- The Salter VertiCook is a two-tier air fryer similar to the Ninja Double Stack
- It has a slightly smaller capacity, but the two otherwise have similar specs
- The VertiCook is much cheaper than the Double Stack, costing just £119.99
British company Salter (best known for its kitchen scales) has released a new two-tier air fryer that takes up considerably less space on your worktop than traditional dual-drawer models. The 9L Salter VertiCook looks very similar to the award-winning Ninja Double Stack XL, but with a much more modest price tag.
The Ninja Double Stack XL has long held a place in our roundup of the best air fryers, and took the prize for best air fryer in the 2024 TechRadar Choice Awards thanks to its smart design and consistent results, whether you're whipping up a batch of fries or preparing a whole meal.
It's not cheap, though. In fact, with a list price of £269.99, the Ninja Double Stack XL is one of the most expensive models we've ever tested. It dropped as low as £198 during Amazon's Spring Deal Days sale, but even that's towards the top end of the scale for a dual-drawer fryer.
That's where the new Salter VertiCook comes in. This air fryer has a slightly smaller capacity than the Double Stack XL (it's half a liter smaller inside), but its design is otherwise extremely similar to Ninja's, and at £119.99 when bought direct from Salter, it's less than half the price.
Seeing double
As my colleagues at T3.com noted, one of the biggest differences between Salter and Ninja's two-tier fryers is that the Salter model has a clear window in each drawer so you can check the progress of your food without opening it.
However, this also means that the Salter fryer doesn't look quite as smart as the sleek Ninja Double Stack XL – an effect that's amplified by Salter's use of plastic rather than metal for the drawer handles.
The Ninja Double Stack has six cooking modes (air fry, max crisp, roast, bake, dehydrate, and reheat), while the Salter VertiCook has 12 presets optimized for different dishes. Both air fryers allow you to sync the baskets so different foods will finish cooking at the same time, and let you use racks to cook two items in each drawer simultaneously.
Of course, we won't be able to really tell whether the VertiCook can match the Double Stack for cooking performance until we've tested the two side-by-side. I'm hoping to do exactly that and bring you a full comparison very soon.
