Tower Vortx 4L Digital Air Fryer review: basic but very budget-friendly

Tower Vortx 4L air fryer: two-minute review

The Tower Vortx 4L is a simple, low-priced air fryer, with a single drawer, simple touchscreen controls, and a range of presets to explore. 

It’s far from the most advanced model on the market. Some of today’s best air fryers offer a range of cooking modes or come with two baskets and the ability to time-sync your cooking, for example. Here, you only have one cooking mode and one basket. However, if you just want to air fry, then the Tower Vortx 4L has you covered. On test, I found it cooked food evenly and efficiently, with results that were crispy on the outside and hot through on the inside.

There’s a range of presets – fries, chicken drumsticks, shrimp, cake, steak, fish and ribs. As a vegetarian, I didn’t find them overly useful (I tried the fries preset, but it burned my fries). I preferred to manually set cooking duration and temperature, but meat-eaters might have more success with these.

While the capacity is on the smaller side at 4 litres, I found I could fit a surprising amount into the drawer. My main complaint about the design is that the bulbous, curved shape means this fryer feels like it takes up more room than it needs to. In fact, there are a number of other models on the market that have a larger capacity but are smaller overall, so if you’re looking for the best small air fryer, this isn’t it. 

At time of writing Tower Vortx 4L is regularly discounted to <£50, placing it in the budget category. It’s great value for that price, but at the cheap end of the market there’s plenty of competition and lots of deals to be had, so it’s worth shopping around before committing to this model – you might be able to find a more advanced model for around the same price. 

That’s the short version; read on for my full Tower Vortx 4L air fryer review.

Tower Vortx 4L air fryer review: price & availability

• List price: £69.99 / AU$163
• Regularly discounted to £40-£50 in the UK
• Available: UK and Australia

The Tower Vortx 4L air fryer is available in the UK. At list price it costs £69.99, but at time of writing (a few months after launch), you can pick one up for around £40-£50. That’s in TechRadar’s budget bracket for air fryers, and I think it’s good value for that price. It’s also currently on sale on Amazon Australia, for around AU$160.

It’s solid quality, works as advertised, and handles the basics very well. It’s not as stylish or versatile as pricier models (don’t expect alternative cooking methods or multiple drawers, for example), but if you just want something simple and effective, it’s a solid recommendation at this price. 

At this basic end of the market it is worth shopping around though. Air fryers – and budget models in particular – often attract strong discounts. An especially good time to shop is around the Black Friday sales at the end of November. The specific discounts when you want to buy might be a key deciding factor in which model to go for.

For example, at list price the Ultenic K10 is a fair bit more expensive than the Vortx, but at time of writing it’s discounted to around the same price. It offers more features (a preheat function, a companion app) and has a more space-saving shape too.

• Value for money score: 4 out of 5

Tower Vortx 4L air fryer specs

Tower Vortx 4L air fryer review: design

• 4L capacity; in one drawer with removable grill plate
• Bulky, rounded design
• Touchscreen controls

The Tower Vortx 4L is a basket air fryer with one drawer. Inside, there’s a removable grill plate with cutouts to allow the hot air to circulate around underneath the food. The 4L capacity is actually on the smaller side, but you can still fit plenty in there (I’ll get into this more in the Performance section). 

One annoying thing is that even though the capacity is quite conservative, the curvy shape means it takes up a lot of room on your worktop. If you’re short on space in your kitchen, I’d recommend looking for an air fryer with straighter sides, to make more efficient use of space.

It’s operated via a touchscreen control panel on the front. Here you’ll find an on button, timer increase and decrease buttons (up to an hour), and temperature increase and decrease buttons (from 80-200C). These enable you to manually set your cooking temperature and duration. Alternatively, you can use one of a selection of presets for commonly air fried foods. To cycle through your options, you press the ‘M’ button on the control panel. 

Fancier / pricier air fryers offer multiple cooking modes – roast, grill, and so on – whereas the Vortx just air fries. Actually, that might not be strictly true. One of the presets is for cake, so the Vortx can also bake things, although there’s no way to select a ‘bake’ mode. I will let you into an industry secret, though: ‘air frying’ is really just baking rebranded. If we really want to get into it, ‘roasting’ is the same thing again, in terms of what’s needed from the appliance – it’s all just hot air evenly distributed in a cooking chamber. 

