Product Evaluated:

Kalorik 26-Quart Digital MAXX Air Fryer Oven

About This Evaluation

Air fryers are extremely popular appliances that are relatively new to the kitchen ecosystem. Much like multi-cookers, air fryers sprang to popularity seemingly overnight, largely driven by online sales. We’ve been using air fryers for some time but wanted to dig deeper into the products on the market, what the major differences are between types of air fryers, and evaluate specific brands through systematic kitchen appliance testing.

In this analysis we are evaluating an oven-style air fryer from Kalorik, specifically the Kalorik 26-Quart Digital MAXX Air Fryer Oven. Kalorik was founded in Belgium in 1930, and they sell a wide range of household appliances, from vacuum cleaners to blenders to air fryers and multi-cookers. 

We tested the Kalorik oven in our Portland-based test kitchen, which is designed to mimic a home kitchen so we can get a real-world idea of how these products work in the environment in which they will be primarily used by the consumer.

Note that Kalorik makes a variety of air fryers, including a basket-style air fryer. There are advantages to both styles, but we’ll get into that in a minute.

What We Love

The Kalorik air fryer oven is a jack-of-all-trades, offering a battery of attachments and functions that do everything from convection baking to rotisserie cooking. For most folks, it could easily replace a traditional oven. In fact, we stopped thinking of this appliance as an air fryer and more as a countertop oven with air fryer capabilities.

It looks the part, too. With a stainless finish and French doors, this appliance was made to sit on your countertop and be admired by gadget enthusiasts. And, with the exception of the very loud timer (a great feature if you’re on the other side of the house or have other background noise going on), the Kalorik oven is exceptionally quiet. In our test kitchen, which has a moderate level of ambient noise, we had to put our ears right next to the appliance to hear any sound at all.

Opening the doors of the Kalorik oven during cooking doesn’t affect time or temperature settings you’ve already programmed into the appliance, so you can check on your food whenever you want without having to fuss with settings.

The user manual states that preheating the appliance is recommended. However, we found this step to be largely unnecessary for many cooking processes. We tested the Kalorik oven without preheating and had great success with cooking chicken, vegetables, and French fries. We recommend preheating for baking functions and for broiling steaks and chops, both processes where time and precision are of the essence.

What to Know

While the Kalorik oven has a ton of functionality, this comes at the expense of requiring a little more time to get used to programming the appliance. There are a lot of moving parts–a rotisserie spit, a bacon tray, a steak/dehydrator rack, and an air frying rack, all of which have slightly different instructions and positions for use.

Expect to spend some time perusing the manual and getting used to the nuts and bolts of operating this appliance. This is a reasonable trade-off if you’re looking for an appliance that can do it all (and honestly, kudos to Kalorik for not pretending that you can optimally perform a wide variety of cooking methods with only one accessory) or even replace a traditional oven.

We also found the attractive French-style doors to be a bit touchy–when the doors were open the slightest nudge would cause them to spring shut. It’s something that takes a little getting used to, but the advantage to these doors is that they are very attractive, they allow you to gaze upon the beautiful food you’re cooking to gauge its progress (something you can’t do with a basket style air fryer), and Kalorik has imprinted the doors with handy placement guides for the oven’s different accessories. This means less time perusing the user manual and more time cooking!

Features Analysis

• The Kalorik oven’s 500°F max temperature sets it apart. Essentially, this means you can broil in this appliance. For certain foods, the broil setting is going to get you better browning and faster cooking.

• The Kalorik oven’s French doors are a nice touch for users who want line of sight to the food they’re cooking (they also have handy placement indicators on them that tell you where to place the appliance’s different racks and accessories), and they have a classic appeal for those with more traditional kitchens. 

• The Kalorik’s marketing materials tout the oven’s ability to cook food 25-30% faster than a regular oven, and it delivers on this promise. Just being able to forgo the usual preheating for most foods is a huge time saver, and then the oven’s convection fan speeds up the cooking process considerably.

Real World Testing

Roasting Veggies

• For this test we roasted 1 pound (454g) of mixed vegetables with 1 tablespoon oil and ¾ teaspoon salt.
• Method: Used vegetable preset (10 minutes at 400℉); after 10 minutes the veggies weren’t done, so we repeated the cooking process, using the preset again. Total cooking time: 20 minutes
• Results: The vegetables were flavorful, tender, and well browned. While the preset wasn’t perfect for the veggies we used in our test, it would certainly work for quicker-cooking veggies like asparagus or green beans. And it was no big deal to hit that preset button twice!

