PowerXL Air Fryer PRO Review

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I was excited to try out the new PowerXL Air Fryer PRO as I love to cook at home. I was most excited to try roasting a chicken as we love picking them up from the local store for a quick meal. So, to make them with the seasonings my family prefers, anytime we want will be a treat!

The PowerXL Air Fryer PRO came with three books with some pretty delicious recipes. I have tried several below for you. I walk you through each step and item as I used them. I have also laid out the good vs. bad.

My first recipe was making a Rotisserie Chicken.

Making a rotisserie chicken was a challenge. First, you have to tie the chicken together. I did this three times. I finally Googled how to truss a chicken. If you know how to do this properly, you may have fewer problems than I. This is the most important step because once the chicken is in a nice “tight” compartment, it can spin evenly around on the shaft. But if your wing is too far out, it messes with where the shaft spins. One of my legs came out of the joint and flopped around. So do some research before jumping right in!

Next, you have to place the shaft through the chicken center and secure the forks at each end. I did not find any instructions in the manuals of how to do this, so I had to Google it as well. Thank goodness for videos! The key with the forks is that they have a set screw that will keep the forks in place. This sounds easy, but my 4 lb chicken was a tad long, so it was hard to get the shaft in the fryer correctly. The shaft is placed in the air fryer on the left side to “turn” the square peg. This has to be placed strategically. Also, the forks at each end of the chicken have to be secure, and unfortunately, the chicken is not symmetrical. So when it was spinning, the chicken flopped around.

It was also “flopping” around because the weight was wrong and because I could not get my string tied since that one drumstick fell out of joint. My husband tried to fix it but had little success. One of the recipes in the book is for 2 Cornish hens… I have no idea how those would both fit in the fryer!

The spices that I put on the bird smelled and tasted delicious! It should have taken 45 minutes, but it took one and one and a half hours! Some of this was because I was playing around with the “floppy bird” trying to get it nice and tight with string and in the forks when it was hot, so it took a while to warm up again, but I read through other reviews that this is a normal thing to take longer, so I was prepared to have lots of extra time.

The main unit comes with an “easy view window.” This was a fun “add” because I could watch my rotisserie work. I found myself always checking the food… there is something satisfying to watch your chicken rotate in circles for an hour. It allowed me to watch without releasing the heat to check on different items. With this being said, it was also stressful to watch my chicken flop around and not fix it.

Clean up: The main unit was VERY hot to the touch, so I had to wait a few hours to clean. Clean up was not too terribly hard, but in retrospect, I found crumbs that burnt up from where my floppy bird hit the top of the unit. When I was cleaning it out, I must have pushed some of the spices up in the units holey top. When I made my next recipe, I smelled the burning. This was not a manufacturing flaw; it was all me.

French Fries (not in the recipe books)

Who doesn’t like fries! Very easy! I cut potatoes, tossed them around in a LITTLE oil, placed some salt on them, and then placed them in the rotating mesh basket. They turned for 45 minutes! When they came out, they were delicious and crispy! One strong tip is to make sure all the potatoes are cut at an even thickness and the same in size. The ones that were different in size did not cook as well, and I ended up tossing them in the end. Nobody wanted to eat them. I give the fries two thumbs up!

Clean up was a tad hard due to the mush in the basket. There was a little scrubbing needed. I just left it in a pan of water and used a brush, and it cleaned up nice then.

Strawberry Roll-ups (aka fruit roll-ups)

The recipe was simple, 2 lbs. of strawberries, sugar, and a little lemon. (located in the Dehydration Book) Blend it and put on parchment paper sprayed with oil. 10 hours later, you should come out with fruit roll-ups… a little chewy and tasting delish. While I think it has the potential to work, especially because it was delicious when I tasted the slurpee liquid before placing it on the parchment paper.

However, it did not work for me. I followed the instructions to the T, but they dried out, so instead of fruit roll-ups, I got potato chips. I still ate most of it because it had such a rich strawberry taste. I started the recipe around 3:00 pm and was cooking by 4:00 pm. However, due to it taking 10 hours, it completed the cycle at 2 am. Next time I will have to monitor it closely, and it should turn out right. I was disappointed since the lowest level was almost burnt, having a darker brown/red color while the other two kept a nice red color. I did not eat that level as it was so dry and “burnt” tasting.

Clean up was easy since it was on parchment paper. Just wiped it off, and I was done.

Mozzarella Sticks

I placed some Mozzarella sticks from a box directly onto the Air Flow Racks. They were delicious. The cheese melted and was so gooey. I feel this was a win because my oven does not make them “gooey,” just hot. These mozzarella sticks were store-bought and placed directly on the racks.

Clean up was nice and easy except for a tad of cheese that got stuck between the mesh. A little soaking and brush worked.

Chicken Wings

I made three recipes with chicken wings. I used the recipe from the book and 2 from my home. Each time the wings were delicious but took longer than the time expected to cook. The location of each wing and what rack the wings were on made a difference too. I used three Air Flow Racks for my family of 4 and had just enough wings. I placed several in the cast iron to crisp them up. Next time I will just use 2 racks to see if it turns out better. Again, it was the lower rack that turned out too “done.”

Clean up is difficult. As you could see from the Rotissary chicken, it was a mess… they give you a drip pan, which helped, but the chicken touched everything while spinning, so I had to go in there with a soapy cloth then another cloth to clean the soap out. It was a pain. It does say the racks and such can be placed in the dishwasher, but the stove itself makes for a hard clean up. Im kind of a neat freak, so all the little nooks and crannies took me a while.

Final Thoughts

There are only really two main problems I encountered, first, the door comes off its hinge. I guess that it is for easy washing, which is a good thing, but it also falls off the hinge rather easily when checking your hot food. Not something you want to deal with when it has been on “cook” for 45 minutes. The other problem is that the lowest Air Flow Rack is so low to the bottom that when you stick your mitt in to get the racks out, usually your mitt (or hand in my case because I did not use a mitt the first time) will touch the bottom of the oven part and it just too dang HOT!

The controls are easy to read since it is pictures! A diagram in the user manual tells you what the different buttons are used for, but you really don’t need to see it to know.

Also, I’m not too fond of the amount of space it takes up. It is big, and I do not have much counter space. However, I did not include that in losing a “star” because I knew it when I initially saw it. I don’t want to toot my horn, but I can cook, and sometimes the recipes did not seem correct to me, but I still followed the way the book said.

If I were to rate the whole fryer, I would give it 4 out of 5 stars. The star that it didn’t receive was because of design and because some of the recipes not turning out the way it should, which I noted above.

The PowerXL Air Fryer PRO comes with:

Main Unit with Control Panel
3 Airflow Racks
2 shallow Air Flow Racks
Rotating Mesh Basket
Drip Tray
10 Skewers
2 Adjustable Skewer Racks
Rotisserie Shaft, Forks, and Set Screws
Rotisserie Fetch Tool
Three Cookbooks
1. American Favorite
2. Dehydration Creations
3. Rotisserie Cooking Guide