Product Review: Cosori Iconic Stainless Steel Air Fryer

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This product review is based on our own experiences and opinions. Cosori recently gifted us the Iconic Stainless Steel Air Fryer and we’ve been using it a few times a week over the past month to test it thoroughly. We will never review a product that we don’t own ourselves or haven’t had the proper time to test.

Product Overview

The Cosori Iconic Stainless Steel Air Fryer is a premium kitchen appliance made with stainless steel, ceramic-coated nonstick cooking surfaces, a tempered glass touchscreen display, and a DC motor that provides more precise and energy-efficient airflow compared to traditional AC motor air fryers.

It also has built-in smart control features and an app with a recipe library. We haven’t tested these features yet as we’re not sure we’ll use them in our day-to-day, so this product review is focused solely on our experience with the physical appliance and not its smart technology.

Key Features

Capacity: 6.5 quarts
6 preset modes: air fry, roast, bake, dry, proof, reheat
Temperature range: 90° – 450°F (30° – 230°C)
Time range: 1 minute – 24 hours
5 adjustable fan speeds
Shake function: Reminds you to shake the basket halfway through
Clear, easy to use touch screen made of tempered glass
Removable crisper plate
Non-stick ceramic coated cooking surfaces
Stainless steel exterior

Product Review

Overall, we’re very impressed with the Cosori Iconic Stainless Steel Air Fryer and would highly recommend it to anyone in the market for a premium air fryer. Even at a price point of $249, it’s a great value.

It cooks reliably and consistently, is intuitive to use, cleans easily thanks to its non-stick cooking surfaces, and looks beautiful on our countertop. We see this air fryer lasting us a long time, even with frequent use.

Quality: 10/10
- Materials: Sleek stainless steel exterior looks beautiful in our kitchen and the ceramic-coated cooking surfaces inside the basket are super nonstick and easy to clean.
- Weight: Slightly heavy, but solid and premium feeling.
- Touchscreen display: Well-lit and easy to read.
Cooking functionality: 10/10
- This air fryer performs reliably and consistently, yielding perfect textures with even crisping across the basket. Everything we’ve cooked in it so far has turned out great! (We especially love that the fan is powerful without being too noisy.)
- Multiple cook modes provide a convenient way to make a variety of foods. Reheat mode is especially useful as it allows us to warm and re-crisp foods without them getting too crispy or burnt.
Ease of use: 8/10
- The touchscreen controls are intuitive, responsive, and large enough to be easily read.
- Temperature and time adjustments use a simple up and down arrow system.
- The basket locks into place with a simple button latch that’s easy to engage and release while grabbing the handle.
- Default cooking modes make it easy to cook various types of foods without having to adjust every setting.
- Shake mode is a helpful reminder when air frying.
- The crisper plate fits very snugly into the basket, which is great for cooking but means it’s difficult to remove. This has proven to be an issue since the openings in the plate are large enough that certain foods fall through during cooking, getting stranded beneath it until the plate cools down enough to handle (we go into this in more detail in the Pros and Cons section below).
Ease of cleaning: 9/10
- The cooking surfaces are ceramic-coated, which means they’re very nonstick and easy to clean. We’ve had no issues with food sticking so far and messes wipe off easily with a sponge.
- As we mentioned above, the crisper plate is difficult to remove for cleaning.
- Because of its large capacity, it’s a little unwieldy in our small apartment sink, but we manage!
Design: 10/10
- This air fryer has a surprisingly small footprint for its capacity. Notably, it’s about the same footprint as our old air fryer, shorter in height, and more than 2x the capacity.
- We love the sleek design and stainless steel finish, although it does show fingerprints and smudges so it requires more regular cleaning.

Cosori stainless steel Iconic air fryer. — Our air fryer arrived in pristine condition.

A close view of the touchscreen controls on the Cosori Iconic air fryer. — We love how sleek the touchscreen controls are.