Searing Meat

• For this test we cooked one 1” thick boneless ribeye steak.

• Method: Used steak preset (13 minutes at 500℉)

• Results: The Kalorik oven got pretty smoky during the broiling process. Luckily, we had an exhaust fan right next to the appliance that we could turn on, but if you didn’t the process would definitely smoke up your kitchen (to be fair, searing a steak in a skillet will have the same effect, if not much worse). The steak was well-browned and beautiful after cooking, but 13 minutes is way too long for all but the thickest of steaks (the broiler sits about 2” from the tray when it’s in the steak cooking position, so you wouldn’t want to go any thicker than 1½” for the steak). Further, you’re only going to be able to brown one side of the steak to perfection. You could flip it halfway through cooking, but then neither side will be truly seared. If we were to cook another steak in the Kalorik oven, we would favor programming the appliance manually instead of using the preset, but it’s awesome to know that you can get a good sear on a piece of meat in an air fryer oven!

Whole Chicken

• For this test, we cooked 1 whole chicken (3.56 pounds)

• Method: Used rotisserie and cooked for 40 minutes at 425℉. After 40 minutes the chicken wasn’t quite done, but was cooking a little unevenly, so we stopped the rotisserie and just cooked it on air fry mode for 10 minutes more to finish the cooking process.

• Results: Using the Kalorik’s rotisserie feature requires some fiddling, and even then it’s difficult to get the weight evenly distributed on the spit. What this means is that the imbalance causes the rotisserie to struggle to pull the heavier side up, and then once the heavy side reaches the top, it drops quickly. This results in uneven cooking. The weight imbalance is likely also hard on the rotisserie mechanism, but only time will tell how much wear and tear it can take.

• In the end, the chicken was nicely cooked and beautifully browned, but it made us question the utility of the rotisserie when you could more easily roast the chicken using the air fry or oven setting and get comparable results. To be clear, we wholeheartedly recommend using the Kalorik oven for roasting chicken but think you could skip the rotisserie.

Frozen French Fries

• For this test, we cooked one 20oz bag of sweet potato waffle fries in the Kalorik oven.

• Method: Used French fry preset (15 minutes at 450℉)

• Results: It was easy to space out the fries in the Kalorik oven’s spacious air fryer basket. The resulting fries were very evenly cooked, browned, and crispy, and the preset was spot-on. The basket allowed any grease to collect on the pan below the basket, making for less greasy results than if you were to cook the same fries in your regular oven.

Cookies

• We used premade ginger molasses cookie dough and portioned it in 1-tablespoon balls. We made 4 cookies at a time.

• Method: We used the bake function (350℉) and set the timer for 12 minutes.

• Results: The Kalorik oven transitions seamlessly from air fryer to convection oven, so the cookies came out perfectly shaped and golden brown.

Price Point

The Kalorik oven sells for $200 online. While more expensive than many air fryers, that is to be expected since this isn’t just an air fryer, but more like a small oven. Kalorik makes a variety of other air fryers that range in price from $70 to $150 depending on capacity and features, so their prices are very competitive.

Specs & Subjective Analysis

• Size/footprint: The Kalorik oven is 14” tall, 15.75” wide, and 12.5” deep. 

• Ease of use/intuitiveness: The Kalorik is initially less intuitive than some air fryers–it took an average of 10 minutes for our team to get the hang of its functions, how to operate the controls, and how to use the different settings. However, because this oven has a lot of functionality, this is not a design problem but rather a necessary part of getting the most out of your appliance.

• Noise: The Kalorik oven is almost silent. In our test kitchen, with moderate ambient noise, we had to put our ear right next to the appliance to hear anything. That said, the Kalorik oven’s alarm is loud enough that you can leave the room and be confident that you’ll hear it.

• Capacity: The Kalorik oven can handle 4-6 servings worth of food, depending on what you’re making. It can fit one small to medium sized chicken or up to 9 bone-in chicken thighs, 1 pound of vegetables, a 6-cup muffin tin, or a 10” cake, bundt, or springform pan. This is a pretty great feature, since most air fryers struggle with capacity and require cooking many foods in batches, which can negate some of the benefits of using an air fryer in the first place. It also means you can likely use most of the baking pans you already have rather than buying special pans just to fit in your air fryer.

Analysis