When it comes to air fryers, there are numerous brands to choose from, all of which tend to present a circular design-build, pre-set options, and the promise to deliver your favorite foods without the grease.
Now while the Cosori Premium Air Fryer also makes golden, delicious, and crispy promises, it aims to take on a different approach, providing you with an aesthetically sleek appearance, responsive touch button display, fully-featured and multifunctional use, and some minor quality of life improvements that other brands don’t offer like a square basket base.
In this in-depth review, we will take a look at the aesthetic design, the model build, what features the Cosori comes with, and a few important areas that air fryer connoisseurs may want to know, like the model’s specifications and types of available recipes.
This review is for the Cosori 5.8 QT Electric Hot Air Fryer. The Cosori air fryer has received praise in the air fryer community and on Amazon for its performance, versatility, and budget-friendly price.
A Sleek Outer Design That Fits Every Kitchen’s Décor.
First off, let’s start with the outer aesthetic design. The Cosori comes with a remarkably beautiful exterior, black in color with a gorgeous brush matte finish. Despite the outer shell being made of textured plastic, the Cosori’s aesthetic appeal oozes a sleek and professional design.
Unlike other air fryers on the market, the Cosori 5.8 QT comes with a square model, a square basket, a square base, and a half-moon LED touchscreen panel face.
Why is this important? The square basket allows you more room for your favorite foods and it enables you to cook multiple types of food side-by-side if the recipe permits. The half-moon touchscreen panel face is very spacious in its design, ensuring that you have enough room to press the buttons without mistakenly pushing the wrong one.
Unlike other air fryers, it is ergonomically angled so that you can view it without having to bend over to look at it.
The LED display comes with round, circular buttons, a type font style that is very easy to distinguish, universally comprehensible button icons, and the type font glows a crisp white when in use. You’ll never have to guess at which button to press or what the display is telling you.
Finally, the handle on the basket, also ergonomically shaped, is large enough that you can grab it fully with one hand and pull without needing to place your other hand on the air fryer. This makes pushing the basket in or pulling the basket out, extremely easy to do.
What Features Does the Cosori Electric Hot Air Fryer Come With?
- 11 Cooking Pre-sets That Are Adjustable. The LED touchscreen panel comes with 11 unique pre-sets for cooking which includes chicken, steak, french fries, frozen foods, bacon, shrimp, seafood, root vegetables, bread, and desserts and regular vegetables. You simply tap what you want and hit play. However, for those who like their meat well done, you can simply edit the temperature provided from the pre-set with the minus or plus buttons.
- No Calculations Needed – One Touch Panel. The one-touch LED display panel ensures that all of the math behind your cooking temperatures and cooking duration is done for you. Simply choose which option makes sense, like chicken or shrimp, and hit play.
- A Pre-Heating Feature. Although more air fryers are coming out with pre-heating options, Cosori has been one of the first to offer this. What’s more is when you choose to pre-heat the air fryer versus when you do not, you can really tell the difference in terms of the browning or crispiness that you get with your food. Pre-heating only takes 2-5 minutes, so it is quite convenient when compared with traditional conventional ovens.
- Shake Up Your Food Reminders. This is a unique feature that is specific to the Cosori air fryer. The shake reminder lets you know when it is time to shake up your food contents or flip it if needed.
- Detachable Basket. Both the bottom bucket and the inner basket that sits inside are completely detachable from the unit. The removable inner basket is attached to a safety button which is hidden underneath a plastic sliding cap on the bottom bucket. This ensures that the inner basket will never come free of the bottom bucket when you remove it from the unit and go to carry it around your kitchen.
- Non-stick Material. Both the inner food basket and the bottom bucket are made out of non-stick materials so that there is very little food residue left over after serving.
- High Range of Temperatures. The Cosori comes with a temperature range of 170 degrees to 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 77-205 degrees Celsius. The cooking time range is anywhere from 1-60 minutes.
- Switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius. You can easily switch the temperature range from Fahrenheit to Celsius so you can work with measurements you are familiar with.
- A Unique Keep Warm Function. Also unique to the Cosori air fryer is the keep warm function, which allows you to keep your food warm within the basket for a specific amount of time. This is great for families who want to make a large amount of food and package it away after dinner or lunch time.
- It Comes with an Auto-Shut-Off Function. Once your food is done cooking, unless you set it to keep warm, it will automatically shut off so that your food does not overcook.
