Forget all Ninja's other air fryers for a second - this humble model is their best kept secret

Ever heard of the Ninja Air Fryer Pro? Probably not. It's hidden amongst bigger names, but forget about them for a second. The Ninja Air Fryer Pro is the smallest air fryer in the brand's offering, but it's a seriously impressive model.

I’ve tested every Ninja air fryer on the market. Yes, even the ones that you can’t buy anymore. It’s a brag that comes from a place of air fryer obsession. And, whilst plenty of people will point to the Ninja Foodi Dual Drawer Air Fryer or space-saving DoubleStack when you’re looking for the best Ninja Air Fryer, I have a different place for you to look: the humble Ninja Pro.

This compact air fryer has flown under the radar for years. It quietly boasts an impressive 4.7L capacity, sleek design, and powerful motor. You’ll see it shouted about by dedicated air fryer experts, but I wanted to bring it to your attention as potentially the best value, most compact air fryer you can buy. I love it.

Ninja Air Fryer Pro review

Who would the Ninja Air Fryer Pro suit?

Unboxing the Ninja Air Fryer Pro

The Ninja Air Fryer Pro comes in a compact box, which makes delivery and carrying really easy. Inside, you’ve got a very simple set-up: there’s the air fryer, a recipe book for inspiration, and instructions (which are nice to have, but not needed, really). There’s no assembly needed and no stubborn stickers to peel off, so you can get cooking straight away. My one and only recommendation is that you give the air fryer drawer a rinse just in case any dust or dirt has settled in the drawer in transit.

I always use this section to talk about the packaging of an air fryer from a sustainability perspective, because I think it's a subtle, but nonetheless important way to gauge how much thought a brand puts into all elements of their products. The Ninja Air Fryer Pro scores top marks: all elements of the packaging can be flattened and recycled with your paper and cardboard. That's rare for an air fryer, so it's worth shouting about and celebrating (maybe with a portion of chips?)

What is the Ninja Air Fryer Pro like to use?

I was really impressed with how the Ninja Air Fryer Pro stands on the counter. It’s a super compact air fryer and yet, as you’ll see, it maximised on capacity in a way that was almost unbelievable. In the 4.7L drawer, you can cook up to 1kg of chips and a whole roast chicken. They're numbers that are usually reserved for family-sized models, but the Ninja Air Fryer Pro bucks the trend. I love a quiet underdog.

On the front of the Ninja Air Fryer Pro the menu offers a few pre-sets: air fry, roast, dehydrate, and reheat. Of course, these are only guidelines and you can change the temperature and cooking time of each using physical buttons.

Whilst plenty of brands are leaning into touchscreen and smart technology, I have to say, I love having buttons back. They’re so much easier to press with confidence (especially if your had are greasy from cooking) and it makes cleaning and maintaining the air fryer a lot easier. I’ve always found touchscreen air fryers show up finger marks and dirt so much quicker than button controlled air fryers.

With first impressions set out, it's time to get into the delicious part of testing: the cooking.

The fastest, most straightforward way to tell whether an air fryer is any good is by cooking a drawer of chips, from frozen. You get a great visual indicator of how evenly the air fryer cooks across the drawer from the colour of the chips, but you’ll also get a good sense of speed and temperature regulation. In an ideal world, you want chips that are steaming hot and soft in the middle, with some light crunch on the outside.

With that in mind, I emptied 750g of frozen chips into the drawer. As a side portion, this is enough to serve 4-6 people, which is a really decent capacity for a small air fryer. I could have filled the drawer with a full kilogram too, so if you've got a hungry home, the Ninja Air Fryer Pro is more than up to the challenge.

The pre-set for air frying chips in the Ninja Air Fryer Pro puts the temperature to 190°C, which I stuck with, setting the timer to 12 minutes. I normally give air fryers 16-18 minutes, but it’s helpful to get a mini gage of how things are cooking after the ten minute mark.

At 12 minutes they were, in fact, cooking wonderfully. I could see some nice colour at the tips of the chips, so I set the timer for another four minutes to see how a little more time would affect them. When the timer went off, I opened up the drawer to a perfect array of golden, crisp chips.

My only note is that you need to be ready and near the drawer for when the air fryer stops. On my third round of chip testing, I had my had full. Even though the Ninja Air Fryer Pro automatically turned off, the chips kept cooking, tipping the into the category of more brown than golden. They still had a lovely bite on the outside and lovey fluffiness on the inside, but I would have wanted them out at the 16 minute mark.

My extension of the chip test looks at fish fingers and chips. I could comfortably fit 12 fish fingers in the Ninja Air Fryer Pro drawer, which is seriously impressive As with the chips, I used the air fryer pre-set and checked on the fish fingers at 12 minutes.

They were golden, but still a little soft, so I tried cooking them for another 6 minutes, which is about the amount of time that I give all my air fryers for cooking fish fingers. Whilst the cook was even and thorough on the fish fingers, I would definitely be tempted to knock a couple of minutes off. On my repeated tests, I found the perfect fish fingers were the ones that came out at 15 minutes. All of the fish fingers across the drawer had a lovey crunch on the breadcrumbs, and a steamy, flaky inside.

Next, I tested the roasting setting, which works on lower temperatures, for longer. The test I always run with these is grilled vegetables, which covers a mix of pepper, courgette, aubergine, onion, and tomato, tossed in olive oil. The standard time it takes for vegetables to roast in an air fryer is 12-15 minutes and I would say that the Ninja Air Fryer Pro is spot on average.

