Cosori 8.5L XL Dual Zone Air Fryer

Verdict

The Cosori 8.5L XL Dual Zone Air Fryer is a great dual-zone air fryer that cooks food evenly and offers a larger capacity that makes it a solid choice for larger families. It’s also a good-looking appliance and offers a reasonable amount of functions for its higher price.

Introduction

The Cosori 8.5L XL Dual Zone Air Fryer is the brand’s first attempt at an air fryer with two compartments.

That may sound quite uninspiring at first, but considering the £199.99 retail price and some of its recent top performers, including the 6L Turbo Blaze, this may finally be a dual-zone air fryer that takes on Ninja at the more premium end of the market.

I’ve had the pleasure of testing the Cosori 8.5L XL Dual Zone Air Fryer for the last few weeks to see if it stacks up against the best air fryers we’ve tested.

Design and features

• Modern, sleek design
• Larger than competing options
• Easy-to-operate control panel

Put this Dual Zone next to the Turbo Blaze, and they look quite similar, dual baskets aside. The Cosori Dual Zone option is reflective of the brand’s more modern design in recent releases, and that’s certainly no bad thing. It’s a good-looking air fryer.

The Cosori Dual Zone is also a little bit of an odd shape in comparison to other dual-zone air fryers I’ve tested in the past. It’s a little smaller in height compared to the Ninja AF400UK I use daily at 303mm tall, although with 391mm of depth and 440mm of width, it takes up a fair bit of space on the worktop.

The total 8.5 litres of cooking capacity is also enough for a lot of food and for cooking for a large family. That’s split evenly between two 4.25-litre baskets. What’s interesting here is that removing these baskets reveals that the Cosori Dual Zone doesn’t have a wall dividing the two baskets. This is unlike the Ninja AF400UK, where there is a dividing wall, giving you two distinct zones.

There are two elements and fans here in the Cosori Dual Zone, but the lack of a wall provides a couple of intriguing quirks and pieces of guidance – for instance, you can only use the Grill function on one side at a time, and when using both zones at the same time, you need to add 2-3 minutes onto the overall cooking time. Cosori doesn’t seem to explain why this is, but the lack of wall and the potential for heat dissipation may explain why.

The baskets themselves feel substantial, and the addition of windows to keep an eye on your food is especially welcome. There are also lights inside the air fryer itself, which can be turned on via the control panel so you can keep check on the progress of whatever you’re cooking.

As well as the baskets themselves feeling well-made, the same can also be said for the Cosori Dual Zone’s crisper plates. They feel weighty and aren’t flimsy. The fact they also have a proper handle to make lifting them out of the basket is also useful, unlike the Cosori Dual Blaze I tested late last year.

You also get a reasonable amount of accessories here, with a selection of skewers, a rack for said skewers, and a toast rack. There isn’t a recipe book here, however, but just an instruction manual. The downloadable VeSync app provides some recipes, although given the device is in its infancy, there are only a handful of recipes present. I’m sure more will be added as time passes, however.

The Cosori Dual Zone’s control panel is perhaps a little smaller than expected, given the overall size of the appliance. It is, nonetheless, easy to operate, especially with the extensive guidance that Cosori provides in the box and on the appliance itself. It offers a full minutes and seconds readout so you know exactly when your food is done, and the air fryer’s six functions are labelled in the middle to be seen.

You get options to Air Fry, Roast, Reheat, Bake, Grill, And Dry (or Dehydrate). That’s an extensive list, and gives Ninja a run for its money, as well as a preheat function which should be used before you cook anything inside – it gets the basket to temperature and takes 3 minutes. What’s also interesting here is there is a dedicated button for the air fryer to remind you to shake your food halfway through cooking. Turn it on, and halfway through the time you’ve got set and the Cosori Dual Blaze emits a bleep to let you know it’s time to shake.

Hitting one of the cooking modes will provide a preset time and temperature, as always, although this can be changed with ease, too. Simply tap the arrows up or down with your fingers, and you can change time in minute-by-minute increments, or temperature in five-degree steps for extra precise control.

