They're better than a regular oven for small portions because they're much smaller. If you're always making full meals for an entire family, they're not really that useful. But for one or two people, the air fryer is going to be done cooking before the oven has even finished pre-heating.

don't let it fool you, you can't just use it and toss it in the dishwasher. although tbf my dishwasher is not the most effective, and I should probably try different load settings when washing the air fryer basket

anyways, if you don't line the basket with paper, crud gets baked on there real good and is hard to get off, and the little tray is a pain to clean because of all the spots

totally fine if you always line it with paper when cooking meat or other soft things, though. I find most veggies are easy to clean off, compared to meat

anyways, my review: it's an effective tool for quickly making small batches of food with little cleanup. I like making single portions of home fries, toasting buns, reheating food, cooking a single hamburger patty. all with less effort and cleanup than using a pan, and better results than a microwave. and more efficient and effective than using the full oven. also, with less oil than using a pan on the stove.

also, I'm disgusting, so I often reuse the paper liner if it isn't gross. like today I cooked home fries for breakfast and then a hamburger for dinner on the same sheet, because the thing is barely dirtied by cooking some bare chopped potatoes with the tiniest bit of oil. and I don't need to clean it after cooking meat, because all of the meat juice stayed on the liner and I can just pull it out and toss it.