I honestly don't get why the entire internet is obsessed with these ugly plastic eggs that sit on your counter and scream at you while they turn perfectly good potatoes into soggy fries mistakes that are somehow burnt on the tips but raw in the middle... seriously, it is just a tiny convection oven with a fan that spins too fast, drying out chicken breast until it has the texture of a shoe sole instead of actually "frying" anything. I tried to make a batch of wings for game night and realized I could only fit about six wings in there at a time without stacking them, so I spent the entire evening running back and forth to the kitchen while my guests ate cold wings in shifts—it was humiliating and totally inefficient compared to just using a sheet pan in a real oven.
And can we talk about the gross factor? Nobody mentions that the heating coil at the top gets splattered with grease that you literally cannot reach to clean, so every time you turn it on, it smokes and smells like burning rancid oil from three weeks ago... or the fact that after just a few months of scrubbing that "non-stick" basket, the cheap teflon coating peeling starts flaking off into your food, adding a nice little chemical crunch to your dinner. It drives me crazy that I sacrificed so much valuable counter space clutter for a gadget that sounds like a hair dryer and is essentially a glorified crouton maker.
If you are thinking about buying one because you want to be "healthy," just know that you will end up eating more processed frozen food because that's the only thing this machine cooks halfway decently. Before you waste your money, go read a proper appliance maintenance guide and see how many people complain about the fan failing or the handle snapping off, because the build quality on these things is generally trash compared to a standard toaster oven.
