Salter's newest air fryer features French doors and a huge capacity – I tried it to see if it can replace my oven

This Salter XL air fryer oven review will put this very large air fryer through its paces, using a set menu of foods to see if it scores well enough to join Ideal Home's list of the best air fryers.

In a nutshell

The Salter XL air fryer oven is a big beast, but with the option of being split into smaller compartments that can be set to different temperatures or synced together, giving flexibility and versatility that makes it great for all sorts of meals.

In a nutshell, it’s simple to use and a nice looking kitchen gadget, as well as being easy to clean.

Specifications

• Type: Air fryer oven
• Dimensions: W37 x D27.5 x H38cm
• Capacity: 15L
• Weight: 11.1kg
• Maximum temperature: 210C
• Cooking modes: 6
• Power: 2300W

Getting started

The Salter isn’t a small box to take delivery of, but what would you expect for an XL version of an air fryer oven?

Tucked inside pretty sustainable packaging, it’s an easy product to unbox and get set up. The air fryer itself is pretty good looking, with black and silver styling and two doors that open outwards rather than drawers or a flip down door like a conventional built-in oven.

This style is called a French door air fryer and is very popular in the US. It's something we've covered before on Ideal Home in our feature on the arrival of the French door air fryer in this country.

The double doors aren’t just for aesthetic reasons, but because one of the bonuses of this gadget is the fact you can use it as one big air fryer oven with an impressive 15 litre capacity - or add a removable divider that splits it into two smaller 7.5L cooking areas that can be used separately for different items, with a ‘match’ setting meaning you can sync them up so everything’s ready at once.

Great for family cooking if you’re doing different elements and don’t want to wait, while the larger capacity is handy for chucking everything in and knowing you can feed everyone.

Similarly, if you’re not in need of using the whole space, you can pop the divider in and only use one side. In keeping with the versatility of the size inside, you’ve got different sized trays too - a non-stick drip tray, a mesh flat tray and a mesh basket - with one of each in the larger size and two for the smaller sizes.

It’s all fairly self explanatory and well thought-out - everything fits, works and is quite intuitive to use. Even the rotisserie bar with forks and handle to lift it out, which is simple to put together and get set up inside the air fryer.

The same goes for the controls. The digital display is easy to understand, and usable probably even for those people who refuse point blank to read instructions and just wing it (don’t worry, there are instructions for those of us who like to check!).

The buttons are responsive, with clear guides to the six different presets - air fry, roast and bake, as well as dehydrate, ‘manual’ and reheat. Unlike some space-age air fryers out there like the AI-informed Daewoo Actuate you don’t feel like it’s rocket science to get something cooked, and it feels like it takes less time to get the show on the road than with some new kitchen gadgets.

Cooking

Chicken

The first test is a simple chicken breast - something I once would have cooked in my oven but now am an air fryer girl through and through. For this I only need one 7.5L half of the Salter, so keep the divider in and pop the chicken on to the drip tray which can double as a small roasting tray.

I set the temperature to 180C and pop it in for 20 minutes, keeping an eye through the handy viewing window which means I don’t have to keep opening the door. After 20 minutes the chicken’s cooked and is still nicely moist.

The Salter is pretty quiet too, only getting up to about 46dB on my decibel metre which is a fair bit lower than some air fryers out there.

Rotisserie chicken

Given the Salter XL comes with a rotisserie attachment, it’s only fair to test it out. I whip out the removable divider and pop the large drip tray in the bottom.

The rotisserie itself is fairly easy to get sorted out, and sits nicely in the specially-designed holes inside the oven. Within a fairly easy amount of time, I’ve set it to air fry at 180C for 1 hr 24 minutes - the time recommended on the packaging of my supermarket chicken, and I’m watching it steadily turning, courtesy of the light that comes on once it gets going.

One thing I do work out is that the Salter doesn’t automatically register that you’ve removed the divide, so you have to basically set the ‘match’ function so it cooks both sides at the same temperature and time - rather than it realising you’re using one big oven space and would obviously need them to be the same.

No big deal, but a nice treat would be if it somehow realised what you needed and just automatically treated it as one oven, one temperature, one time. Another small downside is that the light seems to turn off once you open the door - which isn’t necessarily what you want if you’re just, for example, checking the temperature.

