Best Ninja Air Fryers of 2026

A removable divider is the whole idea, and it's a better one than it sounds. Leave it in and you have two 3.5-quart zones running different temperatures and times; pull it out and the same drawer becomes a single 7-quart MegaZone with room for a 4-pound pork roast or a chicken with vegetables banked around it.

That flexibility is why we like it best for households that cook one big thing on Sunday and two small things on Tuesday. It reaches 450 °F, runs six functions including broil and bake, and holds about 2 pounds of food per zone — all in a single drawer instead of two, which keeps the front-to-back depth down to 11.79 inches, shallow enough for a narrow counter run.

Both crisper plates and the divider are dishwasher-safe, and the nonstick wipes out between batches, so the extra pieces cost you a slot in the rack rather than time at the sink. What you don't get is a temperature probe or two full-size drawers; for those, step up to the 10-quart machines. For everyone else, this is the most useful shape Ninja sells.

Wings at 400, potatoes at 350, both done at the same minute — that is the promise of two independent baskets, and this is the machine that delivers it for the least money in this group. Smart Finish holds the faster zone back so the two land together, and Match Cook copies settings across when you're doing a double batch of the same thing.

Six functions cover air fry, broil, roast, bake, reheat and dehydrate, the nonstick surface is PFAS-free, and both crisper plates go in the dishwasher. The baskets pull and reseat cleanly with a full load, which matters more than it sounds when you're shaking fries one-handed with the other drawer already running.

The honest caveat is time. A single 1,690-watt heater is doing the work of two baskets, and frozen food can run longer than the bag suggests, so treat this as a convenience machine rather than a fast one. We still think it's the dual-zone buy here: it cooks the same dinner as the pricier Foodi Smart, minus the probe.

The trick is vertical. Two 5-quart baskets sit one above the other in a 15.14-inch-tall body, which is what lets a 10-quart machine fit under a standard 18-inch cabinet gap — and why the whole thing is only 11.25 inches deep. On a short run of counter, that's the entire argument.

We like it for a household of six to eight that wants one appliance doing four jobs. Each basket takes a removable meal rack, so a protein and a side cook up top while vegetables and potatoes run below, and two 5-pound chickens at once is genuinely on the table. Six functions including broil and bake, plus Smart Finish to line the two zones up.

The lower basket runs behind the upper one, so anything on the bottom rack needs extra minutes — swap racks halfway through a long cook and the gap mostly closes. Cooking times also run past the package directions more often here than on the single-basket models. Neither matters much if the alternative is a unit that won't clear your cabinets.

The probe is the reason this one exists. Plug the Foodi Smart Thermometer into the left basket, choose rare through well-done, and the machine cooks to temperature and shuts off on its own — precisely the babysitting a basket air fryer usually demands and can't provide. No opening the drawer every four minutes to poke at a pork loin.

Everything else is the 10-quart dual-zone machine: two independent 5-quart baskets, a 450 °F ceiling, six functions, Smart Finish and Match Cook, PFAS-free nonstick and dishwasher-safe crisper plates. Same 19.8 pounds, same 17-inch-wide counter commitment. The thermometer is what the extra money buys, so the decision is really whether you cook to temperature or just to time.

If you roast chicken breasts, pork loin, or steak more than once a week, it earns its keep and then some. If your air fryer mostly deals in frozen food and leftovers, the DZ401 does the same cooking for a lot less, because the probe is a one-trick upgrade on an otherwise identical machine.

Two 4-quart glass containers, each with its own lid, slide in from the front on a self-aligning track. There's no nonstick coating anywhere in the cooking path — the vessels are borosilicate, PFAS- and PTFE-free, and they go from the fridge to the fryer to the table to the dishwasher without a transfer in between.

Underneath it's a real dual-zone machine: two independent 4-quart zones, 1,785 watts, a 450 °F ceiling, and the same Smart Finish and Match Cook logic as the basket models — stagger the start times and both sides land together. Six functions cover air fry, max crisp, roast, bake, dehydrate and recrisp, and the touch panel is as simple as Ninja's gets.

What it changes is the workflow. Nothing to baby with silicone utensils, no liners to buy, and the dish you cooked in is the dish you serve from and the one you store in. If you've avoided air fryers because you didn't want another coated pan wearing out, this is the model that answers that objection directly.

Buy the two containers as a pair and one can hold leftovers while the other cooks, which is how the system makes most sense. The 8 quarts is two 4-quart zones rather than one giant basket, so a big single batch still means running both sides at the same temperature.

The original 4-quart Ninja is the air fryer most people have actually used, and it still does the basics without drama. It's also the clearest measure of how fast this lineup has moved: the 5-quart Pro above holds more food and costs less, which is an odd sentence to write about a machine this familiar.

Four quarts is a two-person basket — about two pounds of fries, a couple of chicken breasts, enough nuggets for small kids. The ceramic-coated nonstick releases cleanly and wipes out in a rinse, and the 4-in-1 set (air fry, roast, reheat, dehydrate) is the same one the Pro carries. Overload the basket and everything steams instead of crisping, which is true of every air fryer but happens sooner in a 4-quart one.

The size question cuts both ways. One person finds 4 quarts generous; a family finds it crowded after a single round of wings. And at 13.3 inches tall it stands higher than the Pro despite the smaller basket, which rules out some low cabinet gaps that the 10.39-inch body clears.

We kept it on the list for one buyer: someone cooking for one or two who wants the plainest controls Ninja makes. Everyone else should put the money toward the Pro, which is the better machine at a lower price — an easy call that wasn't true a couple of years ago.

Two snap-on lids are the part of this system we didn't expect to care about. They turn the cooking vessel into the leftover container, so a batch of roasted vegetables goes from the base to the fridge without a second dish — and the borosilicate glass is free of PFAS, PTFE and any nonstick coating.

The base itself is small — 11.73 inches deep, 11.85 wide — and at 11.4 pounds it's light enough to lift out of the way, which is the point of the design. Six functions, 1,800 watts and a 450 °F ceiling put it level with the basket machines on heat, and every piece of glass is dishwasher-safe.

Where the system earns its keep is the modular sizing. The 6-quart vessel takes a 7.5-pound chicken and feeds a crowd; the 2.5-quart one handles a single portion without heating a family-sized container. The base adjusts to fit a 4-quart vessel as well, though that one isn't in the box.

It makes most sense in a small kitchen where the base can disappear into a cabinet and the glass does double duty as storage and serving. It's the one glass model here you can move with one hand, and the sizing means a solo lunch doesn't cost you a whole shelf.