We fried nine kilos of potato to settle this

Nine kilos of potato, cut to the same six-millimetre baton, cooked in nine machines across three price brackets, with a control batch deep fried in a pan. Same variety, same weight per batch, same starting temperature.

The thing that decided it

Basket geometry, not wattage. The machines that browned evenly had baskets wide and shallow enough that hot air reached the top surface of every piece. The machines that needed shaking halfway through were tall and narrow, stacking food into a pile that shielded itself.

That is why a ₹8,499 machine finished ahead of one at ₹14,200. Wattage was within fifteen percent across the whole test. Geometry was not.

How we scored browning

Each batch was photographed under fixed lighting and assessed for coverage and evenness, then tasted blind. We ran every batch three times and averaged.

The control batch

Deep fried chips were better. They were crisper, they browned more evenly, and nobody at the table disagreed. They also absorbed roughly six times the oil and left a pan to deal with. The question an air fryer answers is not whether it beats a deep fryer, but whether it gets close enough that you cook chips on a weeknight instead of not cooking them.

What we would not buy

Anything under ₹3,500. Three machines in that bracket had baskets that warped visibly within the test period and coatings that marked under a plastic utensil.

The running cost

At Delhi tariffs, a 400g batch costs about ₹2.60 in electricity in the Vero, against roughly ₹11 of oil consumed in the pan. Over a year of twice-weekly chips, the machine pays for itself and then keeps going.