One-minute review

Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer: one-minut review

Ninja is the kitchen appliance brand that just seems to be going from strength to strength. Not only is it known for making some of the best multi-cookers and air fryers around, but it’s continually innovating, producing numerous multipurpose appliances such as its blenders that double as food processors.

The Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer is known as the Ninja Foodi 5-in-1 Indoor Grill in the US or the Ninja Foodi Airgrill in Australia. Like many air fryers, it offers other cooking functions in addition to air frying. These include bake, roast and dehydrate, but it’s the grill function that sets it apart from the rest. It allows you to chargrill foods, but a smoke-control system means you can do it indoors without setting off your smoke alarm. It’s like having an outdoor grill or barbecue in your kitchen.

It comes with a cooking pot, crisper basket and grill plate, all of which are non-stick and dishwasher-safe; but not all can be stored inside the appliance at the same time. When measured in quarts or liters, the air fry basket isn’t huge. However, it feels generously sized thanks to its wide and shallow design, which means food can be spread out for better results.

On test we were impressed with the air frying and grilling results, but there’s no denying this is a chunky appliance that demands a lot of countertop space - especially when compared to slightly less bulky competitors likes some of the best air fryers we’ve seen. As such, it isn’t ideal for smaller kitchens. However, it’s worth it if you’ll get a lot of use out of the grill function; otherwise, you may as well plump for one of Ninjas standard air fryers instead.

The Ninja Double Stack is a great option if you want to cook more food without taking up a lot of space on your counter, and it took the prize for best air fryer in the 2024 TechRadar Choice Awards. If you want the smoky flavor of food cooked on a BBQ, without the mess, the Ninja Woodfire is well worth investigating. It uses wood pellets (available in different types) to create an authentic BBQ flavor, and can be used indoors or out, provided there's a power outlet within reach.

Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer: price and availability

• List price: £199.99 / $229.99 / AU$399.99

As mentioned above, the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer is known as the Ninja Foodi 5-in-1 Indoor Grill in the US or the Ninja Foodi Airgrill in Australia. You can buy it direct from Ninja and the price is similar to Ninja's other large-capacity air fryers. However, with this model you also get the ability to grill indoors as well as bake, dehydrate and roast.

Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer: design

• Intuitive control panel
• Auto preheat
• Dishwasher-safe parts

This Ninja grill and air fryer was chunkier than we were expecting, measuring 11 x 14 x 17 inches/ 26 x 35.6 x 45cm (h x w x d). In addition, the configuration of the hinged lid means it requires a fair bit of clearance around the rear to allow it to open fully. Not being able to push it to the back of the countertop only contributes to the unit feeling bigger than it is. Of course, you can push it back when it isn’t in use, but it still demands a good chunk of counter space.

The main cooking pot has a 6-quart/ 5.7-liter capacity, and if you’re air frying then you’ll need to insert the crisper basket, which knocks down the capacity to 4 quarts/ 3.8 liters. For grilling, there’s a heavy grill plate that sits inside the main cooking pot. Everything is dishwasher-friendly, but those without such an appliance needn’t worry since a stiff brush is also provided to help with cleaning the grill plate by hand. If you want to store the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer away in a cupboard, you’ll need space not only for the appliance itself, but also either the grill plate or the crisper basket, since both items can’t be stored inside the unit at the same time.

The control panel is easily accessible at the front of the appliance and is simple to use. For grilling, you can choose one of four heat levels. The air fryer can be set at temperatures between 300-450oF / 150-240oC; for roasting, the temperature range is 250-500oF / 120-260oC; or you can bake at 250-400oF / 120-210oC. The dehydrate function uses lower temperatures between 105-195oF / 40-90oC, but requires longer cook times. The screen combined with straightforward arrow buttons to adjust time and temperature mean there’s no complicated setup. The Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer even preheats automatically, informing you when it’s hot enough to add your food. It doesn’t remind you to shake or stir when air frying, however.

A quick-start guide as well as a recipe book with cooking charts offers plenty of guidance on time and temperature selections for common foods. Although note that there are very few suggestions for the roast and bake functions, so these will require some trial and error.

Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer: performance

• Plenty of space to spread out food when air frying
• Bar marks from grill are curved not straight
• Foods cook and brown evenly

Using this air fryer is slightly different to a standard air fryer with a pull-out basket. Instead, the crisper basket here drops into the appliance; you access food by lifting the top lid. The set-up is no better or worse than other air fryers, but it’s a bit trickier to shake food mid-cooking, since you’ll have to lift out the hot crisper basket in order to do so.

