I'm so impressed by the Lakeland Dual Basket air fryer, and it's under £100

While it stands to reason that cooking foods in a small efficient air fryer as opposed to your big oven, is likely to be a great energy saving hack. The initial outlay for a decent air fryer that’s big enough to feed a family can be off-putting.

So when Lakeland, a brand with a reputation for great customer service, brought out its own dual basket air fryer for under £100, our ears pricked up. The Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer with Easy View offers two independent 4 litre cooking drawers, each with a handy window in the front, so you can keep an eye on your food while it cooks.

Not only do I review tens of the best air fryers every year, but I’m also an avid air fryer user in my day-to-day life. So when I had this model in my kitchen for a week, it got plenty of use. There are certain features and functions that I’m always looking for regardless of the price, even if it's the most premium Ninja air fryer. And for the most part, it didn’t disappoint.

Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer specifications

• RRP: £99.99
• Dimensions: H:32.5 x W:40 x D:42cm
• Presets: steak, chicken wings, seafood, fish, pizza, chips, bake, vegetables
• Dishwasher safe? No
• Maximum temperature: 200C
• Maximum timer: 60 minutes

My first impressions of the Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer

As I’d expected, the air fryer requires no setup. Once out of the box, the biggest thing you need to do before using it, is perhaps give the drawers and removable crisper plates a quick wash. 

On the worktop it looks sturdy yet streamlined, which is in part thanks to the touch control panel that, apart from the power button, is only illuminated when it’s switched on. However, while the baskets aren’t in position, the word ‘open’ is illuminated on the display unless you turn it off at the plug, which is a little annoying.

There’s a handy preheat button, allowing you to quickly select an automatic preheat if needed. And the sync button is a necessary feature that takes the thinking out of ensuring both baskets finish cooking at the same time.

There are eight presets for common foods like chips and vegetables, these are helpful for when you’re unsure, or if you’re new to air frying. The manual includes a guide as to the quantity of food each of these presets are designed for, but I always suggest using presets as a rough guide. 

All-in-all the control panel wasn’t the most straightforward I’ve used. But after consulting the manual and using it a few times, it didn’t take too long to get to grips with. However, this is worth considering if you’re buying it for anyone who needs a very straightforward clear control panel. Especially because while you’re adjusting some settings, several symbols can flash simultaneously which is very distracting and potentially confusing for some people.

How does the Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer perform?

Homemade chips are an air fryer staple in my house. I used the handy fries preset which automatically set the time and temperature. And with a couple of good shakes during cooking, my two portions of chips cooked perfectly in the preset time. 

What’s more, it was very handy having the viewing window and light, so I could keep an eye on the colour of the chips without opening up the drawer and pausing cooking more often than needed.

Similarly, bacon is another food that I exclusively cook in my air fryer. Each drawer has space for three slices of back bacon side-by-side. So if you’re making sandwiches for two, you’ll need to cook it in batches or use both drawers.

In just eight minutes at 190C, the bacon fat crisped up, without the rest of the meat becoming overcooked. My only bugbear was having to wash the greasy drawer by hand, instead of throwing it in the dishwasher.

I was surprised that I was able to fit three frozen spicy bean burgers into one drawer. The frozen burgers were cooked with a crunchy breadcrumb coating in 18 minutes. This isn’t super speedy but still five minutes less than they take in the oven and far crunchier.

During the time I was testing this air fryer I made a couple of the recipes that I spotted in the manual. The first was crispy spiced chickpeas. This effortless healthy snack simply involves coating tinned chickpeas in some spices and a spritz of oil.

After 20 minutes, with a shake every five minutes, you get a surprisingly crispy and moreish snack that’s completely guilt free. I’ve had little success with crispy chickpeas in my oven, but this air fryer recipe won me over!

The next recipe I attempted was courgette fritters. These little patties are mostly made of grated courgette, egg, breadcrumbs, parmesan, garlic and spring onion. Despite the recipe stating it’s enough to make 2-3, I made five fritters from the mixture.

I used both drawers to cook them, but the suggested 7 minute cook time was ambitious. Mine took a further 14 minutes, so 21 minutes in total. I didn’t mind though, because once cooked, they were beautifully crisped on the outside, with a scrumptious garlic and parmesan flavour.

Homemade sweet potato wedges alongside frozen breaded fish was a great way to test out the sync finish function. I set the wedges to air fry for 25 minutes and the fish for 15 minutes. By pressing the sync finish button, the air fryer pauses the side with the lower time so that both sides will finish cooking simultaneously.

What tripped me up on this first go, was that unlike some other air fryers, there’s no beep or prompt to tell you to add the food to the second drawer. Instead it just starts cooking. So although I had a mad rush to get the fish into the drawer, I knew for next time to put it in sooner.

Another issue I quickly noticed was that when removing a drawer to shake or turn the contents, the timer only pauses on the side you’ve removed. So because I removed the wedges to shake them more times than I opened the fish drawer, the timers started to become out of sync, which was a little frustrating when I’d planned for a sync finish.

All is not lost though, you can get around this by pressing the power button first. This pauses both timers, so that you can open one of the drawers without them getting out of sync. You just have to remember to press it again to continue cooking once you’ve finished stirring or shaking the food. 

Partly because I hadn’t bothered to preheat the air fryer and also because my sweet potato wedges were on the chunky side, I had to add five minutes to the total cook time to get the perfect result. This was a longer cook time than I expected, but worth the wait for golden wedges and perfectly moist fish with a crunchy coating.

How does the Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer compare?

The Tefal Easy Fry Dual Air Fryer is a similar capacity air fryer with one notable difference. Instead of having two even sized drawers, it has one larger 5.2 litre drawer alongside a smaller 3.1 litre drawer. This opens up the possibilities for cooking larger foods like a whole chicken. But, at double the price, the extra outlay may be hard to justify.

If the size of your household means you need a supersized air fryer, the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer is the one you need. Yes it’s expensive, but its 10.4 litre capacity coupled with the option to use it as either a single zone or a dual zone model, makes this one of the best you can buy, especially if you’re feeding a crowd. 

Should you buy the Lakeland Dual Basket Air Fryer?

On the whole, this air fryer is a great buy. I think it’s fantastic value for money when you consider what you can pay for a dual drawer air fryer from a leading brand such as Ninja. That said, Ninja is known for its incredibly straightforward and intuitive control panels which this model lacks. But you soon get used to the control panel and its quirks.

Most foods I made in it cooked beautifully, if a little slower than I expected. But considering it has desirable features like streamlined touch controls and viewing windows in the drawers, it offers far more than you might expect at this price level- as long as you don’t mind washing the drawers by hand.

About this review, and the reviewer

After completing a Home Economics degree, Helen went on to work for the Good Housekeeping Institute and has been reviewing home appliances ever since. She lives in a small village in Buckinghamshire in the UK. She is now freelance and draws on her wealth of experience to review a huge variety of home appliances.

Helen used this air fryer at home in place of her regular air fryer. She cooked meals and snacks for herself and her husband, trying out new recipes as well as some old favourites.