Ninja - Smart DoubleStack XL 2-Basket Air Fryer with Leave-in Thermometer, 10 QT, 6-in-1 Smart Cook System, Space Saving Design - Deep Gray

I've owned and reviewed several air fryers over the years, and now I’ve had the chance to try the new Ninja DoubleStack XL. In my opinion, Ninja makes the best air fryers on the market, and this model is no exception. However, despite its quality, it didn’t replace my older Ninja Dual Zone air fryer not because it’s a bad product, but because it didn’t meet my personal expectations. Let me explain why. Like all air fryers, this one is very straightforward to use. You simply place the food inside, set the time and temperature, and you're good to go. The only time I needed to check the manual was to figure out the smart thermometer feature. One of the main highlights on this device is the double stack design which claims to be space saving. Thanks to the large size, you can cook 4 meals at once. Each basket comes with a meal rack that is placed above the crisper plate. That rack is use to cook the second meal in the same basket. The baskets are large enough that it could fit an entire 5 lbs chicken in each. When it comes to cleaning, that non-stick coating they use is one of the best. Pour some hot running water and watch the grease come off on its own. I also appreciate the removable rubber bumpers on the crisper plates, which make cleaning even easier. This air fryer is very versatile. It has 6 different types of cooking settings. Air fryer, air broilers, roast, bake, reheat and dehydrate. There’s no preheating required, and it gets hot pretty quick. You have the ability to make the meat even crispier by reversing the crisper plate and placing it higher in the basket. The smart thermometer which I usually don’t use but I tried it here, and I was very impressed. I really like how the device will stop on its own once the meat reaches the desired temperature. I have to say it is very accurate. The meat came out at the perfect cooking temperature. The control panel, located on the right, is sleek and modern, and the large, bright display makes it easy to read. Now, here’s why this seemingly perfect air fryer didn’t quite meet my expectations. While Ninja’s cooking performance is reliable, I found myself working harder with the DoubleStack XL than with my older Dual Zone model. I had to add extra cooking time and flip food more often. This issue lies in the design. The heating coils and the fans are in the back pushing the hot air forward. I thought that the food placed close to the back was going to overcook because it was closer to the heating coil. To my surprise it was actually the opposite. The food near the front of the baskets cooked faster than the food in the back, so I had to frequently rotate the food to ensure even cooking. I thought it could have been user error but I ended up doing some research and some other users mentioned this issue. I even consulted the manual, which suggests shaking the food three times during cooking, more than the single shake required with my old air fryer. The design claims to be space savings, but that depends on your kitchen layout. In the U.S. a typical countertop length is around 25.5 to 26 inches deep. This air fryer measures about 18.5 inches from the back to handle, 11 inches wide including the control panel and 15 inches tall. That 18 inches will only leave you with less than 7 inches of space in front of it, that's barely enough room to even place the basket. My old air fryer is about 15.5 inches to the side and about 13 from the back to the handle. That’s almost about 12 inches of working space left on the front of the appliance. Additionally my old unit fan exhaust is in the back. I have the ability to slide the appliance forward to give room for air flow when cooking. As compared to the DoubleStack the exhaust is on the side meaning the space you maybe saving is for airflow. In my opinion, in terms of space efficiency, you may save width, but you lose out on length and height. Depending on your kitchen setup, this could either be a convenience or a drawback. Personally, I prefer more working space in front of the appliance rather than saving a little width on the side. Another design issue I encountered was the difficulty of flipping food from the bottom basket. With my old air fryer I could easily slide out part of the basket and perform that task, avoiding spills and of course convenience. I cannot do this with this air fryer because the handle from the top basket is in the way forcing me to fully remove the entire basket. I tried the top but honestly I found it inconvenient because of the height and the distance between the top cabinets. Lastly, the noise level was a bit of a concern. While all air fryers make noise, this one starts quietly but gets louder, almost like a turbine. It’s tolerable, but louder than other air fryers I’ve used. Overall this Ninja DoubleStack XL delivers Ninja’s usual strong performance even if it requires a little bit more handling. It is very easy to use and cleaning it is a breeze. Its versatility and ability to cook multiple meals at once makes this perfect for large families. Its sleek, modern design could fit well in many kitchens if you have the right space. I wanted it to win my heart but I’ll go back to my old Dual Zone. In the box you get the air fryer, 2 baskets, 2 crisper plates, 2 crisper grills, smart thermometer, and manuals.

