Compare the Best FryersOctober 2018

Fryers use very hot oil to cook food quickly and thoroughly - the food is quickly cooked by the hot oil, often resulting in a crispy outside, but a tender inside. Most people connect home fryers with chips - allowing you to easily recreate the crispy, fluffy chips found in restaurants and cafes. However they can be used for many other different types of food, including fish, vegetables, samosas or chicken. Due to the high temperatures involved in the cooking procedure, modern fryers have significant safety features to minimise the chance of accidents, and contain pre-set modes for the most commonly-cooked foods.

Capacity

All our fryers have a food capacity, measured in kilograms. The larger the capacity, the more food you can cook in one go - this may be especially useful for large families. However larger fryers also have a significantly larger footprint, and so will take up more counter space in your kitchen.

Power Levels

All of our fryers are given a power level, rated in watts. The higher the wattage, the more power the fryer has. This translates to faster and more efficiently cooked food, but also to higher electricity bills. Fryers tend to be quite power hungry, so it may be prudent not to automatically buy the device with the highest power - a good mid-point between power and cost-efficiency is important.

Low Fat & Air Frying

While traditionally deep fat frying has been seen as an immensely unhealthy form of cooking, there are several healthier options available. Low fat fryers are specially designed to use less oil than standard fryers, meaning the resulting food has a lower calorie count, and is therefore healthier. Under these systems a single teaspoon of oil will suffice for an entire portion of chips, so the calorie count can be a mere fraction of what it would be using a traditional method.

A growing section of the healthy frying market is so-called ‘air’ fryers - a range of cookers that use superheated air to fry the food instead of oil. Because they use very little or no oil (some models use a very small amount of oil to 'kick start' the air heating) the resulting food is far lower in calories and fat. Indeed, tests have shown that with a 300g portion of chips, airfrying reduced the calories from 717 to 576! Also, because they don’t use oil you don’t have to worry about disposing of the used frying oil - which makes them far more ecologically friendly as well.

Generally speaking these low-fat and air fryers are more expensive than their traditional counterparts. However, given how much lower in both calories and fat the resulting food is, the health benefits may far outweigh the extra expenditure.

Fryer Prices

The price range of fryers is from £19 to £1,089 and in total we found prices for 195 fryers. On average, a new fryer costs £99 and 80% of fryers are priced between £35 and £203. The most expensive fryer that we found is the Miele CS 1411 F at £1,089, and the cheapest is the Brentwood DF-701 at only £19.

Fryer Brands - Price Range

Miele fryers start at £1,089 and their most expensive fryer costs £1,089. The average price of Miele fryers is £1,089 which is the highest average price of all fryer brands.

The second highest average fryer price out of all brands is Smeg fryers with an average price of £492. Smeg fryers start at £492 and their most expensive fryer costs £492.

The average price of Gourmetmaxx fryers is £317 which is the third highest average price of all fryer brands. Gourmetmaxx fryers start at £317 and their most expensive fryer costs £317.

Fryer Brands - Average Ratings

We have analysed 45 expert reviews and 9,713 user reviews for fryers and used this data to evaluate the average rating for each brand of fryer. Philips is the top rated fryer brand with an average rating of 92%. Tefal is the second best brand with 91% and DeLonghi is the third best brand with 87%.

Biggest Fryer Retailers

The biggest fryer retailer by number of products currently for sale is eBay. We found 157 current fryer offers from eBay. The second biggest retailer is Amazon UK with 134 offers. That means eBay is slightly bigger than Amazon UK when it comes to fryers. Currys is the third biggest retailer with 25 current offers.

When Are Most New Fryers Released?

Most new fryers tend to be released between July and September. September was the biggest month last year for new fryers, with 16 new fryers released that month. In 2016 most new fryers were released in September as well, with 61 new fryers released that month. The biggest month in 2015 for new fryer releases was July, with 24 new fryers released that month.

How Fast Do Fryer Prices Drop After Release?

New fryers drop in price by an average of 13% in the first 6 months after they wer first released. On a typical new fryer costing £64, by waiting 6 months before buying you could save on average £8.

Powers

'Power' is the power level of the fryer, measured in watts.

Comparing all fryers, the powers range from 140W to 10,000W. The powers of the majority of fryers range from 1,400W to 1,700W. The fryer with the biggest power is the Bartscher SNACK IV, which is a 6,500W fryer and is priced at £318.71. The fryer with the smallest power is the Logik L30PFS12, which is a 200W fryer and currently retails for £19.98.

Fryer Food Capacities

'Capacity' denotes how much food the fryer can hold at once, measured in kilograms.

The fryer food capacities of fryers range from 0.3kg to 17kg. The fryer food capacities of the majority of fryers range from 0.8kg to 1.2kg. The fryer with the biggest fryer food capacity is the Tower T14001, which is a 17kg fryer food capacity fryer and is available at £35.04. The Severin FR 2437, which sells for £0.00, has the smallest fryer food capacity and is a 0.3kg fryer food capacity fryer.

Low Fat Frying Functions

A low-fat frying function serves to fry food using only a fraction of the oil normally used.

The number of new fryers that do and are fryers without a low fat frying function is roughly the same. 151 out of 311 do are fryers with a low fat frying function and 160 out of 311 are fryers without a low fat frying function.

Which Are the Cheapest Retailers for Fryers?

The chart below helps you decide which retailer is normally cheapest for buying fryers. For each retailer it shows the total number of fryers where they currently have a market leading price. The chart below helps you decide which retailer is normally cheapest for buying fryers. For each retailer we took all of their prices and looked at what proportion of those prices where the cheapest on the market. The cheapest retailer that we found was eBay. 117 of their fryer prices were the cheapest that could be found anywhere.

Proportion of Fryers for Which Each Retailer is Cheapest?

Assessing how cheap each retailer is for fryers by counting the number of cheapest prices for that retailer, makes the retailers that offer the greatest number of fryer prices more likely to offer the greatest number of cheapest prices. The chart below considers the proportion of each retailer's fryer prices that are the cheapest compared to other retailers. The cheapest retailer that we found using this approach was eBay. 74.5% of their fryer prices were the cheapest that could be found anywhere.