Pizza-sized air fryers are here. Why do you need one?

I’ve tested air fryers in my role as Ideal Home’s Kitchen Appliances Editor for many a year now and while I’ve wholeheartedly ditched my built-in oven in favour of my smaller, faster appliance, there’s one problem food that has prevented many others from doing the same.

While many of the best air fryers are pretty spacious, there are hardly any on the market that can fit an entire pizza, whether homemade or store-bought. As most medium pizzas are usually about 12 inches in diameter, the drawer sizes of air fryers have always been a limiting factor. Until now.

I’ve spotted that the newest generation of pizza ovens have been designed with everyone’s favourite Italian food in mind. I’m not just talking about an obligatory pizza mode but rather, designs that allow you to fit a full-sized pizza in for perfect baking. Here’s our lowdown of all of the brand-new air fryers out there designed to rival the best pizza ovens on the market.

The newest trend in air fryers

We’re always o the hunt for the next big thing at Ideal Home, and when we recently tested Smeg’s new countertop oven (which you can read all about in our Smeg Countertop Oven Air Fryer review), we found that one thing is for sure: the latest trend in the air fryer world is to make everything bigger.

The Smeg oven is not only cavernous, but it also has a pizza setting, which utilises steam to inject moisture into your chosen slice. It’s big enough to replace your built-in oven entirely, and features a window, so that you can check on the progress of your pepperoni or vegetable pizza to prevent it from going from perfectly cooked to too-charred.

Smeg isn’t the only brand that has spotted a gap in the market when it comes to pizza-ready air fryers. ProCook recently announced their new Electric Pizza Oven air fryer, which can reach temperatures of up to 400°C in order to give you that coveted crispy base on your Margherita.

Unlike the huge Smeg air fryer, you’ll struggle to cook everything you need for your family in the ProCook oven, which is very compact. Given its small price-tag however, we’re intrigued as to how it’ll shape up against other indoor pizza ovens, such as the Ooni Volt, which we recently reviewed.

If it does prove to be a top performer, it looks like it might be one of the most affordable new appliances to help you make restaurant grade pizza at home.

In our tests so far, the best air fryer with a pizza setting that we’ve found is the Sage Smart Oven Air Fryer, which has a whopping 10 functions in total. The countertop oven style and efficient performance of that air fryer led to us giving it 5 stars in our review. We’ll be intrigued to see if any of these shiny new air fryers with pizza capabilities can give it a run for its money!