up side dishes, like broccoli, to accompany oven-cooked mains if you are on a tight under-£100 budget.

If saving money is at the forefront of your purchase, then the COSORI Lite can save you money, in the long run, thanks to the energy-efficient properties of all air fryers. Bargain hunters should also keep an eye on this air fryer in Black Friday sales, as it's an Amazon exclusive and the retailer loves to get involved with discounts. 

COSORI Lite Air Fryer | £99.99 at Amazon
This Amazon-exclusive air fryer from COSORI is perfect for two to three people. When we tested it, we thought that it had the power to rival even more expensive models. With an RRP of less than £100, it's a great buy. 

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About this review, and the reviewer 

Molly is an Ecommerce Editor at Ideal Home and covers all things appliance related, meaning that she's constantly submerged in the world of air fryers. She received this sample from COSORI for testing at the Future facility in Reading, which is a space that allows her to expand her testing process. It's also much prettier than her flat and produces much nicer hands-on photos. This sample was allowed to be kept for long term testing, meaning we can revisit our verdict in the coming months.