In terms of cleaning, the whole basket comes out and can be hand-washed easily, as can the removable grill. It feels like some kind of non-stick coating, as I had no issues wiping down the insides and getting any food residue off. If you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher (one day…) then both of these parts are also dishwasher-safe.

• Design score: 3.5 out of 5

Tower Vortx 4L air fryer review: performance

• Easy to use controls
• Presets are very meat-focused
• Simple to clean; basket is dishwasher-safe

I’ll start with the basics: I have no complaints about the Tower Vortx 4L’s air frying abilities. During my review period, I used it to cook everything from falafel to cheese on toast (an air fryer revelation) to sweet potato fries. In fact, it basically became my go-to cooking appliance. I found it cooked everything efficiently and evenly, leaving food satisfyingly crisp. Basically exactly what you’d want from an air fryer. 

I was mostly cooking for one, but I like to have leftovers to pop in the fridge or freezer, and I found the capacity was deceptively large. There’s only one shelf, but I managed a whole load of roasted veg. Of course, the results won’t be as crispy if you over-fill it, but that’s a compromise that sometimes I’m willing to make.

The temperature range should suit almost anything most people would want to cook, although there is an argument the maximum temperature could be a touch higher (it tops out at 200C, whereas more premium models we’ve tested go as high as 240C). 

The touchscreen controls are fairly intuitive – press Power once to switch it on, it’ll come up with the default temperature and time, which you can then adjust using the plus and minus icons for each parameter. It beeps with each button press, although if you hold down a plus or minus to quickly increase or decrease a setting, you’ll just get the one beep. Still, it can get a little annoying and there’s no way to switch this off. Otherwise, it’s very quiet in operation; you’ll barely notice it’s on.

As it’s cooking, the display will cycle between showing how long you have left and the cooking temperature, so you can see fairly easily where you are in the cooking process. If you want to move about the contents mid-fry then it’s easy to do so, and the inner grill plate sits snugly enough that it won’t dislodge if you give the basket a quick back-and-forth shake (the fryer automatically pauses heating when the basket is open). 

You get one quiet beep to say when your time is almost up, and another longer, louder beep when its completely up, and the air fryer will then turn the heat off. 

Now onto the presets. These are: fries, chicken drumsticks, shrimp, cake, steak, fish and ribs. As you can see, rather meat-focused. I am a vegetarian, which made testing these out a bit of a challenge. I did use the fries setting to do some sweet potato fries, but found it burned them – they were the thin kind, and the setting might have been configured for a chunkier cut. (Consulting the settings table in the information booklet suggests 18-20 minutes at 200C for thin, frozen fries, which I think is too long and too hot, so perhaps the chefs at Tower are prone to overestimating in general.) If you find a preset that works well for a type of food you cook often, I imagine that would be useful. 

So air frying: check. No complaints. But it would be remiss of me not to flag up the things that this budget-friendly model can’t do, that other pricier friers can.

A lot of mid-to-high end models offer alternative cooking functions such as bake, roast, grill, reheat and dehydrate. Even accounting for the fact that I suspect some of these functions are essentially the same thing, this should still make the appliance more versatile, and be useful if you genuinely need them. 

If you want to be able to cook more complex dishes, you should opt for a dual-basket fryer. You can generally set different temperatures for each basket, and many have a sync function that lets you put in a finish time and the air fryer will automatically start off each basket cooking when it needs to so both parts are ready at the same time. But for functions like that you’ll need to spend a fair bit more – over £100, definitely. 

• Performance score: 4 out of 5

Should you buy the Tower Vortx 4L air fryer?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Alternatives to consider

Not completely sold on the Tower Vortx 4L Digital Air Fryer? Here are two more alternatives for you to consider:

How I tested the Tower Vortx 4L air fryer

• I tested it on a variety of different food types
• I used it generally in my kitchen for four weeks

I used the Tower Vortx Digital Air Fryer on a variety of different food types, including common air fryer tasks like fries, assessing the results in terms of how evenly the food cooked and how crispy the results were. I also had it in my kitchen and used it regularly for around four weeks – during which time it became one of my go-to appliances – and noted any pros and cons during general use. I considered how intuitive and straightforward the controls were to use, and noted any pain points. I also compared the features and functions offered with this model and how they compared to others on the market, factoring in price and value for money. 

Read more about how we test

First reviewed September 2024

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