Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360 Review (2023)

We purchased the Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360 so our reviewer could put it to the test in her kitchen. Keep reading for our full product review.

Maybe you’ve caught the Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360 on an early morning infomercial. It’s boasted as an all-in-one cooking appliance with 12 preset cooking functions, capable of crisping French fries, roasting a 10-pound turkey, dehydrating fruit slices, baking desserts, toasting bread, slow-cooking roasts, reheating leftovers, and more. Air fryers are used to cook traditional fried recipes without the mess involved with deep frying. They’re similar to convection ovens and work by circulating hot air all around the food—no oil required.

If it works as advertised, the Power AirFryer 360 could technically replace a toaster, toaster oven, convection oven, standalone air fryer, deep fryer, slow cooker, food dehydrator, and microwave. I tested it out to determine if this "As Seen on TV" gadget is all it’s cracked up to be. Keep reading for the results.

Setup: Nothing to it

I removed the air fryer from the packaging, plugged it in, inserted the cooking pans and drip tray, and let it preheat for about 10 minutes to burn off the manufacturer’s oil coating as recommended in the instructions. Getting started is as easy as selecting one of the 12 cooking presets for your food. Overriding the preset time and temperature is easily changed with the dials—for example, I made a frozen pizza that required a different cooking time and temperature than the pizza preset on the air fryer.

Design: May be too large for some kitchens

The Power Air Fryer 360 is sized like an extra-large toaster oven or small microwave. While it fit on my kitchen counter and beneath cabinets, it took up too much countertop real estate for my taste. It’s too big to fit inside of a cabinet, but if you have to store it on the counter, at least it looks good with a sleek all stainless steel exterior and glass door.

Other design features I liked include the bright interior light, intuitive controls, easy-to-read LCD setting screen, and the guide markings on the door so you always know which rack height to use for different cooking functions.

Features: Intuitive controls

The Power Air Fryer 360 works with what they’ve dubbed 360° Quick Cook Technology. There are five heating elements located in the top and bottom of the unit plus a fan that circulates the hot air to surround the food from all angles.There are 12 preset cooking functions that automatically set time and temperature, including air fry, toast, bagel, pizza, bake, roast, broil, rotisserie, slow cook, reheat, dehydrate, and warm. The manual has a preset chart that lists the temperature and time ranges for each cooking mode.

It comes with a crisper tray for air frying, baking pan, pizza rack, and rotisserie spit. There are three rack placements in the unit, which means you can cook multiple trays of food at the same time. However, I found the crisper tray and baking pan capacity to be on the small side. If you want to make French fries for a crowd or dehydrate several fruits at once, you’ll have to purchase additional crisper trays separately.

There are controls to change the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius and turn the convection fan and interior light on and off.

Performance: Powerful, but noisy

This was my first time using an air fryer and I was excited to test it with two classic fried recipes: French fries and buffalo chicken wings. I selected the air fryer function and filled the crisper tray with a single serving of frozen steak fries. I went with the preset air fryer time and temperature: 400 degrees for 18 minutes.

It actually took two tries to correctly preheat for the fries. I was anticipating a beep to alert me when the air fryer was finished preheating and it was time to put the food in. Instead, the air fryer automatically starts the timer as soon as the oven is heated, which means you need to put your food in the air fryer while it preheats, otherwise you’ll miss the start time.

Once I got cooking, I was disappointed to find the air fryer convection fan gives off a loud, whirring noise. It’s completely silent in cooking modes that don’t use the convection fan, but air fry mode was so noisy that I could hear it from other rooms and even from other floors of my house. This was a definite negative against the air fryer for me.

I hoped the end result would warrant all the noise. After 15 minutes, the unit beeped and the interior light turned on to signal the end of cooking. The door handle was still cool when I removed my fries, but the outside of the air fryer got very hot to the touch and is something to be mindful of if you have children helping in the kitchen.

After all that, I was pleased to see the fries turned out better than they do in my standard oven. They were crisp and golden on the outside and tender on the inside.

Next, I tossed half a dozen chicken wings with a bit of baking powder, which I'd read helps create a crunchy, fried-like exterior without batter or oil. After 20 minutes at 400 degrees, the wings weren’t as golden as I would have liked, so I switched to broil mode to increase the temperature to 450 degrees for an additional 5-10 minutes. I was prepared for this, since other reviewers have noted air frying mode on the Power Air Fryer 360 takes longer to cook some recipes than the instructions call for.

The air fryer got really dirty with burnt-on drippings and grease splatter from cooking the chicken wings. The wings were crunchy with tender meat inside, but I'm not sure the result was worth the cleanup.After I saw how messy the interior got cooking just half a dozen chicken wings, I definitely wouldn't recommend roasting anything larger than a 4-pound bird on the spit.

As for some of the other functions, there wasn’t much that really wowed. The pizza function didn’t produce any crisper of a frozen pizza crust than I get with my standard oven and it didn’t save me any time. Toasting bread and bagels was no faster than using a standard toaster, but I loved being able to toast up to six slices at a time.

Dehydrate mode utilizes the convection fan and takes 6 hours, which is a long time to have such an intrusive noise fill the house. I didn’t find much use for it as a slow cooker, since my 5.5-quart Dutch oven didn’t fit inside. And since the whole appliance gets so hot, I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving it running all day while I was out of the house.

A standard dinner plate easily fits inside for reheating or warming, but again, this probably isn’t any easier or faster than using a microwave for these tasks. Baking and roasting modes should work well if you’re making a small batch of cookies or a couple of chicken breasts for dinner. If you want to cook for a crowd, you’ll have to purchase additional baking pans and crisper trays separately.

For most cooking functions, I recommend sticking to a standard oven. The only edge the air fryer has is for kitchens not equipped with a standard oven, toaster, or microwave—which isn’t the majority.

Cleaning: Interior is tricky to keep clean

The stainless steel exterior easily smudges with fingerprints and requires a wipe down after each use to keep it looking shiny. The cooking trays and drip pan are removable and it's recommended you clean them by hand.

Because the unit takes 15-20 minutes to cool down, food residue on the inside started to dry and took some effort to remove by the time it was cool enough to clean. Lining the drip tray with foil could help make cleanup easier, but it won’t help with the interior walls or door.

Price: Your buck goes far

The Air Fryer 360 costs around $200, which is on the high end compared to dedicated air fryers. But that price tag may be justified if you have a need for several of the functions. If your kitchen isn’t currently equipped with a toaster/toaster oven, convection oven, deep fryer, and/or food dehydrator, then $200 may seem like a small price to pay for the added functionality. If you’re still on the fence whether the AirFryer 360 deserves a place in your kitchen, there’s a 90-day money back guarantee so you can try it out without worry.

Power AirFryer 360 vs. Instant Vortex Plus 7-in-1 Air Fryer Oven

The makers of the cult-favorite Instant Pot also sell a multi-function air fryer oven. The Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven, which The Spruce Eats also tested, is a 7-in-1 appliance, with settings for air frying, roasting, baking, broiling, reheating, dehydrating, and rotating for rotisserie. Although it appears to have fewer settings, Emeril’s model just has more preset functions. The roast and bake functions can still be used for pizza, toast, bagels, and rotisserie.

It also has an attractive stainless steel exterior and will take up more space than a standard air fryer. It comes with two racks, a rotisserie spit, and a rotisserie basket that continually rotates and eliminates the need to shake potatoes for even cripsing during the cooking process. Priced around $120, you can save a significant chunk of change compared to the Power Air Fryer 360—and it was much quieter in tests.