You can see that the vegetables had a gorgeous gloss across the whole drawer, the tips had gorgeous, light brown speckles across them too. If you wanted them a little softer, go for a 12 minute cook, but equally, for more crisp, the 15 minute mark is spot-on.

I also really appreciated how lightweight the drawer was. The handle was easy to hold and tip, so I could empty the vegetables onto a plate without needing any utensils. Pair that with the non-stick and the whole process was hands-free, which is rare for air fryers. They're normally unwieldy, heavy, or vegetables get stuck in the basket.

The reheat setting is always one that I hold my breath for. The best air fryers should be able to revive last-night's leftover pizza to a level that will have you questioning whether you're actually eating a brand new pizza.

Whilst the Ninja Air Fryer Pro boasts impressive capacity for its size, the drawer is a touch too small to squeeze a full 12" pizza into. However, my half could slot in diagonally, with room for another piece. In seven minutes, the pizza was steaming hot, the vegetables were crispy, my sauce was still flavourful, and the base was crisp, but with doughy crusts. The Ninja Air Fryer Pro absolutely aced the reheat test, time and time again.

At this stage in the review, all of my formal tests were over. I had repeated each round time and time again, but I was so deeply fascinated by the Ninja Air Fryer Pro that I had to keep going. I wanted to find the limit to what this petite powerhouse could do.

I tested a slightly more complex dish, which involves me cooking rice and bulgar wheat, cooking ginger and garlic, mixing them with a glaze, adding vegetables, and then cooking everything together. It's a balancing act of consistency with the grains, speed with the vegetables, and nuance with the ginger and garlic. Done well, and you'll end up with a beautiful, warm grains bowl, done wrong and you're in for all sorts of chaos.

I didn't want to hope too highly with the Ninja Air Fryer Pro, but it had been so brilliant, I was secretly imagining it would be wonderful. It was. The rice was tender, not stodgy. The vegetables were soft, but still had some bite and I could taste that the garlic had been cooked until it was sweet, but not overcooked into bitterness. Another star for the Ninja Air Fryer Pro.

I have a seriously sweet tooth too, so I took my chance to run some baking tests. My 10" cake tin can be hit-and-miss with air frying, because it's a touch too deep for plenty of mainstream air fryers, especially compact models. Nonetheless, it's one of the best air fryer accessories I've ever owned, so I like to test it out when I can.

I had a suspicion that it would squeeze into the Ninja Air Fryer Pro and, of course, it did. I managed to bake a whole carrot cake in 25 minutes using manual controls to set the time and temperature on the Ninja Air Fryer Pro. The cake rose beautifully, browned evenly, and had a beautiful, light, fluffy texture. It was impossible not to love,

Riding the sugar high of my carrot cake success, I ran a cookie test too. Cookies are notoriously fickle in different temperatures, so I treated this as I do most air fryers. I set the temperature to 180°C and gave the cookies eight minutes, before checking.

Normally, they would need another four minutes to get crispy, but you can see that they were already on the dark side of golden at the eight minute mark. They had cooked beautifully, with crunchy outsides and a great cookie crust, but still with some gooey softness in the middle. I could be tempted to cut the time down to an almost unbelievable 6 minutes, but 8 minutes proved more than satisfactory (and also very speedy).

How does the Ninja Air Fryer Pro compare?

Before I had a flavour of what the Ninja Air Fryer Pro could do, the Instant Vortex 4-in-1 Air Fryer and Cosori Lite Air Fryer were my favourite compact air fryers on the market. If you're looking for space-saving models, these are absolutely worth taking a look at. Here's how they stack up against the Ninja Air Fryer Pro.

The Instant Vortex boasts an extra 1L capacity, but with that, it is a few cm bigger in all directions. In my tests, I didn't actually notice the extra capacity, but I also didn't notice the extra size. If you're looking for a really budget option, the Instant is great. However, I found the Ninja Air Fryer Pro had more nuance when it came to cooking on lower temperatures and it didn't have the same, strong plastic smell that came with the Instant.

The Cosori is also bigger than the Ninja, but the capacity is actually 3.8L, which is smaller than both the Instant and the Ninja. What this does offer is smart features, so you can control the temperature and settings of your air fryer from an app. I do like the modern design and extra function, especially for the price, but the controls sit on top of the air fryer, which doesn't always suit kitchens with high counters (or small chefs, like me). I'd go for this instead of the Ninja if you are really keen on smart features, or if you want to mix up the style. It's a great air fryer, but the Ninja Air Fryer Pro still has the edge for me.

Should you buy the Ninja Air Fryer Pro?

As far as compact air fryers go, this is perfection. I'd happily place it in a small kitchen, but equally think that it works hard enough to steal a spot in a larger, family home too. It's a testament to Ninja's expertise that they can make one of the smallest air fryers on the market, but kit it out with the best technology still. It's the industry's best kept secret.

How we test air fryers

At woman&home, we have a process for how we test air fryers. By following established tasks, we can look at each model's versatility and performance, whilst directly comparing them to each other. These tests span from simply cooking frozen fries through to more complex cookies and reheats of leftovers. We like to get a gauge of how versatile, powerful, and useful an air fryer is across the board, so that you can work out whether it's the perfect one for your home.

I'll also compare each air fryer to similar models, so that you get a good idea of whether the air fryer is good value for money too. If, after reading the review, you still have questions, don't hesitate to email me. I'm always happy to talk about all things air frying.