I tried the new Ninja Crispi Pro: Is this the end of traditional air frying?

In the crowded air fryer market, is there truly space left to innovate?

Apparently so. The original air fryer purveyors, Ninja, recently launched an upgraded version of their popular Ninja Crispi product – intended, in case that ‘i’ didn’t make clear, to crisp your products up faster than it takes to make a cup of tea.

The first Crispi felt revolutionary when it launched in 2025, offering users the chance to watch their food cook through an all-glass container. This next-gen model feels similarly high-end, and boasts a whole selection of fun new settings, including ones for baking, dehydrating, crisping and roasting.

In fact, there are seven of them, which makes this one of the most advanced models on the market. All that, plus two non-toxic glass containers that look (according to the promotional pics) big enough to roast a whole chicken in, plus trimmings.

First things first: the Crispi Pro is heavy. At 5.17kg, the hardest part of the set-up is levering it out of the box – probably unsurprising, given that the design prioritises heavyweight glass containers over the lightweight plastic ones you’d find in other air fryers.

In terms of design, it looks decidedly futuristic. The air fryer boasts a different design to most others on the market, in that there are two glass canisters of different sizes: a big 5.7L one, and a smaller 2.3L one (a medium size can also be bought separately, or transferred from your old Ninja Crispi).

They slot into the air fryer, and there’s a metal base beneath that can be raised or lowered to support the container when it’s hanging off the top. When standing by itself, that top looks rather like a UFO has been beamed down for the purposes of cooking sausages and frying chips.

That said, it’s easy to set up. The two glass containers come with the metal racks that go inside them (the better to let hot air circulate underneath): they need to be washed.

But once the logistics have been worked out, the rest is easy. The power button turns the machine on and off, the ‘temp’ button and dial adjust the temperature, the ‘time’ button and dial adjust the time, and the ‘mode’ button lets you cycle through the different modes. Simply press the dial in to start the cycle, and Bob’s your uncle.

With all those different settings to try out, we got to work attempting to cycle through them all. The starting challenge? Cook ten sausages.

I popped them on top of the metal rack inside the glass container, without oil, and set the timer to ten minutes at ‘Max Crisp’, which felt pleasingly rock’n’roll as far as settings went.

The air fryer handled that with no sweat, cooking the sausages to perfection. ‘Flipping’ the items halfway through did prove slightly harder work than the generic air fryer models (which boast little pull-out drawers) – to flip the sausages, I had to manually pull my glass container out of the air fryer (it has little handles for just this purpose, as well as plastic ‘feet’ to protect your countertop), manually turn the sausages over and reinsert the container.

One big bonus to the all-glass container, though, is being able to see the food cook in real time, which was oddly mesmerising. And it’s also helpful when it comes to cleaning – there’s nowhere for the dirt to hide, and the most stubborn of stains can usually be lifted with a warm water soak.

When the time came to store the sausages, the containers also came with lids, allowing me to put them in the fridge without even transferring them to another box.

So, sausages worked fine, but the air fryer promo pics had promised me a full roast dinner. Would it manage to pull off one of those? I bought a whole chicken, a lot of roast potatoes and some veggies and set to work.

The chicken was cooked to perfection. I set it at ‘roast’ for 40 minutes, at 200°C, and the result was beautifully roasted, and just the right amount of tender. The potatoes went in after twenty minutes (with an additional five-minute ‘Max Crisp’ blast at the end) and again, ended up gorgeously light and fluffy on the inside, while crisp on the outside.

The vegetables? Well, they ended up being a bit more of a mixed bag. The string beans were plated crispy and delicious, but the broccoli was charred, and the carrots were raw. Next time, they might be one to boil.

One surprise winner? Reheated pizza. The Crispi Pro managed to revive my sad slice in a fraction of the time it would take an oven, while the hot air meant the stale sogginess that often permeates resurrected pizza slices didn’t even factor in here. A win.