Compare the Best FryersAugust 2019

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

We currently list 169 fryers ranging from £12 to £559. The average price of a new fryer is £100 and 80% of fryers are priced between £30 and £191. The most expensive fryer that we found is the Smeg PGF30F at £559, and the cheapest is the Oster CKSTDF102SS at only £12.

Fryer Brands - Price Range

The average price of Smeg fryers is £559 which is the highest average price of all fryer brands. Smeg fryers start at £559 and their most expensive fryer costs £559.

The second highest average fryer price out of all brands is Zelmer fryers with an average price of £180. Zelmer fryers range in price from £180 to £180.

Cecotec fryers start at £172 and their most expensive fryer costs £172. The average price of Cecotec fryers is £172 which is the third highest average price of all fryer brands.

Fryer Brands - Average Ratings

We have checked 43 expert reviews and 4,548 user reviews for fryers and used this information to evaluate the average rating for each brand of fryer. The top rated fryer brand is Tefal with an average rating of 92%. The second best brand is Philips with 84% and the third best brand is DeLonghi with 81%.

Biggest Fryer Retailers

We found 151 current offers for fryers from eBay making it the biggest fryer retailer. That is much bigger than the second biggest retailer, Amazon UK for whom we found 79 current offers for fryers. The third biggest retailer is Currys with 21 current fryer offers.

When Are Most New Fryers Released?

Over the last 3 years we couldn't see any evident pattern in the release month for new fryers. The biggest month in 2018 for new fryer releases was June, with 13 new fryers released that month. In November 2017, 18 new fryers were released making it the biggest month that year for new fryer releases. 59 new fryers were released in September 2016 making it the biggest month that year for new fryer releases.

How Fast Do Fryer Prices Drop After Release?

In the first 6 months after release, fryers drop in price by 12% on average.

That means that on a typical fryer costing £47 you could save on average £6 by waiting 6 months before buying.

Powers

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

Across the range of fryers, the powers range from 140W to 10,000W. The powers of most 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 currently retails for £0.00. The Logik L30PFS12, which is available at £19.95, has the smallest power and is a 200W fryer.

Fryer Food Capacities

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

Comparing all fryers, the fryer food capacities range from 0.3kg to 17kg. The fryer food capacities of most fryers range from 1kg to 1.5kg. The Tower T14001, which sells for £37.61, has the biggest fryer food capacity and is a 17kg fryer food capacity fryer. The fryer with the smallest fryer food capacity is the Severin FR2437, which is a 0.3kg fryer food capacity fryer and is priced at £37.99.

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. 51% of fryers do are fryers with 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. 121 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. 80.1% of their fryer prices were the cheapest that could be found anywhere.