The plus side of everything stopping when you open the door is that you’re not going to have a hot chicken whirring round, or an air fryer frying away, with the door open, saving energy and preventing any accidents.

A decent safeguard, especially if little ones are around. By the time it’s done, my husband declares it’s ‘just like those rotisserie chickens you can buy ready-cooked’, which I figure is as high praise as you can get.

He’s right - it’s cooked perfectly, up to temperature as proven by our probe, but with a lovely crispy skin all round. It’s the advantage of cooking on a rotisserie over a tray, where inevitably the underside doesn’t crisp up in the same way. The future of roast chickens in my household, perhaps.

Chips

The Ideal Home air fryer chip test sees me making potato chips from scratch by chopping potatoes into uniform sizes then tossing in oil and seasoning and popping in for 15 minutes.

They’re nowhere near done, and the fact the Salter XL is so quiet leaves me a bit concerned that maybe it’s broken. I try another 20 minutes, but they still aren’t making the progress I’d like.

For the final 15 I move the basket they’re in up to the top of the oven and then we get there. Crispy and evenly cooked thanks to the fact the size of the mesh basket allows me to spread them out in a single layer, which also means I haven’t had to shake them.

That said, I can’t help but feel that other air fryers have done chips a bit more efficiently and I’m not sure why.

Bacon

The bacon test means I get to take advantage of one of the smaller compartments for an easy two rashers of bacon for my solo breakfast sandwich. I pop them in on air fry at 200C for about 10 minutes, which does the trick.

I turn it halfway and while it’s cooked evenly, it’s not quite as crispy as I’d have liked and feels like it’s dried out a bit. Not the end of the world, but I’ve had better air fried bacon.

Frozen food

My frozen food of choice for a test like this is breaded fish. You want it crispy on the outside, but without drying the fish out inside.

I pop it in at the top for the 30 minutes suggested by the packaging, but it’s cooked sooner than that, and has dried out a bit, which is strange since this didn’t happen to the chicken. Possibly my fault for putting it too high up in the oven though, so I’ll try it on a middle level next time. Another learning curve is not to put it on one of the mesh trays the breadcrumb coating fused itself to the mesh.

What's it like to clean?

If you think of this as more similar to an oven than to some drawer-style air fryers out there, cleaning is a similar process as learning how to clean your oven. You need to get your racks clean but also the interior of the oven itself and door.

However, this really isn’t hard. The whole thing is helped by the fact that the racks are all removable and dishwasher safe, and then it’s just a case of wiping out the inside and the door and cleaning the removable divider.

The racks themself did need a bit of a soak after certain things like breaded fish which stuck to the mesh of the tray, but the non-stick drip tray cleaned up super easily like a dream.

How does it compare to similar models and its predecessors?

When it comes to air fryer ovens - and big ones at that - the Salter XL does what it says on the tin, with the added flexibility of that removable divider that not all of these types of air fryer ovens have.

It’s better looking than, say, the VonShef equivalent, and quieter and easier to clean too. That said, it’s a bit more expensive at £129.99 so if you want cheap and cheerful you can suck up a bit of noise and extra cleaning.

In some ways it doesn’t feel quite as efficient in cooking terms as some other air fryers or air fryer ovens, and some elements seem to take a bit longer to cook, with a few elements feeling like they dried out a bit. If it's the fastest cooking results possible you want, something the Ninja FlexDrawer is our ultimate choice.

It is super easy to use though, and you won't need to juggle an instruction manual while you try to work out what’s going on, with a simpler six-function system and intuitive controls.

Should you buy the Salter XL Air Fryer?

The Salter XL will undoubtedly have great appeal for families thanks to its large capacity, along with the flexibility that means you could cook different elements of a meal at the same time, and even set it up so they’re all done at the same time.

It’s fairly good looking so if aesthetics is your thing, that will count for something, and if you want an easy life when it comes to cleaning, this seems to fit the bill. If you want to spend less, there are cheaper alternatives out there, but the extra bit of spend will get you a better looking, quieter, easier to use and easier to clean machine.

Not quite as high spec as some out there, but something that does what it says on the tin, and gets your food cooked without too much hassle.

Do you think the Salter XL Air Fryer would be a good fit in your home?