Our Take

Who Is This Right For?

This air fryer is great for anyone who likes to use their air fryer frequently, as it’s a reasonable size to store on the kitchen counter, looks beautiful, and is easy to clean. It’s also great for anyone looking to do more than just air fry, thanks to the 6 different cook modes.

It’s a great size for 2+ people. The 6.5-quart capacity is on the larger side for our household of two, but we love being able to cook bigger batches of food when we’re entertaining or meal prepping. And the extra capacity isn’t an issue because the footprint is still small.

Who Is This Not Right For?

This air fryer might be a little overkill for anyone who doesn’t use their air fryer often and doesn’t need top-of-the-line materials like stainless steel (Cosori even has other models at a lower price point for this reason – we’ve linked them below in the Alternative Recommendations section).

It’s also on the larger side, so smaller households of 1 or 2 people (especially those who often cook single servings rather than bigger batches) may find a smaller model more suitable for their needs.

We’ll also note that this air fryer might not be a good fit for anyone with limited dexterity in their fingers or hands, as the crisper plate can be difficult to remove due to its snug fit and tiny handle.

What We Tested

To be honest, our air fryer usually gets the most use from cooking french fries. But we also use it often for crispy game day snacks like egg rolls. So we made sure to test the Cosori air fryer with these two foods, plus a few extra simple recipes.

Frozen Fries (tested 3 times)

Cooked according to package directions.
Used “air fry” mode with the “shake” function turned on.
Results: Crispy, perfectly cooked fries in about 12 minutes. A handful of fries fell through the crisper plate each time and got trapped 🙁

Fries after cooking in the cosori air fryer, and some stuck underneath the plate. — As you can see, 6.5 quarts is a bit large for 2 servings, but it still works perfectly!

Egg Rolls

Test 1: Cooked on “air fry” mode with temperature adjusted to match our cheeseburger egg rolls recipe.
Results: A little underdone after the usual amount of time we cook these for, but still crispy and delicious. We’re planning to test this again using Cosori’s default temperature for air frying.
Test 2: Reheated from the fridge on “reheat” mode with default settings.
Results: Turned out perfectly crispy and warmed through, as if they’d been made fresh!

Cubed Potatoes

Roughly half-inch cubes, tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Used “air fry” mode at 400F for 20 minutes with the “shake” function turned on.
Results: Crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside fried potatoes that weren’t greasy and cooked much faster than if we’d fried them on the stove. A handful of potatoes fell through the crisper plate.

Crispy potatoes before and after being cooked in the cosori air fryer.

Dehydrated Limes

Sliced 2 limes into thin rounds and laid flat in the basket.
Used “dry” mode with default settings, did not shake or flip.
Not fully dehydrated after the default 6 hours, so we added on extra time for a total of 10 hours to fully dehydrate.
Results: Took longer than we expected, but a convenient way to dehydrate foods without having to use the oven all day long.

We’ll be back with an update here after trying out air fryer buffalo wings and chipotle cauliflower tacos this fall!

Note: We haven’t yet tested the “roast,” “bake,” or “proof” settings since we plan to mainly use this appliance for air frying, reheating, and occasionally dehydrating.

