KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven with Air Fryer review

If you don’t have much room to spare, the KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer saves space by serving as a toaster, air fryer, and countertop oven in one. If you’re also one of those people who’s fanatical about evenly browned toast, it delivers the goods. While this KitchenAid’s not small, it’s not as large as other air fryer toaster ovens on the market, yet it's big enough to roast two chickens or bake a large lasagna.

It’s the quietest air fryer we had on test, although it’s also one of the hottest to the touch. If you read our KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer review, you will see where it struggled and where it excelled.

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KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer review: Price and availability

The KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer is available at Amazon for $219.99, Best Buy for $199 and at Target for $199.99. It’s available in matt black.

KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer review: Design

With its matte black housing and towel bar handle, the KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer looks like it was made to function, not dress up your countertop.

The controls, which consist of a small digital display and dial, are located below the door, which allows for a large capacity in a small footprint. With the oven you get a 13 x 9-inch baking pan to bake cookies or roast a couple of chickens. It’s not as big as other air fryer ovens, but it will still take up some space as it measures 17 x 18 x 11.5 inches. As it weighs just over 30 pounds, you will want to keep this appliance on display, rather than move it around. 

KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer review: Cooking performance

Looking at its performance on test, the KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer scored adequately for frying Brussels sprouts, frozen French fries and breaded chicken. However, It stood out for the scratch French fries it produced. It achieved near perfect marks for these as the results were evenly browed, crisped, tender and moist. The only area it fell down in was chicken wings, which while tender and moist, just weren’t well browned or crisped. In our bake tests, it did not perform exceptionally well. Cookies and cake didn’t brown perfectly evenly and the crust on a frozen pizza wasn’t very crispy.  

When you choose a setting, the KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer automatically goes into a preheat mode. You do have the option of deactivating it if you're in a hurry or want to add more time at the end of a cooking period.

When you want to air fry in this oven, you spread your food out in the provided shallow basket; KitchenAid suggests you cook only one layer of food at a time, which is about 1 pound. This appliance did a good job at crisping Brussels sprouts, breaded chicken cutlets, and frozen French fries. It faltered at air frying chicken wings which came out only lightly browned and crisped.

However, of all the air fryers we tested, the KitchenAid was the best at making French fries from Idaho potatoes that we had cut ourselves. In fact, no one would have believed they hadn’t been cooked in a vat of oil. These were cooked in 25 minutes, which is substantial, but for the best results, worth the wait.

Using the convection roast setting, we also roasted a whole chicken. Although it came out moist and tender, it cooked unevenly — browning on top but barely at all on the sides and bottom. If you like the crisp skin on roasted chicken, you’d be disappointed.

We cooked four 4-ounce hamburgers in the KitchenAid on both the Broil and Convection Broil settings. After a preheat that was longer than 5 minutes, they cooked in 12 and 15 minutes respectively. They browned evenly and came out juicy, but as from all air fryers, they looked like broiled, not grilled or pan-fried burgers; there were no dark brown bits on the exterior.

When we baked a 9-inch yellow cake it came out with a moist and tender crumb, but we were disappointed in the top coloring. It was unevenly browned and very dark in places. Cookies spread out quite a bit, but were nicely browned and moist in texture. A 12-inch frozen pizza didn’t cook evenly and the bottom crust was soggy in the middle. 

On the medium toast setting, the KitchenAid made toast that was evenly golden brown. While it took longer than a pop-up toaster, it was faster than the other air fryer toaster ovens we tested, toasting to medium in about 4 minutes. You can toast 9 slices of toast at once but they won’t come out as evenly browned as two slices.

It took 45 minutes for four cups of cold macaroni and cheese to heat to a serving temperature on the Reheat setting, but the oven was able to keep the food nice and hot for a full hour without drying it out on the Keep Warm setting. Sliced strawberries dried to a leathery consistency when heated on the Dehydrate mode. 

KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer review: Ease of use and cleaning

There are two small dials on the control panel; one to select the cooking function and the other to select the cooking time which is displayed on a small LCD screen. In addition there are three small buttons to turn the convection fan on, start the program and cancel cooking. Operation is very straightforward with this in mind. This model comes with an oven rack, air fryer basket, enamel baking pan, broiling rack and a crumb tray. During cooking, an internal light switches on in the oven, making it easy to check on your food without opening the door.   

As it cooks, the unit becomes excessively hot in places with the left-top side reaching as high at 175°F and the door 278°F. The handle and dials do stay cool enough to touch, but the door’s hot enough that you couldn’t leave small children unsupervised around it. The KitchenAid has a dBA reading of 54.4 when it’s operating, which is the quietest we saw on test.

None of the parts are coated with a nonstick finish and while the manufacturer says the accessories are dishwasher safe, it recommends hand washing — so cleaning can be fiddly. The enamel surface on the baking pan makes it fairly easy to clean, but the air fryer basket can take a bit of work to return to a pristine condition. As the walls of the oven cavity have a nonstick finish, they can be wiped clean of splatters.

With this product, you get a user manual that thoroughly explains how to use it, but it contains minimal cooking charts and no recipes.

KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer review: Verdict

The KitchenAid Digital Countertop Oven With Air Fryer is a great air fryer that can do a lot more. As the controls sit below the oven, the cavity is large enough to hold a 13” by 9” baking dish, yet doesn’t take up excessive countertop space. 

While its roasting and baking performance was disappointing, it did a beautiful job of toasting bread evenly and toasted more quickly than other toaster ovens. It was a good all-round performer for air-frying as well, with the exception of chicken wings. We think it would be a great choice for people who want to air fry scratch fries and toast bread regularly. However, the door grows excessively hot in use, so it’s not one to have around small, unsupervised children.

Compared to the Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven, a similar model which we’ve also tested, the KitchenAid scored more highly for frying French fries, both frozen and fresh. However, the Cuisinart produced better chicken and achieved a higher mark for ease of use as well, mainly due to KitchenAid lacking detail in the manual.