Philips Viva Airfryer HD9220 Review

What’s the Philips Viva Airfryer?

The Philips Viva Airfryer is a scorching air cooker that provides a more healthy different to deep fats frying. It’s successfully a small fan oven in your worktop.

Its chips are very good for a well being fryer – one of the best we’ve examined. However its repertoire past chips is pretty restricted. And it’s let down by a small capability and a big price ticket.

 

Philips Viva Airfryer – Design and Options

The design of the Viva Airfryer is surprisingly compact on the worktop; it’s tall and skinny relatively than huge like rotary well being fryers. The highest part is a heating factor and fan, whereas the underside part is drawer that pulls out to disclose the cooking basket. In consequence, there’s no window for maintaining a tally of cooking progress. The underside of the basket is a metallic mesh, so air passes straight by way of it and hits the underside of the drawer, which is sculpted to flow into air.

Controls are easy: a dial on the prime allows you to set temperature (80-200°C) whereas the timer knob above the deal with controls cooking. And on the again there’s an uncommon twine storage that’s useful, though it protrudes annoyingly.

It cooks as much as 800g of chips, with a tablespoon (18ml) of oil, to provide 3% fats chips. And it cooks them a bit quicker than a rotary well being fryer: 22 minutes for 800g at 180°C. Curiously, it comes with recipes to twice “fry” bigger wedges, first at 160°C then at 180°C.

The accompanying recipe e-book makes it clear that the Viva Airfryer is mainly a small fan oven: baked potatoes, spring rolls and drumsticks; plus you may prepare dinner truffles, crumbles and quiches in an oven dish inside it – good luck discovering a sufficiently small oven dish.

Philips Viva Airfryer – What’s it like to make use of?

The Philips’ design is interesting – compact and shiny. And the timer knob is cool in a retro means: it’s an analogue timer however the Viva Airfryer does flip off (and make an old style “ding”) once you’re out of time.

To organize chips, it is advisable to first toss them in oil in a bowl. Then pop them into the pre-heated machine. The fan is audible however not noisy sufficient to get in the best way of a dialog or the radio.

The ensuing chips have been spectacular: prepared in simply 20 minutes and tastier than any of the opposite well being fryers we’ve examined. They have been barely dry, not fairly comfortable and fluffy sufficient within the center, however decidedly tastier than an oven chip.

As an experiment we cooked recent chips comprised of the identical potatoes within the oven with a spoonful of oil, stirring them simply as soon as midway by way of the cooking time. The Viva Airfryer is the one wholesome fryer that made chips that would beat them.

We additionally tried to prepare dinner prawn crackers in it. We weren’t optimistic after disastrous makes an attempt in rotary well being fryers, however the Philips at 200°C cooked them shortly and passably – they weren’t as huge and fluffy as you’d anticipate from a deep fats fryer, however they weren’t as greasy both. The one downside was that, with no window to control progress, you would hear them getting blown round inside but it surely was onerous to inform whether or not they have been cooked or not.

Cleansing was OK – the wire mesh on the backside of the cooking basket takes a superb brushing as a result of it catches all the things, but it surely’s not as greasy a job as cleansing a deep fats fryer basket.

Ought to I purchase the Philips Viva Airfryer?

Sure if you wish to prepare dinner wholesome chips. That is the one machine we’ve examined that makes wholesome recent chips that style higher than the identical chips cooked in an oven.

In case your precedence is tasty chips, relatively than worrying about fats content material, then contemplate the DeLonghi RotoFry F28311 or the Sage Multi Fryer. And if you wish to prepare dinner massive portions of wholesome chips, contemplate the DeLonghi Multifry Additional… or simply use the oven.

Verdict

A powerful, small scorching air well being cooker that makes tasty, wholesome chips… however not a lot else.