Chatgpt, is it you?

I use it pretty much every day

What do you use it for? I got one as a gift a couple of years ago, I used to to make tater tots once (admittedly they were pretty good, but I don't generally eat tater tots) and I tried to make fried tofu but it simply came out dry on the outside. Since then the thing has been sitting in its box - I can't get rid of it because the person who gave it to me visits sometimes.

I suppose we probably just cook different sorts of food - everything I make is either boiled or pan-fried. (I don't ever use my oven either. I've been thinking of replacing it with a cooktop for more cabinet space but I think that would lower my home's resale value.)

Ah, our just has a basket that goes right in the dishwasher

I think you could get away with an oven and a deepfryer with everything, but in my experience an airfryer is generally faster than the oven, and less oily than a deep fryer (I wanna say more healthy but I don't really know enough about the details, so I'll just stick to the objectively "less oily").

I use it for fries (sweet potatoe fries most often), anything resembling nuggets (like vegetarian nuggets/schnitzels, other veggy pattys, falafel), fry-snacks (eggrolls, samosa, bitterballs), and you can get a bit adventurous with trying our breads, vegetables, or other stuff that you would just plop in the oven.

A large oven uses a lot of electricity that is wasted for heating up that entire space.

An air fryer is nothing but a small convection oven. That means it heats up almost instantly, wastes much less heat, can circulate the air much faster for faster baking, and uses substantially less heat. And it doesn’t generate the smell of deep frying.

We use ours almost every day. The oven is basically not used unless we make full size pizza.

The standard convection oven isn’t a better tool except in size.

Our air fryer is also quite good at making things like potatoes or tofu crispy, not deep fried crispy, but nice and crispy without that much oil or the amount of time it would need in the convection oven.

It is a convection oven, but the small size means you that cook times (from start to finish) are much faster, and cleaning is generally easier.

And though technically it should be the same, the convection setting on my parents full sized oven never produces as crispy of results as an air-fryer, so maybe there's more "air-flow-to-size-ratio" or something going on.

I think it is smaller capacity, has a "fryer basket" and maybe hence can concentrate the power more effectively on the small space so is faster? IDK, the NuWave used to be sold as an air-fryer too, but I've never air-fried in a "real one" so I can't personally compare. I just find that the much larger "Oven" and throw everything in the dishwasher is way more useful for way more foods and types of cooking (like if I want to bake a potato etc).

An air fryer is closer to an impingement oven than a convection oven. https://youtu.be/AASP4P5vRAA