Over the past decade, the air fryer has become a staple of the American kitchen. Roughly 60 percent of households in the United States now own an air fryer. There are countless cookbooks, accessories, even actual food products designed to make the experience of air frying better and easier. Unfortunately, there’s been much less innovation when it comes to the air fryer itself, especially from a design perspective.

This became abundantly clear to me several months ago. About halfway through my salmon’s cooking time, I heard the fan on my cheap Dash air fryer completely give out. When I opened the machine, the fish was nowhere near done, and it was clear that the air fryer’s heating element was struggling. Unable to find any documentation of a warranty or even remember where I’d bought it, I chucked the busted air fryer into the trash and pulled up the Amazon app on my phone to search for a new one.

I did not like what I saw. The first results on Amazon returned a slew of nearly identical air fryers in two categories: pod-shaped machines in black, red, or grey plastic, or enormous toaster-oven-shaped varieties available in stainless steel. There were also dozens of air fryer brands — Ninja, Instant, Cosori, Dash, Nuwave, Breville, Phillips, Toshiba, and Hamilton Beach among them — all with varying reviews on their performance. And because this was an appliance that would sit out on the counter at all times, I wanted to find something that fit both the dimensions and the aesthetic of my small apartment kitchen. As such, the hunt continued.

My scrolling stopped, though, when I came across the Fritaire, which looks like no other air fryer I’d seen before. Instead of a metal basket, Fritaire’s egg-shaped air fryer employs a glass bowl to hold the food, which the brand claims makes it easier to clean and helps users avoid the chemicals inherent to the nonstick coatings on most air fryers. It’s also “self-cleaning,” meaning that users can dump soapy water directly into the bowl and allow the machine’s fan to swirl it around with air before tossing the water and wiping it clean. Aesthetically, it boasts a little bit of an Atomic Era, Jetsons-esque vibe, and is available in a range of colors, from classic black to newer offerings like mauve and lavender.

Fritaire founder Andreas Hansen first became aware of air fryer cooking in 2020, when the COVID pandemic sent sales of the appliance skyrocketing. Always a tinkerer, Hansen, who has an extensive background in product development, ordered several air fryer models from major brands like Ninja to test them at home. He liked the way they cooked, but his wife hated the look of all of them. “She didn’t like any of them, and it wasn’t because of performance,” he says. “She said that they all looked the same. They’re black, they’re gray, they’re boring, they’re ugly. That just sparked a need for me to see what else people don’t like about air fryers.”

Hansen began reading through dozens of negative reviews of air fryers on platforms like Amazon, and noticed tons of reviewers agreed with his wife. He also noticed some common complaints about the ways in which air fryers are designed — folks who buy the pod-shaped air fryers don’t like that they can’t see how their food is cooking inside and that they’re difficult to clean, for example — and so he set out to design an air fryer that could avoid all these criticisms.

It was when Hansen started to look for manufacturers for his design — which prioritized attractiveness and function equally — that things got tricky. Quickly, he learned why so many air fryers, even when they’re sold by totally different brands, look so similar. Many air fryers are made in China, and a single manufacturer may produce air fryers and other small appliances, or parts for those appliances, for several brands. “Even the big brands buy from them,” Hansen says.

The other problem that Hansen quickly encountered was that his plan to offer more colors was complicated by the way that air fryers work. Because they’re basically countertop ovens, manufacturers have to contend with the hot air that will inevitably make contact with the air fryer’s plastic pieces. “There is a reason that air fryers are usually not colorful, and that has to do with heat discoloration,” he says. “Basically, the plastic gets cooked over time. White plastic will turn green, green becomes yellow, and so forth.” Black will also discolor over time, but it’s much less noticeable than lighter colors. Hansen worked for nearly eight months to find a plastic that wouldn’t be impacted by heat discoloration, and he still had to settle for making the machine’s handle in black plastic.

