- Programmes: chicken, bacon, fries, steak, vegetables, preheat and keep warm
- Cost per use: estimated 41p per hour
- Food capacity: 3.8l
- Dishwasher safe basket and crisper plate
Reviewed by Emily Peck
The aluminium and plastic Cosori Lite comes ‘truffle grey’ and a ‘milk white’, both with a stylish orange trim. The overall feel is premium. It has rounded corners and its basket opens and closes smoothly, without sliding out too fast like some air fryers can. With a power of 1,500 Watts, it sits in the middle of the table for output and cost per use.
The crisper plate has silicone corners, so it slots into place nicely too, while the pull-out basket has a handle that remained cool to touch in use, while the sides didn’t get too hot for comfort either. Considering the sub-£100 price, I think it’s great value for money.
The Cosori comes with good variable controls, from 75℃ up to a toasty 230℃ for that crispy, fried finish – a temperature you won’t find all air fryers reach. They tend to stop at 200℃. Unusually, it has pre-set cooking modes for chicken, fries, steak and veggies and, randomly, bacon. The timings are a little random, however. Chicken suggests 13 minutes at 210℃, for example. While that cooks chicken tenders through, it isn’t quite long enough to get that really crispy fried finish. But it’s easy to adjust the timings and add or subtract minutes as you get used to the air fryer.
The controls are spelt out on the display, so you won’t need to refer to the instructions too much and there’s also a handy ‘keep warm’ mode. I like the convenient pre-set mode that makes it easy to blast the air fryer with heat for a few minutes before loading food. (Pre-heating is something all seasoned air fryer fans swear by for best results.)
If, like me, multi-tasking isn’t your strong point, you’ll also find the Shake mode helpful too. I used this when cooking chips on the Fries mode for 15 minutes at 200°C and it reminded me with a beep to shake them mid-way through the cooking cycle. Very handy.
This air fryer – like the Philips Essential Air Fryer with Rapid Air Technology that we’ve also included in this round up – is smart, which means you can pair it to an app for remote control. For safety reasons you can’t start or stop the air fryer using the app, but it did mean that I could set it and go catch up on a little TV while monitoring my sausages and chips from the other room. After a long, busy day I can imagine that’s a feature I’m going to appreciate and use often.