To test out the air fry function, we cooked up a batch of frozen thick-cut fries. We set the temperature to 360oF / 180oC, allowing the cooker to preheat with the crisper basket inside. This took just three minutes. Once hot, the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer prompted us to add the food and automatically started the countdown timer on closing the lid. There’s no reminder to shake or turn food during air frying, but we checked it half way through, lifting out the basket with oven gloves to give the fries a shake. After 20 minutes, the resulting fries were crisp, golden and perfectly cooked. Not only did they taste great, but they cooked faster than the 28 minutes they would have taken in an oven.

Next, we air-fried chicken wings, and we were impressed that there was enough space in the basket to hold seven wings side-by-side – you could easily fit more in, if you piled them on top of each other. Before air frying, we coated the wings in ½ tbsp oil and preheated the air fryer to 400oF / 200oC. We turned the wings after 10 minutes, and 15 minutes later they were cooked through with beautifully golden crisp skin and moist tender meat.

For our third test, we assessed the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer’s ability to cook raw hand-cut fries. As per the advice in the air fry chart, we soaked the raw fries in cold water for 30 minutes then dried them thoroughly. We coated them in 1tbsp oil and preheated the air fryer to 400oF / 200oC. The cooking chart advises 23-26 minutes, and we gave them a shake following 10 and 15 minutes of cooking. We removed them after 18 minutes because they were cooked and golden brown. The insides were fluffy and the crisping and browning on the outsides of the fried was pretty even.

The ability to grill is a core function of this air fryer, so we tried it out by grilling two beef burgers. We followed the suggestion in the grill chart and set it on high for 6 minutes. The grill is slower to preheat – it takes around 8 minutes – and you have to make sure the grill plate is inside, so it’s hot when the food is added. Once preheated, we added the burgers and then turned them after 3 minutes of cooking. We were impressed with the minimal amount of smoke and cooking smells emitted by the Ninja. The burgers were nicely cooked with charred lines on the outside, but the shape of the bars on the grill plate means the markings on the burgers were curved as opposed to the traditional straight marks you’d expect.

Cleaning the cooking pot and basket is easy thanks to the non-stick coating, or you can pop it in the dishwasher. The grill plate is a little more fiddly to wash by hand, but it’s made easier by using the brush that’s supplied by Ninja.

The air fryer didn’t go louder than 55dB on our noise meter; the grill was slightly noisier, but still only reached 58dB – which isn’t too loud at all.

Should you buy the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Read more about how we test

First reviewed: May 2022

Looking for a cooking appliance to enhance your existing lineup? Ninja’s versatile offering may just be for you. Lavishing us with choice, the Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300 joins Ninja’s fast-growing kitchen appliance collection. 

Best known for its range of blenders and food processors that rival the likes of Nutribullet in terms of style and functionality, Ninja designs appliances to ‘fit the lifestyles of busy people all over the world’. As well as blenders and food processors, the company offers an intuitive range of choppers, multi-cookers and health grills, all designed to create great tasting food, fast.

The AF300 is the latest model to join Ninja’s range of dedicated air fryers and multi-cookers, boasting the most sleek finish and convenient features to date. It’s unique in that it provides the ability to produce two separate dishes in record time. This is possible as a result of its Sync mode, which does the hard work for you by ensuring that the food you place inside – meat in one compartment and veg in the other, for example – are both ready at the same time.

The Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300 offers all the health benefits of a decent air fryer in that it can cook up to 75% faster than a fan oven, with little to no oil required. What’s more, it has the ability to carry out five other tasks, including max crisp for cooking frozen foods such as nuggets and chips; roast, for vegetables and meats; reheat, which is great for leftovers; dehydrate, for making veggie crisps; and bake, for when you fancy something sweet.

This is now one of Ninja's older models. If you're looking for something with good cooking capacity that will take up less space on your kitchen counter, check out the Ninja Double Stack, which has a two-tiered design with minimal transfer of heat between the two drawers, making it ideal for cooking two dishes at once. It's so good, it took the prize for best air fryer in the 2024 TechRadar Choice Awards.

If you like the flavor of barbecued food but not the hassle of scrubbing everything afterwards, take a look at the Ninja Woodfire, which uses wood chips to create an authentically smoky flavor.

Price and availability

You can buy the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300UK for £179.99 from the Ninja website if you're in the UK. 

Australian shoppers can also pick one up directly from Ninja Kitchen for an RRP of AU$399. It's also available in Australia from other major retailers, including Myer and Amazon, and is frequently discounted.

