air fryer big ovens?

Looking at new ovens the other day (ours doesn't have much longer to live), and I noticed many have an air fryer setting.

What is it?  

I thought air fryers worked because the space was small and the heat was concentrated and moving.  But a big oven has a huge space (our requirement is that it fit a chicken standing).

Is it just a hyper fast convection fan or something?  

Air fryer and convection oven are the same thing.
The benefit of air fryer is that it's small, so it takes less time and energy to heat up.

I don't understand why this would be better for a large oven.

I use my instant pot duo crisp as my main cooking implement as an air fryer.

I adore my ninja airfryer. But having larger capacity than a regular air fryer,  we have to add 20% to the time on a recipe

That's what got me curious about the bigger ovens having this setting .   It's in addition to convection, so not that.

How would it work in such a large space?

Yep, it would take longer to heat, but it really matters where the heating element is in relation to the food.

In my instant pot air fryer, I cook the food on the platform closest to the heating element and fan at top. This is where it is the hottest, and gives me the best crisp.

It seems a great question for the oven company.  Why would I use a larger oven versus my little air fryer? It might pump out much more heat or something else beneficial. I don't really understand it, but perhaps the salesman can inform you properly.  

It just seems counter productive to me.

The other benefit of air fryer is that it's relatively simple to clean. Would the oven unit be more difficult?

The air fru option might utilize the broiler heating element from the top, and perhaps convection uses the bottom element.

Exactly my questions.

But it seems to be standard now, so maybe I'm missing something?

Anyone out there got a big oven with an air fryer?  Does it fry?

This article recommends just getting an air fry basket for a convection oven to be turned into air fryer.
https://www.epicurious.com/shopping/how-to-use-your-convection-oven-as-an-air-fryer

Other sites say the benefit of air fryer oven is capacity, as air fryer units cook less at once

We need a new oven this year.

Most new ovens come with the air fryer setting.  The ones that don't,  don't qualify for energy saving grants.  

But why air fry in a big oven at all?  It seems like it would use way more energy?  Or is there something I'm not seeing?

r ranson wrote:But why air fry in a big oven at all?  It seems like it would use way more energy?  Or is there something I'm not seeing?

I see two things that would make that make sense. If it's not ridiculously inefficient, it's always nice to have fewer appliances and if it does a good job, it might make it so that you don't need the smaller counter-top version at all, freeing that space up for something else, which is always great. And also, if you find that you're always wanting to air-fry more than your counter-top device can handle in one load, it might well be more efficient to run the oven-version one time than the counter-top version three.

But I want to be clear that this is just me speculating. My oven only has convection, not air-fry.

That's something to consider.  

The counter top version is a keeper because we can use it outside in the summer without heating the house extra.  

I have a gas oven that came with an air fryer. I didn’t really want the air fryer, but got a good deal. What I’ve learned is that it doesn’t need to pre-heat, so it actually doesn’t heat the kitchen up like the oven does! Also handier for bigger portions.

Yeah....I can see the redundancy argument here.  That if it's built into a larger oven, you no longer need 2 appliances.  Also that air frying is all about hot elements and moving hot air, so as noted, food is cooked in a shorter time than if pre-heating were necessary.  Finally, I can see the sales pitch here:  Air-frying was sold initially to create great fried food without keeping a vat of oil around that you needed to heat up to make french fries and other deep fried foods and was additionally sold to be a healthier option.  I can see many wanting that for the latter alone.  Now that you mention also possibly getting energy saving rebates/grants, they appear to be really pushing this option.

I'm learning a lot.  Thank you.

In some ways, it's hard to reconcile the new knowledge with my 20 year old oven set up.  

So, um, where I live we have a library.  And from the library, we can borrow different meters to test energy efficiency around the home.  Add to that the extremely detailed reports the power company gives us... and I love geeking out about energy efficiency.

Like for example, using hot water to fill the kettle in the summer uses considerably more electricity (and time) than cold water from the well.  But in the winter when the spillover heat from the heatpump is heating our hot water, it's more effect to start with hot water from the tap to fill the kettle.  Just little things like that make me happy to know and might be useful if we ever get a chance to pop off the grid.

When I hear about the quick pre-heat time, it makes me think of the current oven's electrical use is almost entirely in the preheat stage.  

We generally cook between 300-350f. and the preheat stage takes about 7 minutes.  The first ten minutes of the oven being on take approximately the same electricity as the next 2 hours of maintaining heat (to put it in context, it's considerably less than charging an electric car at normal rate).  More items in the oven, slightly lowers the amount of energy to keep it hot after the first half hour.  Not a lot, but enough that we find that it's most efficient to cook  a large amount for 2 hours in the oven.  This is the way we are trained to use the oven, so it's hard to get my head around different use cases.  Maybe that's where I'm struggling.

The current oven is also really well insulated (possibly too well? we didn't do the install so I'm scared to look) so the heat doesn't come out into the house very quickly - but it takes a few hours to cool down.  All that heat has to go somewhere.

So... new ovens.  

They heat up faster, does this mean it's a more significant draw to heat up or is the technology improving?  The fan helps?  

I don't know why my brain has dug my virtual heels in on this.  In the end, the family will probably just buy an oven with the right colour, energy grant, and good warrantee.  I guess I just want to understand it better so I can know how to get the most out of the oven they choose.  

An air fryer is just a regular oven with a fan in it. I have a fairly new model and I never use it because it takes too long to cook things. Since it’s a bigger space and it doesn’t require preheating your relying on just the direct heat from the heating element rather than the built up heat from preheating. So in order for it to work you have to put your food right up close to the heating element which just leaves the rest of the space to go to waste. Yes using it will heat up then inside eventually but the temp settings for the air fryer only apply to the heating element and not the ambient temp in the oven itself.