Ninja has a brand new air fryer and those with smaller kitchens will want to know all about it

It's a gamechanger for compact spaces

Ninja air fryer on countertop
(Image credit: Ninja)

Air fryers come in all kinds of sizes, but up until now, there was only one air fryer from Ideal Home's favourite small appliance brand Ninja that was a good fit for compact kitchens. 

Now, thanks to this brand new release, the Ninja Air Fryer MAX PRO 6.2L AF180UK, you'll be able to make Christmas dinner a whole lot easier in your smaller kitchen. And as every Ninja air fryer we've ever tested has easily made it in to our rankings of the best air fryers, we're fairly confident that this is going to be a hit performance-wise too.

I was invited to Ninja's new office in Frankfurt to see Ninja's brand new releases, which means that I got an exclusive first look at this air fryer too. Here's what I learned when I saw it in action.

New small Ninja air fryer

You can buy Ninja's new air fryer from the Ninja website and be one of the first to try it out.

NinjaAir Fryer MAX PRO 6.2L AF180UK

Ninja Air Fryer MAX PRO 6.2L AF180UK | £149.99 at Ninja
Though it'll have a compact footprint on your worktop, this air fryer has an impressive capacity of over six litres. It also has a sleek interface, along with a huge six functions to choose from when cooking.

The first impressions I had with this air fryer is that the design marks a new direction for Ninja, with a kind of polished finish that we also saw with the relatively new FlexDrawer (which you can read more about in our Ninja FlexDrawer Air Fryer review). 

While the FlexDrawer is so large that it can put to bed any questions of an air fryer vs an oven when it comes to size, and has the flexibility to be used as a single or double drawer appliance at any time, this new Ninja AF180UK is targeting a different type of kitchen. 

New ninja air fryer on display

(Image credit: Future)

This air fryer will be for you if space is already in demand on your worktop but you still want to capitalise on the space you have. Though it's shorter than Ninja's only other small air fryer, which we tried out a few years ago in our Ninja AF100UK Air Fryer review, it has a much larger capacity – 6.2 litres compared to 3.8 litres. 

There are also two more functions (bake and Max Crisp) packed into the Ninja AF180UK compared to the AF100UK, though these two air fryers have the same RRP (£149.99). That means you get more functionality and space for your money.

New smaller Ninja air fryer

(Image credit: Ninja)

If you don't have space for one of the best dual zone air fryers, then we think this new Ninja release might be the perfect compromise between saving space and maxing out on cooking capacity. We're racing to test it out as soon as possible, to let you know exactly how it measures performance-wise too. 

Molly Cleary
Kitchen Appliances Editor

Molly is Ideal Home’s Kitchen Appliances Editor, the Ideal Home Certified Expert on Appliances. An all-around cooking and baking enthusiast, she loves finding the next must-have product for readers that will their kitchen a better place. She joined the team in September 2022 after working on the editorial teams of Real Homes, Homes & Gardens and Livingetc.

For the last 4 years, she's been reviewing hundreds of small appliances; conducting tests at home or in the Ideal Home test kitchen. She would be hard-pressed to pick a Mastermind specialist subject but air fryers are her ultimate area of expertise, after testing just about every single one released since 2022.

To keep ahead of trends and new releases, Molly has visited the testing and development spaces of multiple kitchen brands including Ninja Kitchen and Le Creuset as well as attended consumer shows such as IFA, hosted in Berlin to see the cooking innovations of the future.