Pros

Super nonstick – The ceramic-coated plate is very nonstick, which is definitely an improvement over our previous air fryer. So much so that when we made our cheeseburger egg rolls, we didn’t even have to grease the basket like we normally do! This makes for a great experience while cooking because we don’t have to worry about food sticking, and it also means easier cleanup because there are no stuck-on messes.
Shake mode – We love this feature because Cosori clearly thought of everything! Since food typically has to be shaken or flipped halfway through air frying, there’s a “shake mode” you can turn on that’ll notify you to do this halfway through your cook time. It’s a small thing, but it’s features like this that make us fall in love with a product because it just makes life a little easier.
Quiet operation – It’s quieter than we expected for such a powerful air fryer (even at full speed, the fan is significantly quieter than our old air fryer). It’s loud enough to notice that it’s on, but not so loud that we have to raise our voices to hear each other over it.
Pleasant chime – We love the happy little chime this air fryer plays when it’s done! It’s loud enough to hear from the other room, but quiet enough that it’s not annoying, unlike the aggressively loud dings and beeps from some other air fryers we’ve used.
Premium feel – The weight, materials, and aesthetics of this air fryer all contribute to a very high quality, premium feel that looks beautiful in our kitchen and seems like it will last a long time (Cosori even offers a limited 5-year warranty to back it up). Notably, the touch screen controls are sleek and responsive, and the basket slides smoothly and locks into place reliably. It even arrived in premium packaging with a helpful starter booklet and recipe collection.
Multiple cook modes – We were pleasantly surprised to learn this air fryer has 6 different cook modes, all with varying fan speeds and default temperatures so that you can do more with it than just air fry! So far we’ve found the “reheat” function to work really well for crispy foods like leftover fries and egg rolls, and it was fun to test out dehydrating limes in it. We’ll definitely be experimenting with the various modes more to see what else we can make. We’ll update this review in the future as we gain more experience with our new air fryer!
Doesn’t get too hot on the outside – Despite how hot the inside of this air fryer can get, the outer surface doesn’t get super hot which we really appreciate. This makes it easy to move around the kitchen after using it. The outside of our old air fryer would be too hot to touch after using it for even just 10 minutes, making it a bit of a hazard in our small kitchen.

Cons

Crisper plate is difficult to remove – The crisper plate has a very snug fit so it doesn’t lift up during cooking, but this means it’s quite difficult to remove for cleaning. There’s a small metal piece you can grab onto in the center, but it takes some force and dexterity to pull upwards on it enough to remove it. It’s not too big of an inconvenience for us, but we could see this being a problem for people with limited dexterity or grip strength.
Some food falls through the crisper plate – This, combined with the crisper plate being hard to remove, is by far our biggest issue. We’ve found that the openings in the crisper plate are big enough that certain foods fall through to the bottom of the basket easily, including french fries and cubed potatoes. Since the basket gets very hot and the plate can be difficult to remove, this means whatever food falls through gets stranded there until the basket cools down.
Weight – It’s definitely on the heavier side (which is expected from a stainless steel appliance) so it takes a bit of strength to move around the kitchen and in or out of storage cabinets. Not too heavy, but something you don’t want to store in hard-to-reach or high-up places.
Fingerprints – Because it’s made of stainless steel, this air fryer does show fingerprint smudges. This doesn’t particularly bother us, but we could see it being a pain point for those who like to keep their appliances sparkling and smudge-free.

Product Specs

Capacity: 6.5 quarts (6.2 liters)
Modes: air fry, roast, bake, dry, proof, reheat
Temperature range: 90° – 450°F (30° – 230°C)
Time range: 1 minute – 24 hours
Dimensions (including handle): 14.8 x 11.8 x 11.6 in
Dimensions (excluding handle): 11.8 x 11.8 x 11.6 in
Weight: 14.1 pounds (6.4 kg)
Materials: Stainless steel exterior with non-stick ceramic coated cooking surfaces

Alternative Recommendations

We’re impressed with Cosori’s quality and have heard great things about their other air fryers from friends and family, particularly the TurboBlaze 6-Quart Air Fryer. It’s similar to the Iconic model we have, but it has 9 cook modes and is available in a matte dark gray or cream color.

Cosori also offers a dual-basket air fryer, in case you like to cook multiple foods in your air fryer at once. We haven’t tried an air fryer like this before but could see it being useful for quick and easy dinners!

Where To Buy

Cosori Iconic stainless steel air fryer product listing.

Buy on Cosori.com

Buy on Amazon.com

If you have any questions regarding the information presented in this post, please refer to our Nutrition Disclaimer here.

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