Customer Reviews:
 Tefal Actifry October 13, 2008
The plastic tabs that hold the lid down are very flimsy and are cracking and wont last very long,I have tried to glue it, this could be a major design fault- can I buy a new lid?
 Great October 8, 2008
I have had the acti fry for about 4 months now and find it great. Yes the chips do taste different to deep fried but in my opinion there taste nicer in the acti fry. I'm a fussy eating and found that when chips were cooking in a deep fat fryer if they weren't cooking in Olive oil then i just didn't like them. However with the acti fryer i find myself experimenting on different oils and seasonings.
I use my acti fry for cooking meat especially chicken and sauage which tastes great. I would never use cook these meats any other way now.
The best thing about the acti frying is how easy it is to clean. I have bought household applicances which end up never getting used as there take ages to clean whereas the acti fry is simple to use and clean. I have even managed to get my Dad to use it, which is no easy task.
a chip fiend writes October 6, 2008
A deep fat fryer that takes only one spoon of oil to cook chips? You must be joking. And yet this cunning machine produces very respectable chips without the stench associated with deep fat frying. Furthermore it assuages my anxiety about the unhealthiness of serial chip eating. It really is very good for the chipaholic. Yes it is rather expensive, yes it takes longer than the 'real thing' and yes it makes me feel like a bit of a food fraud. But when chips are both so tasty and healthy at the same time, who really cares?
 Unimpressed September 26, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
I bought this item to make the task of making chips easier and healthier. It is indeed easy to use and no doubt produces food with a lower fat content than conventional deep frying. However... the chips it makes are nothing like the deep fried variety, they are more like poor quality oven chips. Despite trying various types of potato and different oils the result was always disappointing. They take ages to cook too, and if you have more than three people to serve forget it, as it can't cope with large quantities. It's claim to be odourless is also a nonsense as it always left an annoying smell which seemed to linger for hours and hours.
Chips produced by this appliance are nowhere near as good as deep fried chips, if you want to eat less fat simply have them less often. If you want covenience buy oven chips, this machine is in effect a glorified fan oven. I can see this appliance appealing to those people who cook with a microwave oven, and we all know what great chefs they are!
 Really great product that can still be improved September 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Tefal Actifry is a functionally superb piece of kitchen eqiuipment. We took ours to France in the motorhome. No residual smells inside and we even cooked with it outside! Having chips with your barbecue attracts a lot of attention though. Everybody wanted to know where we bought it etc. One thing that we noticed is that although it is very expensive here, they are actually more expensive to buy in French Hypermarkets, although Tefal is a French brand.
The chips honestly don't taste like deep fried chips, but they do taste very good - lovely and crisp on the outside. Also good are little new potatoes, or salad potatoes, sprayed with 1 cal butter-flavoured spray 'fat' and 'roasted' in the Actifry. The calorie saving is very significant but they are still really tasty. We have also, when pushed for time, cooked oven chips in the Actifry. They have a much better taste and crispness than when cooked in the oven and children will eat them, whereas they generally hate oven chips!
The Actifry is also easy to clean and feels much safer to leave on when children or animals are around.
The areas for improvement are:
aesthetic design: it's the ugliest piece of kitchen kit that I have ever allowed to cross my threshold! You have to have a fairly large storage space because you wouldn't want it on view when not in use.
construction: as people have remarked, the clear plastic bits do feel very flimsy, although we have managed to avoid breakage so far
manageabilty: I also found that the casing does get very hot indeed.
The cool to the touch claim is untrue, I'm afraid.
capacity: despite the bulk of the machine, portion sizes are really child-sized in the eyes of true chip-lovers (my man!)
I have to recommend it as a good buy though, but would advise that you don't get one as a substitute for an existing fryer. Wear that one up first unless you are very wealthy !!
In the meantime, wake up British manufacturers and make a cheaper, better version, with a more interesting name and sleek shape !!
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