SYNC Finish, Serve Together: Thanks to 2 independent frying baskets, you can use different programs, times and temp in each draw, both ready at the same time. With Dual Cook Function, get the double guilt-free fried foods with the SYNC cook function.

Within each basket is a crisper plate, which can sit either one-third or two-thirds of the way down depending on what you’re cooking – you can bring foods like sausages closer to the heat source when grilling for a better finish. A handy little touch is the addition of grippy silicone feet on both sides of the grill plate that helps it stay securely place, even if you’re tipping a basket of chips onto a plate.The top row is reserved for all eight cooking modes: air fry, roast, air crisp, broil, bake, dehydrate, reheat and grill. Once you select one of the cooking modes, you’ll then be able to tap either L or R, depending on which basket you use and tweak your time and temperature settings using the up and down keys on either side. One of the more interesting features of the touch interface is Sync Finish. As the name suggests, this allows you to individually set each basket’s mode, temperature and time and have them both finish simultaneously.

Also on the control panel is the light button, which illuminates the cooking cavity for a minute, thanks to a window within the drawer. The window itself is small, slightly tinted, and obscured by a handle, so it’s not always easy to see how brown the food actually is. Having two completely independent cooking drawers means you can easily prepare two different foods at once, also using different programmes, times and temperatures for each drawer (e.g. roast in one; air fry in the other), yet also instruct the Chefree to have everything ready to serve at the same time. This 'Sync Finish Function' is actually reasonably amazing, to be fair, and it takes a lot of hassle out of cooking large meals to feed a family or even just something for yourself of an evening. No need to cook elements of the menu sequentially: everything can be ready at once (provided your planned meal fits into two drawers, obvs). It doesn’t get too warm on the lid, but even so, I’d not recommend leaving anything on there that could potentially burn or melt over longer periods of use. The bigger thing to worry about is the dual rear exhausts, which can put out quite a bit of hot air during use. You can also search recipes by your specific Chefree model (Chefree makes more than one air fryer, as you can imagine), so the app will tell you exactly which buttons to press. It's the ultimate idiot's guide to air frying, but genuinely useful to get you up and running. Once you get the hang of things, new ideas and ingredients should start to pop into your head unbidden, as the potential of the device gradually dawns on you.Of course, you don’t buy a huge air fryer to make cheese on toast, so let’s talk about more involved meals.

Grilling food using your oven can deliver mixed results, as anyone who’s ever burnt meat or veggies while using one can attest to. The controls are at the front in a touchscreen panel: there are presets for roasting, air frying, air broiling (similar to grilling), baking, beef and fries, as well as a four-temperature air grill setting, and manual controls for both time and temperature. Beyond the presets, there’s very little guidance on which settings each food requires, so for veggies and poultry, for example, it’ll be a case of trying different programmes out to find the best one.Still, if your kitchen countertops are big enough, it’s doable – and there’s a good reason why it’s so large. The post-pandemic parallel stresses of a cost-of-living crisis compounded by soaring energy bills has been a positive boon for the air fryer industry. People have still got to eat, so the idea of being able to prepare hot meals in half the time has proved a deliciously attractive proposition.