Tower Vortx Eco Duo Basket Air Fryer review

How easy is the Tower Vortx Eco Duo Basket Air Fryer to use?

The first thing we noticed was the air fryer’s large size. While it’s to be expected that two-drawer models will be larger than most, this one requires a great deal of space. Usefully, it offers drawers of two different capacities: 5.2L and 3.3L, perfect for when you’re perhaps just cooking for one or want to cook a main and small side at the same time.

The Vortx Eco comes equipped with eight different food presets: fries/chips, cake, steak, chicken, drumsticks, prawns, sausage and pie. An icon for each can be found on the control panel, which is clear enough, although it would benefit from some accompanying text, as we found ourselves constantly referring to the instruction manual during testing. While there is no manual setting, it’s fairly easy to adjust the preset to your desired temperature and time.

Assembling the air fryer is straightforward on first use. Each basket comes with a grill plate to elevate the food, allowing for even cooking. This plate can be easily removed if you don’t need it or for cleaning. After testing, we found the air fryer easy to clean, though somewhat disappointingly, the baskets and plates are not dishwasher safe.

The instruction manual is comprehensive and explains many of the less-than-intuitive features well. Despite the cooking chart for a few items, there’s little in the way of prep information, except for chips. One oddity is that the manual states that items cooked in the large drawer should be cooked for five minutes longer, but the presets do no account for this.

Results

The Vortx Eco is one of the quietest air fryers we’ve tested; in fact, there were a few occasions where we had to actually check that we’d turned it on. However, cooking results were mixed. Halloumi was crisp around the edges, but barely cooked in the centre – a preheat function would have improved this.

There’s no vegetable setting, so we cooked our aubergine slices for 16 minutes at 180C. These were evenly browned and crisp, with a soft, cooked middle.

And, without a chicken breast setting or guidance in the manual, we decided to cook the breast on the default chicken setting of 200C for 15 minutes. The chicken breast came out a little undercooked, so we gave it another 3 minutes. It took 18 minutes of cooking time for the meat to be nicely browned and juicy in the middle.

We followed the instructions for air frying chips, which took 30 minutes to cook in total. Of note, this model doesn’t give you a prompt to shake or check on your chips at the half way point. But, they were cooked through, albeit unevenly: the top sides were brown while the undersides remained yellow. Although the food was relatively tasty, we’d be hard pressed to call them chips.

How sustainable is the Tower Vortx Eco Duo Basket Air Fryer?

The packaging for the Vortx Eco was a mixture of cardboard and plastic bags.

Information about spare parts is well signposted and parts can be requested via customer service – both an email address and contact number are provided.

This model comes with a one-year warranty as standard, which can be extended up to three years.

We ran the Vortx Eco for 10 minutes and recorded the cost of its energy usage. Using the small drawer cost 3.2p; 10 minutes in the large drawer cost 3.85p; and running both drawers cost 4.66p.

Conclusion

If you’re someone who often finds themselves cooking for a large group one day and just one or two people the next, this versatile air fryer will get the job done. We loved the two different-sized drawers and the sleek finishes.

The control panel would benefit from some text as it’s not instantly clear how this model works.

However, it cooks relatively well, producing well-browned and crisp results. Still, we would have preferred a pre-heat function and a setting for veggies.

The Vortx Eco boasts an impressive 8.5L capacity and is whisper-quiet too, making it ideal for large, open-plan kitchens.

Tower Vortx Eco Duo Basket Air Fryer specifications

Components: 2 air fryer baskets (5.2L and 3.3L), 2 grill plates
Wattage: 1700W
Dishwasher safe components: No
Capacity: 8.5L
Made in: China

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All costs-to-run calculations were done against the variable tariff at the time of testing (31.8p/kWh), which may have since changed – read more on the current energy price guarantee rates.