Our Place, the brand known for its aesthetically pleasing cookware like the virally popular Always Pan, also took a distinct approach to designing its own air fryer. Its Wonder Oven is priced at $195, decidedly more expensive than the typical pod-shaped air fryer that normally sells for around $100, and looks like a petite toaster oven. It’s also available in multiple chic colors — warm, orangey Spice and cool Blue Salt, among them — and its look has earned the oven viral fame on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Many creators call it the “adult Easy-Bake oven,” referring to the popular ’80s cooking toy, and that description isn’t too far off.

When she began thinking about what her brand’s air fryer would look like, Our Place CEO Shiza Shahid immediately eschewed the pod-shaped design. “The typical air fryer design is really bulky and hyper-specific,” she says. “[This design] is just so much more useful. It allowed us to make the Wonder Oven not just an air fryer, but also an oven you can bake in. It’s also a toaster. You can do so much more in it, it’s a more versatile and approachable design. And, of course, the cherry on top of the cake is that it looks good.”

Because Shahid’s company employs an in-house design team, it allowed Our Place to develop a design that was truly distinct. “The way most kitchenware brands design products is that they purchase it from factories who’ve already done that work. It’s very rare for a company to have their own in-house product design team,” Shahid says. “It’s not just in air fryers, it’s across the board. Every frying pan looks the same, every toaster looks the same. It’s a category that has lacked innovation for a long time, both in form and in materials.”

There might be a reason for that lack of innovation beyond manufacturing efficiency. Perhaps, the pod-shaped air fryer is the superior design, and that’s why so many brands have gone with it. I decided to put that theory to the test by requesting three different air fryers from their manufacturers and evaluating them on their performance: the Our Place Wonder Oven, the Fritaire, and a basic Toshiba pod-shaped model. My plan was to air fry chicken nuggets, bake a cookie or two, and roast half-bags of frozen broccoli in each appliance. I assumed — and feared — that the bulky pod machine would produce the most even cooking.

The results, however, were shockingly similar — except when it came to baking. All three air fryers produced crisp nuggets and nicely charred broccoli florets, but neither the Toshiba nor the Fritaire models came with a baking sheet that would have worked with the cookies, so I wasn’t able to replicate that test. The Wonder Oven baked an okay cookie, but it won’t be replacing my larger oven in that respect.

I also purchased a combination air fryer and toaster oven from Drew Barrymore’s popular housewares line Beautiful, which is sold at Walmart. As its name might indicate, Beautiful’s products are all aesthetically pleasing, available in multiple colors, and made with luxe finishes like gold-painted handles. Priced at around $100, this oven did look great on my counter, but it cooked very unevenly, always burning the toast in the back left corner, and the exterior of the machine felt dangerously hot even after a quick cook. It also quickly fell victim to that heat discoloration that Hansen mentioned. Within just a few weeks, its light sage exterior turned an unpleasant brown around the edges of the door. I reached out to Beautiful for more insight into why I might be having these issues, but did not hear back.

Every air fryer I tried came with its own gripes. The Fritaire model was annoying to use because I had to remove the entire top half of the egg-shaped machine — which includes the heating element — every time I wanted to check on my food. Its plastic also felt flimsy, and the included rotisserie attachment was cumbersome and frustrating to use. The Toshiba cooked pretty evenly, but was a real pain to clean, and the nonstick coating inside the basket built up an unappealing film of carbonized grease. It was also the ugliest of the three, a big hulking hunk of black plastic. Our Place’s Wonder Oven was arguably the most attractive and easiest to use of all three, but it still suffered from uneven cooking and a finicky timer knob.

Ultimately, I still have all three of these air fryers, but the Wonder Oven is the only one that’s earned a permanent spot on my counter. Call me shallow, but I’d rather have to worry about unevenly browned chicken nuggets than crowd up my counter with an unsightly black appliance that I have to look at every single day. For the most part, the Wonder Oven roasts my veggies and bakes my salmon just fine. Every once in a while, I am annoyed by how often I have to stir what’s inside or by the need to flip the tiny sheet pan around just for my potatoes to roast evenly. But I guess these are the kinds of compromises we all have to make if we really can’t live without an air fryer.