Coming from an older PowerXL 5.3 quart air fryer with 3 buttons, the new Ninja DoubleStack has 4 times more buttons and features that I never knew I needed from an air fryer. Not only does this new Ninja DoubleStack have time and temp like my older PowerXL, it also does Air Broil, Bake, Roast, Reheat, Dehydrate along with the standard Air Fry. The Ninja is double in cooking capacity as my older PowerXL and still fits underneath my cabinets while taking up the same footprint as before (see my pic). With the extra features and buttons, using the Ninja does have a bit of a learning curve. With two separate drawers, you first have to turn the machine on, select the basket, select the cooking mode, finalize your cooking temps and time and hit start. A lot more steps than simpler air fryers and this is where I would allow it because of the other advance features. Not only can you cook two drawers at different times and temps, you can also have them finish at the same time with the “Smart Finish” button. A good example where I would use this is when I make my kids chicken nuggets and French fries. The chicken nuggets need shorter time and lower temps than the fries. I put frozen chicken nuggets in the top drawer at 375f for 7 minutes. I put the frozen French fries in the bottom drawer at 400f for 15 minutes. Hit the “Smart Finish” button and the French fries will start, then the chicken nuggets will automatically start later so both nuggets and fries will be done at the same time. The ”Smart Thermometer” was complicated at first to learn but pretty awesome when you figure it out. What the smart thermometer does is that the Ninja air fryer has a built in temp probe you can plug in that you can monitor your internal temps and stop the cook accordingly. I tried chicken breast and it worked amazing (see pics). I first put Brussel sprouts coated in olive oil and salt in the top drawer at 400f for 15 minutes. Then seasoned and placed chicken breasts in the bottom drawer with the temp probe in the meat and plugged into the front port. Set which type of protein it is, my desired doneness and the time will automatically be set based on how it’s cooking. Chicken should be cooked to 165f internal temp and the air fryer automatically turns off when it hits your desired temp. No more guessing and poking your meats with a temp probe. Simply set and forget! In summary, I do highly recommend this air fryer to anyone that has a large family to feed. It’s relatively a small footprint for the capacity and all the features will make you feel like a complete cooking pro. The many buttons and different cooking modes can add complexity and might not be for you if you’re only looking simple time and temp type of cooking.

It literally does everything and more while having a sleek, luxury finish. The compact double deck as opposed to big and bulky was genius. Dope be fooled by size of box even the XL is pretty compact.

