Bella Pro Series – 6-qt. Touchscreen Air Fryer – Black Matte

This is the best air fryer we have ever bought. The cooking area is a large size. It’s not very loud at all and it was a great upgrade from the ninja that we used to have.

I really enjoyed this air fryer, until I washed the grill part in the dishwasher. The coating completely disintegrated and rusted. I really hope they fix this issue. Otherwise, its functions great, just hate using it with the grill but that’s the only option!

I do really love this air fryer only problem is the timer is off for flipping over food half way through cooking. Instead it tells me 2 minutes before it’s done. Other than that it’s awesome haven’t had a problem with the coating like other reviews.

It seems like the trend in home appliances these days is to try packing so much into a single product that you wouldn’t dare go anywhere else for your cooking needs–you need a blender, here’s one that also warms soup and makes ice cream–want a slow cooker for chili, sure, but have you thought about one that does pressure cooking and baking, as well? I get the all-in-one toaster, broiler, griddle, coffee-pot combo for a dorm room or tiny apartment, but the results from these Franken-appliances are usually mixed–one or two functions might come off well, but on the whole, it’s jack-of-all-trades but master of none. Not so with the Bella Pro…we’ve been putting this latest air fryer through its paces over the past 2 weeks and we haven’t hit a stinker yet.
The touch-screen model was an upgrade for us over the much smaller and much simpler analog dial-based model we’ve been using for the past year, and while the touch-screen controls are indeed a nice-to-have, it’s the performance that has blown us away. The biggest draw here is obviously the air fryer–a massive 6-quart metal drawer will handily fry up enough tater tots, fries, chicken wings or onion rings to feed a family of 4-6 easily, and it’s no joke that it will do it in at least 1/2 the time of a regular oven. But what we like even more than the speedy cooking time are how the foods taste when they’re done. We started the first few days cooking a few items side-by-side, a few in the oven, a few in the fryer. Wings, fries and tots from the fryer were noticeably crisper and flavorful without drying out or coming up burned on one side or another like they did sitting in a pan in the oven. From there we moved on to some of the other functions, including dehydrating…which, honestly, we never really thought that much about before. We reduced 9 big apples into a shockingly small pan of dried apple rings and the end results were as satisfying and tasty as anything we might buy in the store (quick tip: soak your fruit in a little water mixed with a small amount of citric acid to keep the fruits from browning as they dry). Dehydrating time can be adjusted to create anything from chewy dried fruits to legit fruit chips, just like the store-bought kind, and the great part is that when you pull the drawer out to check on the food’s progress, it immediately resumes where it left off once the drawer is back in place without any intervention or button pushes from you (no pausing or resuming necessary!). Then we popped in a slice of pizza to see how that did at warming it back up after a few nights in the fridge. While we’ll need to adjust the time to a bit less than the default 8 minutes (the one slice pictured below turned out a bit darker than we typically care to see), it definitely warmed it back up without turning rubbery or even hard in some spots as we’ve often experienced with microwave reheating. Hopefully you can see from the image we’ve attached that you can probably reheat 2-3 good sized slices given the size of the cooking drawer.
Cleanup is a snap with only two real parts to clean–the metal frying drawer, and the lift-out crisping tray. Preset menu options provide predetermined temperature and cooking time combinations for Air Frying, Roasting, Broiling, Baking, Reheating, Keep Warm, Pizza, and Dehydrate (though these times and temperatures can also be adjusted). The upper menu display that indicates the current selection is just that, a display only…the only true touch-screen buttons are the Power/Start, Menu cycle, and time and temperature change arrows. The big, easy-to-read LCD display in the middle hops back and forth between temperature and time remaining and there’s a loud but not obnoxious beep when the cooking cycle is complete. The sides and top of the fryer do not get very hot in operation; you can comfortably touch the sides even when the temperature is up near the 400 degree maximum, and the HUGE handle out front stays absolutely cool to the touch regardless of the operating temperature, which is a must for those times when you have to pull out the frying drawer and shake up the contents for even cooking. The convection fan does make some noise in operation; it’s a bit quieter (or at least less harsh) than our microwave, but YMMV…just be aware if you’re going to have something running for many hours (like a dehydrate job), you will notice the appliance whirring along in the background.
Overall, we’ve been immensely impressed with the Bella Pro, and we haven’t even tried cooking a single item yet that has needed even one drop of oil or spray to come out tasting great. The short instruction manual includes a few recipes in the back that actually look pretty decent–we may start diving into some fancier foods now that we’re starting to settle into a rhythm with the air fryer. No…it’s not as fast as a microwave, but the results thus far have been MILES better than what we’ve ever obtained from microwave cooking, and the time savings and convenience over cooking the same foods in our full-sized oven has made this appliance a go-to for all our meals over the past few weeks. It’s hard to gush about our experiences without sounding like a shill for Bella, but no joke–all the results we’ve obtained to date have been healthier and FAR more flavorful (less grease taste, more food taste), and required less electricity, time, and effort to prepare or clean than the same foods as done up in a standard electric oven. The fact that this particular model offers such high capacity and user-friendly operation at such a reasonable price makes it even more compelling. If you’re looking for a pretty low-risk, low-cost, low-impact way to get into air frying with enough capacity to serve more than a few people at a time, this Bella Pro is definitely worth serious consideration!