I swapped my Ninja air fryer for a cheaper alternative - my food has never been crispier

I'm a big fan of air fryers. They're easy to use, they cook food quickly and use less energy than our tiny, wholly inefficient oven. Our Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone is used almost every day, from quickly preparing our toddler's lunches to even helping cook several elements of our last Christmas dinner.

I've never had any real complaints about it; it has two drawers allowing you to sync up cooking times, even with different temperatures and cooking modes, and it doesn't require any pre-heating time. It also looks pretty nice too, as bulky kitchen appliances go. But as good as it is, the drawers aren't big enough for everything I make.

And with energy bills creeping higher again, putting the oven or grill on just for the sake of some garlic bread to go with our pasta can sting.

So when Cuisinart reached out and offered the chance to trial their Tri Zone 13.6L Air Fryer and Oven, I was only too happy to give it a go to see if I could completely cut out my oven.

But first, a word of warning. With two 4.3L baskets and a 5L flat oven drawer, this is far from compact, and it was just a tiny bit too tall to fit on our kitchen counter below our wall units.

Having checked the measurements ahead of time, this wasn't an issue for me, but it's something to be aware of if you don't have any open space.

The digital interface on the Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L model is attractive and easy to use, featuring six cooking options: 'air fry', 'roast', 're-crisp', 'grill', 'bake' and 'dehydrate'. The temperature for the air fry mode ranges from 100°C to 200°C, and allows for 5°C increments, something my Ninja doesn't offer.

Like many other models, you can set each basket to whichever cooking mode, temperature and time you want and then sync them up so multiple elements of your dish are ready at the same time.

To ease myself in, I first tested it out with a simple chicken dippers and curly fries combo only to get a shock when halfway through the cooking time, one of the air fryer's additional features came into play: the shake reminder.

This is something you can choose to keep on or turn off while selecting your cooking settings at the start. I opted to keep it on, as I never remember to shake my food midway, which can sometimes lead to slightly soggier results.

But after hearing the beeps at the midway point, I took the basket out and gave everything a good shake, which led to far crispier results. Forgetting to shake is definitely a user error, so cannot be held against my Ninja air fryer, but in my opinion, this feature makes the Cuisinart air fryer more suited to busy family kitchens like mine.

I tried cooking lots of different things in the baskets, from Yorkshire puddings (sadly not homemade) to chicken breasts and salmon fillets. With the click of a button, I was able to turn the baskets' lights on and see for myself through the built-in viewing windows how my food was coming along.

Some fishcakes I bought didn't come with cooking instructions for the air fryer, so after guessing the temperature and timings myself, it was handy to be able to quickly check how they were doing without pausing the cooking time and removing the basket.

Of course, it's the oven that's the star of the show. With a 5L capacity, it's perfect for 12" pizzas, toast, quiches and baked goods, and I was keen to see if it could replace our oven for lunches and weeknight meals.

The short answer: yes it could. On a solo night in, I treated myself to a sourdough pizza, which fit in with room to spare, and was done in far less time overall thanks to not having to wait around for 20 minutes for my old oven to heat up.

The next night, I cooked some sausages in the oven drawer and they came out juicy and with a lot less mess than when I do them in an air fryer basket.

With a dedicated toast mode for the oven, I also decided to try making my breakfast in it one morning, but found it ended up taking longer than my toaster would.

Overall, the 13.6L capacity means there is plenty of space to add enough food for the whole family - and then some. And the independent cooking zones mean you can have brownies baking in the oven section while you make burgers in one compartment and chips in the other.

The crisper trays and baskets are super easy to insert and remove, and cleaning the appliance down after each use was a breeze.

The Cuisinart Tri Zone 13.6L air fryer is available now from Amazon for £199.99 or you can order it from Cuisinart directly for the same price.

While it isn't the cheapest air fryer on the market, for me it felt like it would be well worth the money just for the range of cooking options and handy features - not to mention the easy cleaning. It's also much cheaper than my Ninja Foodi MAX Dual Zone air fryer, which retails for £269.99.

If you'd prefer don't need the oven, you could opt for the Cuisinart XXL Dual-Zone air fryer, available from Amazon for £121.85 (down from £149.99) or the Scoville 8L Dual air fryer, available for £49.96 at Asda, down from £89.

If you want something a bit smaller, you could try the Russell Hobbs 4L air fryer, currently on sale for nearly half price (£49.99) on Amazon, or the Living and Home 4.7L air fryer which retails for £31.90 at Tesco.