Healthy Choice vs Kmart glass air fryer: Which is better?

Air fryers are increasingly become a staple in Australian kitchens, but exactly what people are looking for an an air fryer continues to evolve.

Responding to the growing desire among some shoppers to avoid plastic and PFAS coatings, we’ve been seeing more and more glass air fryers joining the already crowded air fryer market.

And while some of the glass models, like the Ninja Crispi, are at the higher end of the market, there are also some budget options out there, most notably Kmart and Healthy Choice, both of which offer glass air fryers for under $120. But how do they compare?

While our experts have already scored the Healthy Choice 6.5L Digital Air Fryer AFG605 in the labs, we haven’t had a chance to test the Kmart model yet. But CHOICE staffers Grace Smith and James Worsfold happen to have these budget-friendly models at home. So they decided to compare notes – here’s what they found.

Cost

The Anko-branded glass air fryer is available from Kmart and Target for $99, while you can find the Healthy Choice model for around $115 (plus shipping) across several online marketplaces. This puts these cookers at a more affordable price point than other glass air fryers like the Ninja Crispi and the Dreame Tasti models, which are priced around $300.

Avoiding plastic and non-stick cookware

One of the key reasons shoppers seem to be opting for glass air fryers is a desire to avoid the non-stick surfaces that have been fairly ubiquitous across air fryers since they came on the market.

While the Healthy Choice model comes with a stainless steel crisping tray (designed to increase airflow under the food and allow fats to drip away), Kmart’s air fryer has a non-stick tray insert. This may come as a bit of a shock to online shoppers, because the images on Kmart’s website show what appears to be a steel mesh tray inside the air fryer.

If you are looking to avoid non-stick materials, you can find a stainless steel air fryer tray online for $10–$30. However, Kmart is not clear about the dimensions of its glass basket, and we cannot guarantee you will find one that fits.

Size

Healthy Choice: Grace

This is a decent-sized appliance, but mine is nestled between my toaster and my blender and I find it sits back far enough that I can still use the bench space in front of it for things like food prep. For that reason, it hasn’t made a significant difference to how much space I have in the kitchen. It’s too bulky to store easily in my overcrowded kitchen cupboards, so I’d definitely recommend leaving it as a permanent fixture on your bench, which makes sense if you’re using it frequently anyway.

In terms of capacity, it’s fairly modest. It really isn’t big enough to make food for the whole family, unless you’re cooking it in shifts, which I have done occasionally – it isn’t as crazy as it sounds when you consider how slowly kids eat and how quickly the air fryer cooks. I find it very handy for cooking a quick lunch for one or two people when I’m working from home, or a side dish to go with a main meal cooked in the oven.

Kmart: James

This air fryer is less bulky than the Healthy Choice, consisting of a lid-like heating unit that you place over a glass cooking container. The fact you can disassemble it means you can easily fit it in your cupboard, freeing up space on my already-crowded sharehouse bench. But, despite being marketed as a portable air fryer, it weighs 5.9kg, which is actually slightly heavier than the Healthy Choice, which is 5.4kg.

It comes with 2.5L and 4.5L glass cooking containers, as opposed to the Healthy Choice’s 6.5L container, and so is even less capable than its competitor at cooking large amounts of food – unless you want to feed your family degustation-style. I usually use it to quickly cook a side dish of vegies without having to heat up my whole oven.

Functions

Healthy Choice: Grace

The Healthy Choice has a digital display with touch controls, including six pre-set functions (plus a defrost function). I can’t really comment on the efficacy of the pre-set functions because I always use the custom temperature control and timer. Most of the pre-packaged foods I cook come with cooking instructions specifically for an air fryer and, quite frankly, I’m a control freak so I like to be able to choose my own settings. 

While I’m grateful that the Healthy Choice comes with the option for custom temperature control (I absolutely would not buy a model without this), I find buttons fiddly. It takes a lot of button presses to set your desired temperature and timings. I think the unit could be greatly improved by a circular dial that allowed you to quickly scroll through times and temperatures, rather than having to press a button multiple times to increase the temperature in five-degree increments.