Either I hadn’t been paying close enough attention these last few years, or air fryers have truly come out of nowhere to be one of the most popular, en vogue appliances since the drip-brew coffeemaker was introduced in the 1970s. Having heard the praises of air frying from countless friends and family, I finally caved, and a short while later the opportunity to get this model arose. The Ninja DoubleStack XL is a 10-quart air fryer with dual cooking compartments, each about 6 quarts that result in the combined/rated capacity of 10 quarts. Boasting an array of features that promise to make multi-course cooking simpler, and with cooking capacity enough to feed an entire family, this digital air fryer sits firmly up in the MSRP stack alongside premium options. Ninja’s appliances have a good reputation for quality, and indeed, the DoubleStack XL has been great to cook with. - Unboxing and Setup Arguably the tallest small appliance in my kitchen, the DoubleStack XL air fryer is a fairly large device that somehow still fits under my cabinets with a couple inches to spare. You’ll want to ensure that you’re positioning the air fryer somewhere that the exhaust vents on the rear right side aren’t obstructed in any way, and that where they’re pointing is OK to have heat blown right into it, as the air fryer exhumes hot air after it circulates through the basket. The Doublestack comes completely assembled, with initial setup simply asking for removal and washing of all the device’s baskets, racks, plates, and accessories prior to use. Once dried and all are replaced, the quickstart guide contains sample recipes and suggested uses for the air fryer, including how to program for dual-zone cooking with equal end times. All told it was about 10 or 15 minutes before I was set up and cooking my first whole, small chicken, which came out as good as I could ask for given my inexperience with air fryers. The biggest trouble I ran into getting started is that the quick-start documentation is poorly published and difficult to follow. Attempting to follow along for my first meal using the sensor cook, I found the written instructions made several assumptions about replacing baskets, trays, or basket mesh that a novice user would struggle to understand, and at one point confused basket #1 with basket #2. While both quickstart instructions and the user manual would benefit from sanity checks and/or better proofreading, the quickstart would be much easier to follow (and much more accessible to those who may not read or understand English as their native language) with diagrams or illustrations showing key steps and display functions. - Cooking Impressions The first time I used the Doublestack, I was a bit surprised by the noise it creates. I know air frying needs a strong convection fan to force hot air through the fry baskets, and perhaps the fan on my model is very slightly out of balance…but once the fan approaches full speed it’s quite noticeable and easily the loudest appliance in my kitchen, save for the grinder on my espresso machine. Once you understand the control panel (a little trial and error may be necessary due to the quickstart confusion), it’s easy to set the Doublestack like it’s a toaster oven or similar appliance. Set mode, temperature, and cooking time, then press Start. The benefit of an air fryer over a conventional oven is that preheating is so quick as to be almost unnecessary, and indeed you can simply insert food and start air-frying without warming the basket up first. In any case, the Doublestack works quickly and the end result is crispier food than what would be prepared in my toaster oven, though I do feel my traditional oven (with convection) still does a better job for roasting and baking. Anything that leans towards frying, however, comes out much better in the Doublestack. Plus, there’s no need to worry about deep-frying grease from the perspective of either cleaning up or sheer caloric detriment - a win-win in my book. Overall, I found that cooking times with the Doublestack tend to be a bit longer than either the food manufacturer or Ninja recommend. Adding an extra few minutes to any meal cooked in the air fryer seems to be necessary, regardless of whether one basket or both are in-use. This may be specific to air-fryers in general, however - both baskets cook consistently and evenly otherwise, and as I gained familiarity with the machine I settled on an additional 3 minutes for small baskets and 5 for big ones, which seemed to deliver perfectly crispy results. Sensor cooking did not need adjustment. - Modes & Programming The Doublestack does more than just air-fry. Featured cooking options include air-broiling, roasting, baking, dehydrating, and reheating. These all work similarly to a conventional toaster oven, changing the fan speed, heating element strength, and overall flow of heat and hot air through the baskets to create these additional functions. While I haven’t used these functions just yet, they’re nice to have and with enough time, may be what makes me wind up replacing my toaster oven with the DoubleStack XL after all. Beyond one-touch sensor cooking for perfectly air fried meats, the DoubleStack’s most useful feature is the fully independent control of both cooking baskets. Match Cook simply synchronizes basket 1’s settings to basket 2’s, effectively doubling capacity for cooking large meals, so long as what you’re cooking fits within a basket…you won’t fit a full-size chicken in the air fryer, but two small “whole young” chickens is viable. The more useful feature is Smart Finish, which lets you set a different cooking mode and time on each basket, with both baskets finishing simultaneously (or as close as possible). This makes it possible to cook two items in parallel, even if they call for different cooking temperatures, and only need to load and set the machine once. This came in handy preparing fries alongside chicken, as a recent example, and without any guesswork both courses finished cooking within seconds of each other. Load once, cook once! - Cleaning & Care The Doublestack XL is relatively easy to clean. The basket trays and wire racks are machine-washable, but the baskets themselves and integrated meat thermometer must be washed by hand. In any case, the nonstick surfaces of the baskets make them quick and easy to clean in the sink, though my fiancee did notice it can be tricky to clean around the rubber stoppers of the basket trays. All in all it’s one of the easier of our small appliances to clean. *As I was finishing this review I noticed that the user manual and Ninja’s website differ on whether the baskets (drawers) are machine-washable; the website indicates they are, but not the user manual. I’m hoping a Ninja product rep can clarify in a comment on this review. - Bottom Line Having never used an air fryer before, the Ninja DoubleStack XL Air Fryer has been a great introduction to air-fryers that, despite a few shortcomings in the documentation and first-time user experience, has sold me on air frying despite years of resistance to picking one up. It’s intuitive to use once you fill in the gaps, the food that comes out of the machine is evenly heated, the air frying makes for wonderfully crispy meals, and cleaning is straightforward. I couldn’t ask for much more - but the asynchronous controls over both baskets made this a real treat to use for cooking entire meals instead of individual courses all at once. With only a couple small detriments, none of which are a dealbreaker or negatively impact its cooking performance, the Ninja DoubleStack XL comes recommended!

