T17138 Vortx Elite 10.4L Dual Basket Air Fryer with Sync Finish, 1700W, Graphite with Chrome Accents

This is a review for the Tower Dual Basket VORTX Model: T17138. This is my first experience purchasing and/or using an air fryer. I received my air-fryer next day delivery 6 GOOD REASONS TO BUY THIS 10.4 Litre MODEL? (EVEN IF YOU LIVE ALONE). Of all the air-fryers available on Amazon I chose this large 10.4 Dual Basket fryer because :- 1. It's large capacity allows roasting a whole chicken and/ or a joint Roast + veg. 2. It will cook for 1 or 6 people! 3. The 8 Presets allow instant setup of Temperature and Cooking Time at a press of a button. BUT these and any presets will require manual adjustment according to size and quantity of some cooking ingredients. Eg. A small single portion of chips/fries will require less time than large quantities. And skinny fries will require less time than chunky chips. E.G. I adjusted the Chips preset to 8 minutes for a small portion of frozen chips. On the chips packaging it suggested 12 minutes but 8 minutes was enough in the air fryer. Other Tower models of air fryer offer more or fewer Presets, which is neither good nor bad as ANY preset on ANY air-fryer may have to be adjusted. Some recipes require ingredients to be shaken or stirred, so, it will be necessary to withdraw baskets anyway. And if you use silicone liners, then these will block the view of contents in an air-fryer basket with a window. 4. This Tower Dual Basket Air Fryer has 'Dual' and 'Sync' functions which allows either batch cooking of same ingredients at same temperature in both baskets OR you can set each basket it's own temperature and time and select 'Sync' to programme the air fryer to complete cooking of both baskets at the same time. 5. The 'Shake' function will give an audible and visual alert half way through the cooking process to shake a basket to improve even browning of contents eg chips. 'SHAKE' FUNCTION The 'Shake' function is useful but not essential as frequent shaking is recommended. And if you're sitting in the next room you can set a timer on your smartphone or Alexa or a manual timer, to remind you to shake the basket/s and stir if necessary. This Tower Air fryer is a nice looking, well made, piece of kit, and is slightly smaller than my Combi microwave oven. 6. 3 YEAR WARRANTY/GUARANTEE I have peace of mind having registred the air fryer on the Tower website to claim the 3 year Guarantee. (NB This does not include accidental or damage caused by improper use). RECOMMENDED ACCESSORIES When I ordered my air fryer some Amazon reviews mentioned the value of buying silicone liners to make cleaning easier. So, I bought a Combi pack that included 2 x Silicone baskets, stainless steel wire racks and kebab skewers, silicone tipped tongs, and a pair of silicone finger tip gloves for lifting out the silicone baskets. These accessories are definitely worth adding to your purchase. NB The Tower air fryer baskets DO include toasting racks, and both racks and baskets are non-stick. However, removable silicone baskets are much easier to clean. The largest silicone basket inserts I could find are designed for 9Litre fryers BUT these are an ideal size when cooking for 1-2 people. TOWER BASKETS ARE NOT DISHWASHER FRIENDLY These Tower baskets must NOT be put in a dishwasher. Handwashing is easy-peazy anyway, and definitely not a deal breaker. SMELL The Tower User Manual points out that there will be a strong burning smell on first use of the air-fryer. I therefore followed the advice of an Amazon reviewer and set both compartments of the fryer to cook empty without food at 200C for 10 minutes. This did cause a strong smell associated with first use of a new hot kitchen appliance. I have since cooked with the air-fryer with no further smell. USER/INSTRUCTION MANUAL Programming the air fryer is not difficult, but it does feel a little intimidating at first sight, simply because it's a new appliance. Unfortunately the User Manual layout looks overwhelming simply because it's poorly laid out with blocks of text that are poorly formatted. Consequently I've used a highlighter pen to highlight the most important information. A major improvement in the User Manual woukd be to include more diagrammes and photos. The saying very much applies here, "a picture is worth a thousand words". Pictures and bullet points, and an accessible step by step video need to be made available with the air-fryer. Also the QR code links to the Tower website do not take to you to recipes and other helpful videos. The Tower website has nothing helpful to say about this Model of air-fryer. Consequently, there are likely to be customer complaints and Returns requests simply because the instructions are either unclear or incomplete. Frustratingly, there are descriptions of each function button EXCEPT the 'Shake' button, and I couldn't find information about this on Google or YouTube. But, by experimenting I discovered how to activate and turn off the 'Shake' function which I described above. I now feel that I have a good grasp of how to programme and use my air-fryer and I'm impressed and pleased by it's performance, design, quality of construction, and aesthetic appearance. I unhesitatingly recommend this air-fryer even if you're a singleton.

I’ve been using the Tower 10L Dual Air Fryer for a few weeks, and I’m genuinely impressed. The dual-drawer design makes it easy to cook two different dishes at once — perfect for family dinners or meal prep. Everything cooks crispy on the outside and tender inside, from chips to chicken to veggies. I also love how intuitive the controls are — even the presets actually work well, which isn’t always the case with other air fryers. Cleaning is a breeze since the baskets are non-stick and dishwasher safe. If you’re short on time but still want healthy, tasty meals, this air fryer is a must-have. It’s big enough for family portions but still sleek enough to fit nicely on the counter.

Perfect air fryer, functionality of the two trays is great (lots of space) & very simple to use. Just a shame Amazon dropped/damaged it so the plastic casing is a little ‘bruised’.

Love this air fryer. Decided to buy this after realising how useful an air fryer is. Great fryer, I use this in a cafe I run for the elderly. Had it about a year now, with no problems. Easy to clean, good capacity. Easy to use. The baskets can be independently programmed with different cooking times/temps, or can be syncronised to both cook together. defintely reccomend.

Returned, these seem good in principle s they save counter space, but as someone who has been using airfryers a lot since my first one in 2019, you realise this type of airfryer which is stacked as not very good. They don’t cook as evenly, they drawer have holes in the back so be careful if you have any liquid in the drawer, especially if you’re doing sausages for example and you shake the drawer, it will come out the back. Ours also started smoking and was getting dirty and hard to clean very quick. Overall, don’t waste your money and stick to the two drawer version side by side.

After looking at the Ninja stack air fryers and deciding i wouldn't use most the functions I decided to buy this as the price is a lot cheaper. Very happy with the Tower stack air fryer and the price. Easy to use, easy to clean and cooks well.

Bought this in mid October during the prime sale - previous air fryer was a tower vortex dual which I also loved but went for the new double stack to free up counter space. It was a bit noisier than my previous tower but not too bad - loved the shake reminder alarm. It was easy to use. Unfortunately after two months use it stopped working - the digital display went blank and I couldn’t turn it on to use. Sent back and refund issued with no problem from Amazon- I would buy again once any bugs with this model are resolved

Wow, this is an amazing product! I highly recommend it. It included a few recipes and a recipe online and comes with the three-year warranty. I know precious counter space is a concern and I definitely don’t have much. This saved me a lot of counter space and is an incredible product for cooking fried food as a healthy alternative. It looks great and the instructions are incredibly easy. The cooking time is usually around an hour but the powerful air fryer means it doesn’t take as long. I never realised I was missing out on this!