Sharp AF-GD82AU-B dual drawer air fryer review: beginners start here

Introduction

Sharp’s first dual-drawer air fryer is a no-nonsense affair. It has more cooking presets than most and a high enough capacity to handle family mealtimes, but the handful of clearly-labelled buttons and easy-to-read display won’t overwhelm air-frying newcomers – something I considered myself as before starting this review. An extensive number of food presets then take any guesswork out of how long to cook your dinner for, or at what temperature.

Starting at £170 (but often available for less if you shop around) it’s not the absolute cheapest dual-drawer model out there – but instead of trying to wow with premium materials and a bunch of accessories you’ll probably never use, it aims to nail the basics. If the air frying hype train passed you by until now, this might be the ideal way to get on board.

Design & build: a smooth touch

A side-by-side configuration means the Sharp AF-GD82AU-B takes up a fair amount of space on your countertop – and that’s before you’ve made room around its rear and sides for air to circulate. It’s also fairly hefty, at 10kg. You’re going to want to find a permanent home for it, rather than constantly taking it out and into storage.

The mix of glossy and matte plastics at least make it easy on the eyes, and quick to wipe clean. The chunky drawer handles are merely metal-effect plastic rather than stainless steel – but that’s a minor ding for a reasonably priced fryer. They’re also easy to grasp and the drawers slot into place with zero resistance.

All the buttons are found on the top of the unit, along with two bright, legible LCD displays – one for each drawer. The amount of text might look overwhelming, but because everything is written out rather than represented by symbols, it was very easy to work out what everything does without studying the AF-GD82AU-B manual first.

Maybe don’t peel off the handy pre-applied sticker that shows what each of the twelve presets are supposed to cook unless you have a fantastic memory, though – the LCD screens only display the preset numbers as you tap through them.

Features: set menu

Each drawer holds a generous 4 litres of food, which can be baked and roasted as well as air-fried. Reheat and Keep Warm functions take care of leftovers and recipes that call for staggered cook times. You can dehydrate food too, but it’s not a quick process – a single apple’s worth of thin slices took six hours to turn properly crisp.

The twelve presets covered the majority of my weekly repertoire; beef, chicken, fish, vegetables and fries (or chips) were my go-to’s. Each has a set time and temperature, so can be activated with just a couple of buttons. It was even easier than my microwave. Potatoes, prawns, chicken nuggets, toasted sandwiches, pizza and bacon make up the remaining options. Personally I like my bacon crispier than Sharp’s suggested nine minutes at 180°C can achieve, but each preset does thoroughly cook its specific food.

While you can set each drawer independently, a Sync/Dual button makes things a little easier. Dual mode sets both drawers off simultaneously, for the same time and temperature, which is great when cooking the same kinds of food in both.

Sync finish then works out when to start the second drawer in case one food will take longer than the other, so both finish at the same time. I quickly used this rather than setting timers on my smart speaker.

I also liked how easy they were to clean; both the baskets and the frying trays are dishwasher safe, and the non-stick coating meant I didn’t need to scrub when hand-washing them.

Performance: shake and bake

Cooking one of the twelve foods assigned to its own preset couldn’t be simpler. Just add your ingredients and shut the drawers; hit AUTO until the corresponding number appears on the bright LCD display; then hit Start. The buttons could be more touch-sensitive, though – I had to push hard to register each input.

A beep reminds you to shake the baskets part-way through (the timer stops while they’re removed), even if you set time and temperature manually. Those can’t be changed mid-cook, though. You’ve got to cancel and start over, which is fiddly.

The AF-GD82AU-B isn’t the most powerful fryer around, and while it gets up to temperature very quickly, it maxes out at 200°C – some pricier rivals can manage 240°C or higher.

Everything is cooked evenly, but larger amounts of food weren’t always cooked through in the time suggested by the presets. That was partly on me for not spreading things more evenly out over the removable frying trays, which are the only accessories Sharp includes in the box. There’s no multi-tier rack for stacking ingredients.

Sharp AF-GD82AU-B verdict

The AF-GD82AU-B isn’t the cheapest dual-drawer fryer out there, but it has to be one of the easiest to use. Presets take a lot of the timing and temperature worries out of meal prep, so you don’t have to go scrounging through your bins just to check packets for suggested cooking times.

Foods are cooked evenly, and the frying baskets are very easy to clean. A few button sensitivity issues are a minor quibble, and while stacked portions demand a little more cooking time, there’s otherwise very little to moan about.

Sharp AF-GD82AU-B technical specifications

Drawers	2
Power	2x 1800W
Capacity	2x 4L
Pre-set functions	Air fry, bake, roast, dehydrate, pre-heat, reheat, keep warm, cook from frozen, sync finish, dual cook 12 food presets
Dishwasher safe parts	frying pots, baskets
Guarantee	1 year
Dimensions	395x305x362mm, 10kg