I have never seen or heard of this device!

Is it basically a high wattage directional bulb that broils food with radiant heat? How long does it take to cook things? Do you flip the food?

Perhaps you can line the bowl with foil for easier cleanup. It might also reflect heat back at the underside of the burgers. Just speculating as I've, as mentioned, never laid eyes on such a tool.

It has a self-cleaning washing cycle that makes cleaning ok. I have one and most of the time I put a dish in the oven to keep everything cleaner. Love it.

The so called "Halogen Technology" is no different than any electric oven and toaster oven. They all cook by radiant energy. As a matter of fact, the Halogen energy is probably very slightly less efficient. The fact that you can see bright light coming out is the energy not being used to cook your food.

The Halogen oven has a convection fan, which is a good thing to cook food more evenly, but it is also very important that they have the fan to cool the halogen compartment. If the fan should stop working, the oven may burn up in minutes.

I find it silly for them to advertise “air Frying”. I am not sure what they mean by that. To me it is no more then simple baking, just like any regular oven.

I would not mind getting one and hook it up with a $20.00 digital PID temperature controller and make that into a very effective Air Sous Vide oven. Never overcook any expensive meat anymore with that mod.

Not a bad appliance in the kitchen once you learn what it can and can’t do.

dcarch

I have one of the "pre-halogen" units that I've used for years and I like it. When kids are around or the rare times I want some pizza rolls they're done in 6 minutes. I use it to quickly brown ribs and things or make some quick garlic bread. No, it's not as good as pan-fried in bacon fat, but for a quick assist, it works just fine.

I don't find cleanup to be difficult at all. If I'm going to have something with a lot of grease (burgers for instance) I put down some foil in the bottom, no different than a regular oven. Then you just put some hot water in there, a squirt of dish soap and turn it on and let it go for 5-10 minutes. A quick scrub for anything up higher and it's clean. I paid something like $18-$20 for it. The grates/racks, whatever you call them are getting in rough shape from use for so long but it still works fine. I saw one of the halogen version for about $18 during Christmastime so I thought I'd "upgrade" or at worst, get some new racks. I haven't tried that one though.

"Air frying" is just an updated term. Most have heard the old "oven fried chicken" and the like. The difference is the convection though, it works better for certain things.

My biggest complaint, well only complaint I can think of for it is you can't turn off the fan. Trying to melt shredded cheese on something ain't gonna happen, it'll be all over the bowl!

I specifically didn't want the one that sets over the food. I wanted the one with the big bowl so things are contained. Haven't regretted that decision at all.

I took it to the cabin many times. Does a nice job on baked potatoes and frozen potatoes. With the direct application of the heat it has certain advantages at times over even my beloved Nesco even with the Nesco Roast Air lid in use. Frankly, this is one of those ASOTV items that does work. I've been suckered in on a few of them, the sandwich maker for instance, but this one is quite practical for me at least.

It definitely works as far as applying heat to food, but it is just impractical and tedious for me. The getting food out is a nightmare because the top rack uses three legs... if you take out some of the food, it will be heavier one side and that causes the rack to upturn and dump all the food in the grease below. If you're using both racks, to manipulate the food on the bottom rack, you have to remove every piece of food from the top rack, then remove the rack, then do whatever you have to and put the whole mess back together again.

The surface of the glass is easy to clean as far as that goes, but the bowl is just so heavy and big that it is cumbersome. Not to mention the racks, I hate cleaning racks of any kind. And then there's the glass rim in the lid.... it gets dirty too, and can't be submerged. If you wash it with soap, how do you rinse it? Putting it in the dishwasher is impractical too... the racks don't come clean in there, and it the bowl only fits on the top rack (which it consumes entirely almost... I might be able to fit 2 water glasses behind it, but that's it).

It does make a really crispy crust on breaded chicken. I've never attempted to melt shredded cheese in it, but I can understand how that would be a problem. Any time I've ever made anything with dried herb/spices, they are blown off of the food and swirl around the oven cavity like there's a tornado in there. Another thing I don't like is that the racks are awful... the slats are too large and things like fries fall through. You can solve that by using the bottom of a springform pan as a cookie sheet, but then the air doesn't circulate underneath very well.

Johnliu, it heats with the halogen bulb (which it power cycles to maintain the temperature), and with infrared... they say the infrared cooks the inside while the halogen makes everything crispy. It also has a fan for convection. It does have a timer (which based on reviews I've read, breaks easily, you can't turn it down if you pass the time you want or it will break). It does cook pretty quickly and the nice thing is that you can see the food cooking right before your eyes. It is hotter in the center than on the outsides, and sometimes food needs to be rotated, despite the convection fan. However, flipping is almost unnecessary unless you want to brown the other side. The burgers were completely done when I flipped them, and I only did it to brown the other side just a bit.

Here's a short commercial of the oven I have (it was 2 minutes long)... the same thing is the Flavorwave (which has Mr. T as the celebrity, not Mike Tyson... I was confused about that!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Video of the oven I have

I admire the fact that they have the nerve to misrepresent that infrared cooks from the inside out. Never possible.

There is only one way to cook from the inside out, that is with microwave energy.

dcarch

To get over the problem of food falling through, I found a sort of teflon,rigid mesh that I cut to fit the racks.

For cleaning the racks, turn them upside-down in the bowl so they're submerged in the washing water when you put it on the cleaning cycle.

Islay... that teflon mesh idea sounds great. When I try to make potato chips on the racks they always stick and I have to scrape them off. Something coated with teflon would really help. I know there is a lot of controversy about how bad (unhealthy) teflon is, but I don't use the oven often enough to be very concerned about that.

I've not found the automatic washing cycle to be very helpful, but I did some lemon pepper chicken quarters earlier today and the cleaning went so smoothly that I thought, "Why am I being such a drama queen, it really wasn't *that* bad!"

Lemon chicken ..... now I want some!!!

I had one of those and really liked it. I liked the fact that I could adjust the temperature and the fan speed. I thought cleaning it was fairly easy too. I just wiped it out with paper towels and then a damp sponge. If it was really bad, I'd use the self cleaning feature. I didn't think the bowl was too unwieldy.

However, after just 2 months of use, the bulb went bad. I looked online for information about replacing it, and it was possible. Apparently, what I experienced is a common complaint. We decided against replacement, though.