Also, as somebody who is too impatient to read the instruction manual on a simple appliance, I found it surprisingly hard to get working the first time I used it. 

Kmart: James

Unlike the Healthy Choice, Kmart’s model gives you very little control over the cooking temperature. It has five preset functions like “roast” and “air fry”, each with a suggested cooking time that you can change (up to 60 minutes). Although each preset presumably cooks your food at a different heat, the actual temperature is not displayed and even the manual doesn’t disclose how hot each function is. What the manual does include is a brief guide with suggested cooking times and functions for different foods, but this is far from comprehensive and cooking with this air fryer (especially with vegetables) requires a fair bit of guesswork.

While programming the device is pretty straightforward, learning what settings to use involved a bit of problem-solving. I often have to keep a close eye on my food and sometimes change the preset halfway through, frustrated that I have to place temperature control in the hands of the Anko gods.

Cooking performance

Healthy Choice: Grace

This is my first ever air fryer, which I finally purchased after years of insisting that I didn’t need one because I had a perfectly good oven. The first thing I did in it was reheat some homemade sausage rolls and I almost burned them to a crisp because I gave them 20 minutes, which would barely have heated the edges in my oven. Luckily, the air fryer is glass so I happened to notice the rolls becoming alarmingly dark brown about 15 minutes into their cooking time. Suffice to say I was blown away with the idea that I could get hot food on the table for my hungry children significantly faster than with my oven.

All in all, I’ve been impressed with the cooking performance of this model, especially considering I’ve just been winging it by chucking things in and randomly guessing a temperature. I’ve made crunchy fish and chips, reheated plenty of leftovers and even made toasted sandwiches and air fryer ‘boiled’ eggs with very few issues. The heat seems to be distributed very evenly, unlike my oven, which generally turns out trays of food that are super crispy/burnt at the back and sides and raw in the middle and front. 

Kmart: James

I am also an air fryer novice, but find it to be an asset in my sharehouse kitchen, which has a prehistoric gas oven. While I had mixed results cooking with the Kmart air fryer, it was a massive improvement from the oven, with its inconsistent roasting, long heat-up and cooking times and greater energy consumption.

I try to avoid non-stick surfaces in my cooking, so I often remove the internal tray that comes with the Kmart air fryer. While it gives me peace of mind, the reality is, my vegies often turn out charred in some parts but undercooked in others on the “roast” function, even after shaking the glass container several times throughout cooking.

When I did use the non-stick tray to roast several chicken breasts, they were cooked to perfection. Using the tray also makes a big difference with vegies, resulting in evenly cooked crispy potatoes and soft roast carrots. If you want your food done fast and don’t need to heat several dishes at once, this air fryer gets the job done.

However, I came across a defect that made using the Kmart air fryer frustrating, to say the least. If you take the heating unit off the glass container during cooking (which you need to do to shake or turn your food), it automatically switches off. This stops you from burning yourself or your benchtop. So far, so good. However, when you replace it, it re-starts only for a few seconds before switching off again. The manual says it should automatically resume unless the unit has been removed for more than five minutes, so this is apparently a malfunction. 

You need to remove the heating unit often to shake your food, so I encountered this problem several times, entering the kitchen ready to serve up only to discover my half-cooked food was getting cold. I can’t say whether this applies to all models, or if mine is just faulty, but it’s definitely worth being aware of.

Handling and cleaning

Healthy Choice: Grace

I wanted a glass air fryer because I’m fussy about what touches my food. And I accept that with this fussiness comes some drawbacks, most notably, weight. Glass is heavy, and when you pull this drawer out with one hand, it’s a little uncomfortable, but to me this is a minor drawback. 

