I have seen the light!

 Well, not the light exactly, the daylight lamp I was originally suggesting as a Christmas present from my mother to me got dropped in some arcane presents-for-David swap between my mother and sister, which ended up with my sister responsible for that present, whatever it was. She suggested I get an air fryer, just like she and her husband had just bought for themselves, which she thought would be perfect for my cookery style - which tends to bear-in-a-cave/bachelor.  So we agreed that would be her present to me, but she'd give me the money and I'd pick it up myself once I was back home rather than try to cart it back with me on the train while in the chair, which would be grotesquely awkward, if not completely infeasible.

So I finally picked one up about a month ago, the same Asda George own-brand 3.2L they have*. And after a month using it I can understand what the fuss is about. Essentially the name's a complete misnomer, forget frying, it's an oven with the convenience of a microwave. The big difference for your electricity bill is there's no need to heat it up first - so that's 20 minutes worth of oven use saved every time you use it, on top of which it cooks faster - I'd say knock about 20-25% off fan-oven cooking times.

It does pies and the like in not much more time than a microwave, but without turning them soggy. Small potatoes to mini baked potatoes in about 12 minutes, oven chips in the same time. Roast veg should work the same but I haven't tried it yet. Part-baked bread in 5 minutes. Burgers, battered fish, fishcakes about 12-15 minutes again. Biggest thing I've cooked in it so far is a half chicken, and it would have taken a whole one, though that's pushing at the size limits. That was pre-cooked, but I wanted to heat it through, 20 minutes vs the recommended 25 in a fan oven was a bit much - very crispy skin and a touch dry on the extremities, but the breast etc was fine. 15-17 minutes would probably have been perfect. The only thing I've used the oven for since getting it are pizzas, which are simply too big to fit.

Cleaning is simple, just pull out the tray the food rests on and wipe out any fat that's dripped through to the bottom of the pan with a paper towel - this varies from surprisingly little - that chicken, lamb burgers, to OMG Asda, what are you putting in your sausages! Then rinse the pan like any other pan.

I wouldn't buy anything smaller than mine, that's about the perfect size for one and my sister says it does two okay, but you do want to shake stuff around partway through cooking in that case. You'd definitely want something somewhat larger for a family of four. You probably aren't going to be doing haute cuisine in one, but for the bachelor/family-in-a-rush end of cookery it works just fine. And does it using a lot less electricity.

* Which is definitely at the cheap and cheerful end of things, the timer's clockwork! But it works fine.