- It Is Dishwasher Safe. You simply remove the bottom bucket, then remove the inner basket, and let your dishwasher take care of the rest.
What Are the Pros and Cons of the Cosori 5.8 QT Model?
The Positives Include the Following
- An in-depth owner’s manual with multiple languages.
- Option to extend warranty at no extra cost.
- Safety button for detaching the inner basket.
- Adjustable temperature on pre-sets.
- You can operate for twice as long as other air fryers.
- Has Fahrenheit to Celsius switching.
- Reminds you when to shake up or flip your food.
- It isn’t that loud – akin to a blender on high.
- Comes with unique buttons for keeping warm and pre-heating.
- 11 Pre-set options.
- Is dishwasher safe and has non-stick surfaces.
- The bottom bucket does lock slightly.
The Cons Include the Following
- The bottom bucket does lock a little bit, so you have to give a decent yank to get it open. This can be seen as negative or positive.
- The bottom bucket does expand when the air fryer is in use. This makes it stick tight to the inner drawer; however, it does not cause issues with cooking.
Are There Any Bonuses When Purchasing the Cosori 5.8 QT?
Yes, there are! You get a cookbook that comes with 100 original recipes directly from Cosori. These recipes are coined as easy to make and range from a wide variety of cuisines including seafood, fried favorites, desserts, and entrees. Here is a short list of some of the recipes that the Cosori kitchen has cooked up in the past.
- Breakfast: French Toast Sticks, Baked Potted Egg, Ginger Blueberry Scones, BBQ Bacon, Stuffed French Toast, Coffee Streusel Muffins, Muffin Breakfast Sandwiches.
- Appetizers: Jalapeno Cheese Dip, Chicken Wings, Dry Rubbed Chicken Wings, Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus, Homemade Tortilla Chips.
- Entrees: An Air Fried Whole Chicken, New York Style Steak, Santa Maria Ribeye, Steak Sandwiches, Italian Meatballs.
- Sides: Homemade French Fries, Honey Soy Tofu, Avocado Fries, Cajun French Fries, Sweet Potato Fries.
- Desserts: Cinnamon Rolls, Chocolate Souffle, Banana Nut Bread, Mini Apple Pies, Lemon Pound Cake, Chocolate Espresso Muffins, and so much more!
The above dishes may not necessarily be in your specific cookbook, as the cookbook only comes with 100 recipes selected directly from the Cosori kitchen. However, you can always find more online through the Cosori website or create your own!
Beyond the cookbook, you also get a one year warranty upon purchase of your air fryer. For those who purchase through Amazon or any other channel, you may also extend your warranty for an additional one year (12 months) if you register for it within two weeks (14 days) of buying your unit.
There are instructions within the manual on how to go about doing this and is incredibly easy to do so, all you need is the original copy of your invoice and your order confirmation.
What Are the Benefits of Using an Air Fryer?
Air fryers come with a bunch of different features, allowing the user to accomplish a handful of different things.
- Fast Cooking: Because air fryers are quite small, especially in comparison to a traditional oven, they can heat up very quickly, reaching cooking temperatures in a matter of minutes. This reduces the cooking time of food that would otherwise be cooked in an oven or on a stovetop by 25-30%.
- Fewer Calories & Less Trans Fats: The air fryer doesn’t need oil in order to cover your foods in a crispy surface – instead, it circulates super hot air which dries the surface of the food. Using less oil equals fewer calories and less trans fats. The air fryer is praised for its ability to give us the best of two worlds – healthy fried alternatives.
- Simple & Convenient: Cooking in an air fryer is an easy task for anyone, even easier when considering the fact that most air fryers come with a set of pre-programmed features. Using these presets will allow you to cook your favorite foods with the push of a button. In a worst case scenario you might have to open the air fryer halfway through to shake the basket to ensure that it cooks evenly.
- Reduced Formation of Harmful Compounds: Cooking methods that don’t expose food to high temperatures for a long period of time don’t create an environment where harmful compounds are as likely to form. The air fryer rarely cooks for more than 15-20 minutes – the formation of acrylamide is therefore reduced substantially when cooking in air fryers.
- It Retains Nutrients: The air fryer can effectively retain a big portion of the nutrients in our food. I’ve written an article that goes in-depth on the subject.