The stainless steel inner tray is easy to remove, with a raised corner to allow you to pick it up without scrabbling around the edges. However, the mesh design is pretty annoying to clean. It has the classic mesh issue where, when you scrub at the food, it simply transfers from one area of the mesh to another on repeat until you pick the bit off with your fingers. The tray is dishwasher safe but I use my air fryer so many times a day I prefer to hand wash it so I can use it again immediately. The glass drawer is very easy to clean, but it’s pretty bulky to balance on my drying-up rack and I often worry about it sliding off and smashing into a million pieces on the floor (though this has yet to happen).

Kmart: James

While the Healthy Choice glass drawer has a large handle, lifting Kmart’s containers or heating element is a difficult task, especially given that their surface temperature can reach over 100℃. The heating unit has a small rubber tab and tiny hand holds on the side, which aren’t easy to lift. The glass containers do have plastic handles on the sides, but these are too small to get a good grip and I find I need to use oven mitts so I can grab the whole dish without burning my hands.

As the cooking container is glass, it does require more elbow grease to clean than air fryers with a non-stick basket. While I wish the crisping tray was made of stainless steel, the reality is that cleaning it is a breeze – much easier than the mesh stainless steel tray in the Healthy Choice. Being a smaller air fryer, I also have less trouble finding space for the basket on my drying rack. Both the non-stick tray and glass baskets are dishwasher safe, so I occasionally put the components through when my sharehouse washer is not crowded.

Warranty

Both models come with a one-year warranty for any defects, which is notably shorter than the higher-end glass models. If you find a fault in your air fryer after one year, Australian Consumer Law may still cover you, giving you the right to a refund or replacement if your product does not last for a reasonable period. But given these are budget air fryers, it may not be reasonable to expect them to last as long as more expensive models.

Verdict

With better temperature control and handling we think it is worth paying slightly more for the Healthy Choice air fryer. For some, the whole point of glass cookware is to keep non-stick coatings away from your food, and the Kmart model’s non-stick crisping tray undermines this. 

If you are after a smaller, more compact air fryer (and you care about saving a few dollars) the Kmart model might be for you. It still gets the job done, but its limited functions, frustrating malfunctions and difficult handling make cooking harder.

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Grace Smith

Grace Smith is a senior content editor, she creates and edits content and feature articles for CHOICE magazine and website. Grace writes on a diverse range of topics, from money-saving and consumer rights, to product safety and household products. Previously, she worked as a verifier, reviewing lab data and written content to ensure information was accurate. She has also worked as a content producer for the Household team. As our resident CHOICE Cheapskate, Grace is the writer and producer of the CHOICE Cheapskate newsletter, providing regular money saving ideas and tricks. Grace has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney. LinkedIn

Grace Smith is a senior content editor, she creates and edits content and feature articles for CHOICE magazine and website. Grace writes on a diverse range of topics, from money-saving and consumer rights, to product safety and household products. Previously, she worked as a verifier, reviewing lab data and written content to ensure information was accurate. She has also worked as a content producer for the Household team. As our resident CHOICE Cheapskate, Grace is the writer and producer of the CHOICE Cheapskate newsletter, providing regular money saving ideas and tricks. Grace has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney. LinkedIn

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James Worsfold

James is a journalist with CHOICE's editorial and investigations team, decoding complicated consumer issues and reporting on how corporations and businesses affect the lives of Australians. He has previously created podcast series for We Are Explorers and Protect Our Winters Australia, and has published in Cosmos and The Citizen. James has a particular interest reporting on science, environmental and social issues, and was a recipient of a JEERA Ossie Award for his journalism. James has a Master of Journalism and Bachelor of Science in Physiology from the University of Melbourne. LinkedIn

James is a journalist with CHOICE's editorial and investigations team, decoding complicated consumer issues and reporting on how corporations and businesses affect the lives of Australians. He has previously created podcast series for We Are Explorers and Protect Our Winters Australia, and has published in Cosmos and The Citizen. James has a particular interest reporting on science, environmental and social issues, and was a recipient of a JEERA Ossie Award for his journalism. James has a Master of Journalism and Bachelor of Science in Physiology from the University of Melbourne. LinkedIn