Very cool unit! The Ninja - DoubleStack XL Smart 10 QT air fryer is a genius design! It is surprisingly compact yet offeres a totalof 10 quarts of airfrying capacity. But what's cool, is they break it up into two 5 quart drawers. To make it even cooler and more functional, each drawer can set for a different time and temp. In addition to all of that, each bin has an optional wire grate so you can cook 2 seperate items at the same time in each bin. This was clearly designed with a small foot print to save counter space. It was also designed to fit on the counter and slip in just under the cabinets of most modern houses. My house is a little older and it is just about a quarter inch too tall, but it should great for most. If that is not enough, it also comes with a built in thermometer so you can get that chicken (or whatever else) to the perfect cooked temp and remove whe it's perfect. They thought of everything! I have had multiple Ninja products over the years and I have never been dissapointed. So far, this air fryer meets my previous experience. Overall build quality is great. It's easy to use, intuitive and stunningly versatile! The only thing keeping me from giving it a 5 star rating is that the chord strikes me as unusually short. I wish they would have added a few inches to the chord length. Other than that, this is an excellent choice and I would reccomend to a friend.

I've had the same old front loading air fryer you'd typically see, I was looking to upgrade to the 2-Basket Air Fryer that Ninja has, this is the end seems like the winning ticket. The double stacked design makes this just as big as our existing air fryer, but moving the controls to the side allowed both 5qt compartments to simply stack on top of one another and save some space on our counter. In the box your get the Ninja Doublestack XL and a guide and a couple other informational pages. The thermometer sits behind the control panel ready to use when needed. Both 5qt compartments have a rack inside to crisp on the bottom and crispier top. The quick start guide provides a few meal ideas and some cook settings and times for guidance. Air Fryer is the main part of the title that stands out at first, but it has quite a few features to provide you with more meal options in one machine. Each tray can be set individually or you can match cook allowing the same cook, temp and time to both. The Ninja DoubleStack XL can be used to Air Fry, Air Broil, Bake, Roast, Reheat and Dehydrate. As mentioned before, I was looking for an air fryer with two compartments, the boys always like to have their frozen snack and never wanting the same. This gives the option to heat both up independently, not having to wait for one to be done before cooking the other. If you pull open the basket it will continue the cooking cycle, so be sure to pause as it doesn't automatically do this. These multi-functional machines that Ninja has out are great! We have mostly been using this for Pizza Rolls, Corn Dogs, Chicken Tenders and Nuggets. The Air Fry functionality is amazing and shows off the sort of crunch you can get with a well made machine. I am curios to see if I can find some other recipes online, the one that I am looking to do is the meat loaf, really curious to see how that would come out!

As a long-time fan of Ninja products, I was happy to get the Ninja Doublestack XL 2 Basket Air Fryer which definitely lives up to the brand's stellar reputation. Ninja has its own distinctive style, and this air fryer fits into that mold with its sleek design and functionality. Despite being an “XL” model, it isn't overwhelming in size and fits nicely on my countertop under the cabinets without hogging too much space. At first glance, I was a little intimidated by it. With essentially being four air fryers combined into one unit, complete with a central control panel that looks like a mini command center, I was nervous about messing something up. But, after breaking my usual habit and reading the instructions (which, admittedly, I rarely do), I found it surprisingly simple and fun to use. It has all the standard functions you'd expect from an air fryer—like air fry, roast, and bake—but what really sets it apart are the smart functions that allow you to cook multiple meals at once. Whether you want to sync two baskets to cook them at the same time and temp, or use them separately for two different meals at different temps, the flexibility is incredible. You can cook a full meal for a family of 2-4 people in a fraction of the time it would take using a conventional oven, plus it saves energy and helps keeps the house from heating up when using the oven. For me, it's perfect for quick meal preps—throwing in some chicken and fries and getting a quick dinner ready in no time. But my wife, who has a flair for gourmet cooking, absolutely loves this thing. She’s always trying new recipes with it, and I’ve been reaping the benefits! Not to mention, she raves about the easy cleanup thanks to the non-stick baskets, which is a win for both of us. I can without a doubt highly recommend the Ninja Doublestack XL Air Fryer for anyone looking for a new air fryer or who doesn’t have one yet. This is not only a time-saver but also a versatile kitchen powerhouse that is easy to use and takes up very little space.

Excellent size as it’s not bulky and works great! It saves some counter space and fits nice and snug. The quality of the air fryer is most certainly an upgrade from our previous one by dash:). I thought the price point was a little high, but if you think about all the settings it has and for all it does, the additional thermometer included and basket racks, it’s a stand alone replacement for an oven! I love to make dehydrated fruit snacks as well and this machine does that too!

Overall a good air fryer, the baskets definitely need to be shaken more often for even crisping. Traditionally designed air fryers can crisp throughout a bit more evenly, but definitely worth the compromise for the space saving design.