It’s summer, the time of year where the heat is on the rise, and and when BBQs can become a weekly occurrence. What goes better with a burger or hot dog straight off the grill than some crispy fries. Unfortunately, ovens can increase the heat in your kitchen, take forever to preheat, and still don’t give that deep-fried crispiness to your food.
Fortunately, there are air fryers which are meant to solve all of these issues, and Proscenic was nice enough to send us out its T21 Smart WiFi Air Fryer for review.
Key Features
- Large 5.8-quart size
- Wi-Fi connectivity with app support
- 400-degree maximum temperature
- Detachable dishwasher safe basket
- Aluminum non-stick basket with two coatings of Teflon
If you’re like me, you’ve heard a lot about air fryers over the years and always been curious about them. The Proscenic T21 Smart WiFi Air Fryer was my first experience with an air fryer and I came away pretty impressed.
For starters, it preheats at least twice as fast as my traditional oven saving me time on waiting for it to reach temperature. Next, I was surprised at how much quicker food cooks with an air fryer. That’s something you really have to watch out for with it because I had to cut the cooking time in half or even more to ensure food didn’t come out burned.
Then, on top of cooking more quickly, it also gave food the sort of crispiness and crunch I’m typically used to from a deep fryer, but without all of the oil and mess. Fries, chicken tenders, and more came out ten times better than putting them in a regular oven.
Finally, the app made it convenient to keep an eye on the cooking, and as an Android-focused site, we’re always interested in products that allow us to use our mobile devices to take control. Just be aware that the app and recipe book come with some grammar errors. In fact, I found the recipe book even used the wrong photo for one of the recipes.
Besides a few grammar errors, my biggest criticism of the Proscenic T21 Smart WiFi Air Fryer was the initial smell. At first, it had a strong plastic chemical smell. After a couple of runs I noticed a small sliver of tape that matched the interior had begun to wrinkle up.
Removing this tape, which appears to have served no purpose, did wonders for the smell. It still had an odor, but it was much weaker; every run since then has been an improvement. Reviews on Amazon only cite a handful of people mentioning the smell out of thousands though. Perhaps we unlucky few received a model with bad quality control or we’re just more sensitive to scents, which admittedly I am.
Some other things to be aware of are that you’ll need to leave at least six inches of space behind the air fryer for the vent on the back, and it also makes quite a bit of noise from the fan blowing on the inside.
Those are minor annoyances, if that, and besides the smell that has now improved dramatically, I’ve had no complaints about the Proscenic T21 Smart WiFi Air Fryer.
Where to buy
The Proscenic T21 Smart WiFi Air Fryer is available now for $110 from Amazon by clipping the $20 off coupon or on Proscenic’s website for $129.