Design and key features

Ninja’s Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300 is unlike any other air fryer we’ve tried. As well as the ability to create healthy air-fried foods using little to no oil, it comes with a unique offering in that it can cook two separate foods at the same time and ensure they’re ready to serve together. 

Measuring an ample H31.5 x D35cm, it’s quite a large appliance as countertop gadgets go, but its design is sleek and attractive, as well as functional. A sophisticated black and chrome finish means it’s the kind of gadget you won’t mind keeping out on your worktop – provided you have the room for it.

The appliance feels ergonomic in hand and is luxuriously made. It features two independent cooking drawers that slide out easily to give you an overall capacity of 7.6 litres. Each compartment is deep enough to cook a decent amount of food – be it a 500g batch of sweet potato fries, 1kg of chicken or up to 12 cupcakes, for example. The drawer handles feel comfortable and are easy to insert and take out. 

Within each compartment is a crisper plate that helps to brown the food when you air-fry; it ensures that air can circulate around the food to remove excess moisture and ensure a crispy, golden finish. They also stop the food sticking to the base of each compartment. We found them easy to take out for simple cleaning, either by hand or in the dishwasher.

As well as air frying, the device has the ability to max crisp, roast, reheat, dehydrate and bake, too, and all these features are clearly marked on the digital control panel. The countdown timer also makes it easy for you to see how much cooking time remains in each section.

Performance

At 8.2 kg, lifting the Ninja’s Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300 out of the box and positioning it on the worktop is the hardest part of handling the machine. It features clearly marked controls that light up stylishly as soon as you plug in the appliance and turn it on.

The appliance comes with a quick-start guide book, which features recipes for inspirational meals you can cook inside covering chicken, pork, fish, vegetarian dishes and desserts. There are things listed that you wouldn’t necessarily consider air frying – browse between ‘Hunters BBQ Chicken and Chips’ to ‘Sweet and Sour Tofu and Asian Style Vegetables’.

To get a feel for the six-in-one appliance, we used it to perform a number of tasks. Firstly, we air-fried some fresh pork sausages and frozen sweet potatoes. While each zone automatically suggests a set time and temperature, you can easily adjust these to your preference. The guide suggests cooking sausages for around 9 mins at 200 degrees, and the sweet potato fries for around 20 minutes at 190 degrees. Once you’ve programmed your zone, you can then press Sync to ensure the foods finish cooking at the same time, which is a feature we’re most impressed by.

It’s recommended that you check food mid-way through the cook, giving it a shake to ensure food is being cooked evenly – but this almost defeats the whole USP of such a machine, whereby you’re meant to be able to set it and wait for the end to work its magic. That said, trying to get the perfect finish takes some experimentation.

The Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300 is a powerful machine. Our sausages cooked in super-quick time; in fact, following the suggested time, they were a little overcooked. As mentioned, this will improve as you become familiar with the machine and cooking times, and you’ll soon be creating flavoursome dishes in super-quick time.

We particularly like the fact that you can choose different settings for each compartment. For example, you can roast meat on one side, and bake on the other side. We tested its dual functionality by roasting chopped courgettes in one compartment and reheating lamb cutlets in the other. We were suitably happy with the results.

We also attempted to make a batch of halloumi fries – and were impressed at how well the fries kept their structure while they cooked. We were able to enjoy crispy, melt-in-the-mouth halloumi fries in under five minutes.

Should I buy the Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer AF300?

Buy it if…

You’re looking for inspiration. Bored of meal times? The Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer may just make dinner more interesting. Use it to create recipes from the dedicated recipe booklet such as ‘Coconut-lime Cod and Cauliflower Rice’ or ‘Chicken Fajitas with Spicy Roast potatoes’. 

You want flexibility in the kitchen. This device will give you six cooking settings in one, which you can access easily – use it to cook roast chicken on one side, and dessert on the other.

You want to avoid deep-fat frying but love the taste. Use this and choose a healthier air-fry option to limit the amount of oil you serve on your food.

Don’t buy it if…

You’re not a fan of fried food. The best thing about this device is its ability to crisp foods in under 20 minutes. If you prefer the taste of saucy slow-cooked dishes, this appliance probably isn’t for you. 

You expect the reheat function to act as a microwave. While it does revive leftovers, it doesn’t replace a standard microwave, which can cook ready meals or warm and melt liquids, for example.

You have a lot of mouths to feed. While the 7.5-litre capacity is large, you won’t be able to roast a whole chicken in this device. If you’re looking for something that can cook large batches, it’s worth considering a multi-cooker such as the Ninja Foodi Max Multi Cooker instead.