Tefal ActiFry Genius XL 2in1 YV970840 Air Fryer - 1.7 kg / 8 Portions

I'm not a great one for instant reviews, much preferring to get to know a product well before passing judgement and the ActiFry Genius XL 2in1 does what it promises and more.If we start with chips it is happy with chunky, regular, French fries . . . any size. Sticking rigidly to the instructions and the chips are more akin to the oven variety than the local chippy but add a little more oil than suggested and it improves the flavour and texture no end, with the window allowing you to remove chips at just the browning you want.Blanch the chips for two or three minutes before placing in the Actifry pan and you have double cooked chips, which takes the chips up a notch.The Actifry also produces superb sauté potatoes, blanch first, a little longer than chips, and you produce evenly coloured, rough edged potatoes. Use butter instead of oil for a traditional flavour or a mix of oil and butter if you want to feel more health conscious.As with chips it is the paddle which makes the difference, gently stirring the potatoes negating the need to stop midway and manually turn the potatoes, which also makes it useful for other foods such as stir fries.The tray is excellent for steaks, chops, chicken breasts and the like and superb for items such as scampi. The instruction booklet only takes you so far, not every possible foodstuff is covered, so you have to experiment and learn as you go along. There are some failures along the way, sausages being one in my case, and decent sausages at that, which cooked really well in the top tray but filled the machine with a layer of grease, congealing nicely in areas difficult to clean.There is also a drawback in that pan and tray work consecutively rather than in conjunction so if you want, for example, steak and chips, you first cook your chips then, with the chips still in the pan underneath, add the tray and cook the steak. The chips are kept warm but can go a little tired and limp.One solution I found was to undercook the chips slightly and when the steaks, chops or whatever were cooked and resting, cook the chips for a few minutes more to finish them off, a sort of poor man’s double cooked, triple if you blanched first, to freshen them and crisp them up.All in all a useful addition to the kitchen and even adding a touch more oil it produces far healthier chips than a deep fat fryer. It’s quick and doesn’t need watching, set programme and time and leave it to get on with it. The warning beep that a programme has finished could be a bit louder though.If you want healthier chips and fried or grilled foods I would recommend it for any kitchen, it beats the pull out tray air fryers owned by friends hands down, but a final word of warning though, it is not a dainty item. It takes up a chunk of space, so check the size and your available space.If you can accommodate it then it will quickly become a kitchen workhorse.

Great product, great price, much better than the basket type. It moves the product for you without the food breaking up unless your doing it wrong. Excellent chips from it so prepare to get chunky

I bought this air fryer to make healthier and tastier meals for my family and I'm mostly happy with it. It is very easy to use and has a lot of preset programs that cook different dishes perfectly. It has a large capacity and can cook two dishes at the same time, which is very convenient and saves time. The food comes out crispy and juicy, with less oil and fat. It is also easy to clean and has a removable and dishwasher-safe bowl and tray. The only downside is that it is quite noisy and bulky, and it takes up a lot of space on the countertop. It is also quite expensive compared to other air fryers. However, I think it is worth it for the quality and versatility it offers. I would recommend this air fryer to anyone looking for a smart and efficient way to cook delicious meals.

My opinion of this is positive, not tainted by the fact I paid full price but received a used item in a partly shredded box with a slight hairline crack in the glass. It seems to work ok though.And now I've ranted here's the good part. The fryer itself is super easy to use, and easy to clean. It's loud, and gets very hot, but it cooks food very well. I tried it first with frozen nuggets and from frozen they were cooked perfectly in 11 mins. If anything I could probably have knocked a few minutes off the cooking time....and that was without warming the actifry up first.I say it's loud but no more than a medium level hairdryer or fan might be, you probably won't hear it over a TV in the next room.It is big. I mean really big. But it fits on my standard size worktop just fine, and it's actually much lighter than it looks. You'd expect it to be very heavy but it isn't.The glass and outside around it is a fingerprint magnet though, but if you want a brilliant air fryer that can cook a whole meal at once this is probably the best option out there.

The good: it cooks like a dream. And I’m usually skeptical of auto cooking appliances that promise to take the work out of cooking. This one really does. I’ve made our best ever chips and potatoes, fish, steak, veg stir fry. Need fish fingers for the kids? Perfectly done in 10 mins seriously reducing hanger-child wait times.The bad- the interface is just appallingly bad. It feels like an interface from an appliance 10 years ago. It’s not immediately clear what you have to press and it requires multiple button presses of the same button to cycle through options. For example, if you want to isolate the top tray only for a manual 10 minute cook you have to press a button till a minus symbol appears, then press the tray select until just the top tray is blinking, then cycle through the programs again till you find M then press the clock/thermometer button to switch to that mode, then select your time and/or temp. But if you accidentally press start/stop, you’ve now locked in the bottom pan to cook for whatever mode it was set to (probably mode 1 chips 29 minutes) and there’s no way back other than to reset the entire thing (hold start stop for 2 seconds - which is not mentioned in the manual anywhere). For a big glass display to only have three touch sensitive buttons screams of cost cutting, which is odd since this is a flagship machine. The Tefal slim hot plate almost a dozen touch sensitive buttons so they clearly can do it.Great machine, cooks amazing food, really happy with my purchase for how it cooks. Shockingly poor interface.