Once you’re done with the fryer basket and crisper plate, they can both be put in the dishwasher. I avoided this in my testing and instead chose to handwash them. Doing so is easy, and they were clean, dry and put back in a matter of minutes.

Performance

• Consistent cooking across most modes
• Beware of the Grill setting’s restrictions
• Reasonable noise levels

Over my couple of weeks with the Cosori Dual Zone, I cooked a variety of different items inside it to see how well it performed, including cooking multiple components of a Sunday roast inside to prove air fryers are for more than just your usual beige food.

My first test was to cook a large 1.6kg pork loin joint, filling one side of the Cosori Dual Zone. It cooked on air fry at 165°C for a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes, being turned halfway through. I then pushed the temperature up to 200°C for a further 15 minutes for the crackling. This kind of joint may take closer to two hours in a conventional oven, and it came out juicy and flavoursome, with some excellent crackling.

While this was cooking, the other side of the air fryer saw plenty of action, with some pigs in blankets taking 20 minutes at 180°C on air fry. These turned out especially well, with crispy bacon and a well-cooked sausage. Brussels sprouts and carrots were also done in the right basket, with the carrots being parboiled beforehand. They cooked at 190°C on Air Fry in 15 minutes, and were shaken halfway with the shake reminder setting enabled. The carrots were the right mix of having an outside crunch and melting in the middle without being mushy, while the Brussels retained a lot of flavour compared to if they had been boiled on a hob.

I also cooked a couple of different types of stuffing while the pork cooked, with a larger pork, leek and bacon stuffing and bacon-wrapped pork and onion stuffing parcels taking 25 minutes on Air Fry at 180°C to cook. They came out evenly, and weren’t dry in the slightest.

To give the Bake setting a go, I cooked a selection of pinwheels made using some shop-bought pastry, a jar of mincemeat, and cinnamon sugar. For this, the baskets were lined with greaseproof to prevent sticking, while the pinwheels cooked for 20 minutes at 190°C, being turned after 10 minutes. They came out being cooked through and well done across top and bottom.

For some of the leftover pork, I also utilised the Reheat setting to heat it back up to temperature. The Reheat function can go to much higher temperatures than the Dual Blaze, which was helpful. While this was being reheated, the Roast function also got taken for a spin with some hasselback potatoes and parboiled carrots – these took 25 minutes at 190°C and tasted excellent.

For another roast, I also cooked some rolled brisket on Air Fry at 180°C for 45 minutes. It was left to rest for 10 minutes, and came out more on the medium side. The meat was tender and juicy. The same can also be said for the reasonably sized gammon joint, too which cooked for 50 minutes on Air Fry at 180°C. It’s some of the best gammon I’ve ever had.

Moving back to the more typical beige food that air fryers are perhaps designed for, I cooked some battered haddock on one side for 18 minutes at 200°C on Air Fry while also cooking some beef dripping frozen oven chips on the other side for 25 minutes at 200°C on Air Fry. The cooking times were adjusted to account for the use of both sides, while I also used the Sync Finish function. The fish was held while the chips preheated and cooked, and both finished simultaneously, as expected. The time is also equalised even when food is one side is shaken, which is rather handy.

The Cosori Dual Blaze also coped well with breaded chicken at 200°C on Air Fry, which only took 10 minutes to cook. When cooked in an oven, it usually takes more towards 15-18 minutes, proving the speed of an air fryer. In the other side, the oven chips and frozen tempura prawns took 18 minutes at 200°C, and tasted great, too.

The only thing that the Cosori Dual Zone had some trouble with was cooking crumpets or toast on the grill function. The 230°C for 5 minutes preset was nowhere near enough to cook four crumpets – they instead took 12 minutes, including the preheat.

Throughout cooking all of the above, the Cosori Dual Zone also proved to offer reasonable noise levels. It isn’t as loud as the Dual Blaze, but it’s not as whisper-quiet as the Turbo Blaze.

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