Ninja Crispi Pro Review: Glass Air Fryer

Most air fryers ask you to trust them. You load the basket, close the drawer, and hope that whatever is happening inside is going well. The Ninja Crispi Pro is built around a different idea: glass cooking vessels you can see through, lift out, carry to the table, and put straight in the fridge.

After more than a month of regular use, the conclusion from testing is not that it replaces an oven — it does not — but that it makes a whole category of cooking worthwhile that previously wasn't. Small portions, sides, breaded things, single servings: dishes that never justified heating a full-size oven suddenly become everyday food.

The Crispi Pro is an air fryer whose cooking vessels are interchangeable borosilicate glass containers rather than a fixed non-stick basket. Two ship in the box — 5.7 litres and 2.3 litres — with a 3.8-litre container available separately. You pick the vessel to match the amount of food, cook in it, serve from it, store leftovers in it under the supplied lids, and recrisp in it later without ever transferring the food.

The base delivers 2,050 W across six functions — AirFry, MaxCrisp, Recrisp, Roast, Bake/Prove and Dehydrate — over a temperature range of 40°C to 240°C. The unit measures 31.08 x 29.79 x 28.01 cm. The glass containers have BPA-free plastic handles and protective feet, the base combines BPA-free plastic with stainless steel, and the crisping rack is aluminium with a nano-ceramic coating.

The control system is genuinely simple: a ring of buttons and a central dial. Turn to choose a mode, adjust time or temperature, press to start. From the first use it is obviously an appliance designed not to complicate your life.

The glass earns its place quickly. Watching food brown in real time is more useful than it sounds — especially with a recipe whose timings you have not yet learned. It spares you pulling the basket out every few minutes to check, which also keeps the heat in and saves energy.

The handles and feet on the containers mean they go straight to the table for serving, or into the fridge as storage, without dirtying another dish. They are dishwasher-safe, and when washed by hand even grease comes off remarkably easily — one of the strongest practical advantages over fixed-basket designs.

The deep containers initially seem like a major advantage, and for bulky items they are — a whole chicken or roasting peppers fit without difficulty.

Extended use reveals the catch: in an air fryer, flat surface area matters far more than depth. Food needs to be spread out with space between pieces for the circulating hot air to cook it evenly. For dishes like little pasties, chips or breaded vegetables, results improve markedly when nothing is crowded — and a deep, comparatively narrow vessel makes that harder. Attempting family-sized quantities runs into the usual limits of any air fryer, whatever the container's volume suggests.

The real surprise in testing was how good certain foods came out — good enough to change habits. Chips made from fresh potatoes come out very well. Breaded items hold a genuinely crisp texture. Chicken wings crisp nicely under the constant hot-air circulation.

Reheating is a quiet strength: pasties and pizza slices revive with proper texture rather than the chewy result a microwave produces.

The clearest test of its limits was an oven-native dish — cannelloni. A single portion came out better than expected; a family tray is another matter entirely, not because of cooking quality but because of capacity. That is the honest shape of this appliance: excellent for one to three people, wrong for feeding a crowd.

Worth buying if you regularly cook for one or two people, if you like sides, breaded dishes and quick preparations, or if you want an air fryer that is genuinely easy to clean and maintain.

Not worth buying if you routinely cook for several people, if you expect it to fully replace your oven, or if your cooking runs to big trays and family-scale recipes.

In the UK the Crispi Pro is sold as the Ninja CRISPi PRO XL Glass Air Fryer, listed on Amazon UK at £249.00 in White under model number AS090UKWH, in stock at the time of writing, with both the 5.7L and 2.3L glass containers and storage lids included. Moss Green is listed at the same price and a Sand finish slightly higher. Note that the smaller, differently specified Ninja CRISPi Portable (3.8L) is a separate, cheaper product — not the model reviewed here.

The Crispi Pro convinces precisely because it does not try to be something it is not. The glass-container system delivers real advantages in convenience, cleaning and everyday use — cook, serve, store and recrisp in one vessel — and it makes small-portion cooking accessible in a way that turning on a full oven never was.

Its limits are structural and honest: depth is no substitute for surface area, and family-scale cooking is beyond it. For a household of one to three, it earns a permanent spot on the counter — the space between the microwave and the oven that most kitchens never knew was empty.

How does the Ninja Crispi work? Unlike a conventional air fryer with a fixed nonstick drawer, the Crispi's cooking vessels are interchangeable borosilicate glass containers — the 2,050 W PowerPod base clips onto whichever container you're using, cooks in it, and the same glass then goes to the table, the fridge or the dishwasher.

What temperature does the Ninja Crispi cook at? Across a range of 40°C to 240°C, spanning six functions: AirFry, MaxCrisp, Recrisp, Roast, Bake/Prove and Dehydrate.

Where can you buy the Ninja Crispi in the UK? Amazon UK carries the Crispi Pro XL reviewed here (model AS090UK) — the verified price at this review's last check was £249.00, in stock.