Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro vs Ninja Crispi Glass Air Fryer

The Ninja Crispi is the only air fryer on the market with a glass cooking chamber, and after years of people worrying about nonstick coatings degrading, it's a genuinely meaningful upgrade. You can see your food cooking in real time, the chamber goes straight in the dishwasher, and there's zero anxiety about what's flaking into your chicken wings. The Breville uses standard nonstick-coated accessories — fine, but not a selling point.

This is the most important thing to understand about the Breville: its large cooking chamber is an asset for roasting and baking, but it's actually a liability for air frying. Compact basket-style air fryers blast hot air in a tight space, which is why they get food crispier faster. The Breville's air fry mode is good, but Serious Eats and CNET both note it can't match a dedicated basket fryer for crust. If crunchy fries and crispy wings are your primary goal, the Ninja wins.

The Breville costs roughly twice as much as the Ninja ($333-$350 vs. $160-$180), but it's also doing twice as many jobs. If you're buying it to replace a toaster oven AND an air fryer, the math actually works in its favor. If you already have a functional oven and just want to air fry, paying $170 more for capabilities you'll never use is a bad deal. The Ninja is the better value for the majority of buyers.

The Breville has a dial, multiple racks, and a dozen cooking modes — which is great if you use them, and overwhelming if you don't. The Ninja has four modes: warm, reheat, bake, air fry. That's it. For 90% of air fryer use cases, that's all you need, and the lack of fiddly settings means you actually use it every day instead of leaving it on the counter collecting dust. The tradeoff is no precise temperature dial, which matters if you're following specific recipes.