How economical/ energy efficient are air fryers?

Welcome back to Air Fryer Bro, and today we are taking a look at the subject of energy efficiency and air fryers. How economical are air fryers? Are air fryers energy efficient? How much electricity does an air fryer use? These are all questions we hope to answer by the end of this article.

So, sit back and grab your drink of choice 🙂

A quick disclaimer before we start. I am not an electrical engineer or an energy efficiency expert! I am a guy who loves using air fryers and wants to share his knowledge. If you disagree with any of my points, we would love to hear your view in the comments section below.

I have owned air fryers for quite some time now, and I can see they are powerful machines. They use powerful fans to push intense heat around their cooking compartment. Therefore, I have always wondered how much electricity my air fryer is using up. So……

How do we know how much electricity our air fryer is using?

To get us thinking about the energy efficiency of our air fryer, we first need to quantify how much electricity it is using. We will mainly do this by working out the wattage of the product.

How to find the wattage of your air fryer?

You should find the wattage amount printed on one of the many labels on your air fryer, so it shouldn’t take you too long to find it. On my Philips air fryer, I found it on the bottom of my unit. The wattage amount was clearly labelled.

However, if for some reason you can’t find the wattage of your air fryer, there are other ways.

Usually, most online stores will clearly list the wattage of all of the air fryers they sell. As long as you get the exact model that you own, this should be fine.

You can calculate the watts by looking at the number of amperes or amps used by the appliance. If you multiply the amp rating by the voltage the unit runs on, you will have the wattage rating.

How to compare with other kitchen appliances?

When comparing the energy efficiency of any kitchen appliance, it is not only about the amount of energy it is using, but also the length of time it is drawing this power. Some kitchen appliances may use very little energy but over a really long period of time, whereas others may use a lot for short bursts. You may find out that some seemingly power hungry devices are more energy efficient than you first thought.

Our Energy efficiency calculation

So, with all the above said and done, this will be the way we calculate how energy efficient any kitchen appliance is. As most power companies tell you how much you pay per kilowatt hour (kWH), this is the form our calculation will take. We will also calculate the daily energy usage, if you want the turn this into annual usage simply mutiply the result by the number of days you use your appliance in a typical year.

First, take the wattage of your air fryer and multiply it by the amount of hours used in a typical day. Divide this result by 1000 to get the daily KWH of energy used.

If you are finding this all a headache, you can find an excellent energy cost calculator over at the Department of Energy in America. As most of my readers are American, I am sure this tool will be very helpful.

Although this appliance energy calculator doesn’t list an air fryer as an option, as long as you input the correct wattage of your model it doesn’t matter. The kitchen appliances detailed are just there to give you a guide. Also, this tool is designed to give you annual energy costs. To get daily costs just tell the tool that you only use your appliance one day a year 🙂

Top Tip: to get more accurate usage information on your air fryer, you should keep an air fryer diary. Every time you use it for a week, you should note down the details. This will give you an idea of what your daily average usage of the appliance really is.

How energy efficient are air fryers when compared with other kitchen appliances?

Using the appliance energy calculator from the US Department of Energy, let’s try to compare a variety of different weekly energy uses for other kitchen appliances.

Of course, these calculations are made using estimates from my household. You may use your appliances for a shorter or longer time than me in a typical week. This is just supposed to act as a baseline, it would be a good idea for you to do your own calculations.

Also, these tests are assuming that we are using the appliances on the American power network. I will use the US average utility cost rate in the calculations. Naturally, your rates may vary. This tool does include average rates per state too, so you can tailor it to your needs if you live in America.

The air fryer

As my air fryer is 1425 watts. and I use it for 15 minutes on an average day, I got the following result for the week. $0.30 for a week’s use is not bad.

The soup maker

As I live in Hong Kong, my wife likes to make us soup everyday. She uses a small soup steaming machine to do this. A machine like this may be alien to most of you, but it is a good point of comparison for my household.

After peering on the bottom of this device, I found that it uses 200 watts. However, my wife literally uses it for two hours every day (making Chinese soup is a long process!). This is the result I got from the calculator. One weeks use of the soup maker is:

So straight away, I am gobsmacked to think that my wife’s soup making antics are costing more per week in energy than all of my air frying! A lot of people would look at this 200W soup maker VS the 1400 watt air fryer and assume it would use less!!

The kettle

As I am originally from England, I love to drink tea every day. Therefore, my electric kettle gets quite some use! I found out that my kettle is 2000 watts, and it takes 3 minutes to boil water each time I use it. With my tea and coffee drinking, I boil it three times a day. With all of this in mind, the kettles weekly usage is as follows:

I have to say. I am shocked that my kettle’s electrical usage per week is not far off that of my air fryer. And this is used just to boil water for tea and coffee!!

Are there any other factors that make air fryers energy efficient?

Insulation

When you look at most traditional air fryer designs, they have an excellent amount of insulation around their cooking compartments. This will help to keep more of the heat inside the appliance, rather than spreading it around your kitchen. Living in a hot climate, one of the reasons I love my air fryer is the fact it barely heats up my kitchen at all. Compare this will a regular oven, and you will find one of the reasons an air fryer is energy efficient.

Cooking times

If you go look at any of my air fryer cooking experiments (under the Bro Meals tab), you will see that the cooking times an air fryer needs are much shorter than even a fan assisted oven. I did an article about the best way to cook frozen french fries, and I ended up pretty much halving the recommended fan assisted oven cooking times.

Therefore, even if an air fryer seems power hungry, it is actually a lot more power efficient than you think, as it is on for a reduced time.

Compact size

Most typical air fryers are very small and compact in nature. This means they don’t require any preheating, and maintain their temperature more easily (combined with the insulation). This makes them more energy efficiency.

This compact nature also gives you a great cooking option when you are only cooking for one or two people. You don’t have to heat up a whole traditional oven to do this.

Are Air Fryers energy efficient and economical?

So after all is said and done, what is my conclusion? My personal conclusion is not to assume that an electrical appliance uses a lot of energy just because it has a high wattage rating. I was shocked to find that my wife’s 200 watt soup maker is costing more in electricity than my air fryer! I think a lot of people see this small machine, and assume they can use it extensively with nominal electricity cost.

The message here is that it all adds up. In my household, I would say that my air fryer IS energy efficient, if you consider it is our main source of cooking. After doing these simple calculations, I am surprised just how little it costs me!

I would encourage you to do similar calculations in your household. I bet you will be surprised too! You could even share your results in the comments section below! I would love some feedback as to how your air fryer compares to other kitchen appliances.

And if all this has got you wanting to buy your first air fryer, head over to our recommend products tab to see one that we currently recommend!