ScoopKona
Recycles dryer sheets
If you want to compare an air fryer to a guitar, then a $400 guitar would be more accurate comparison than a $100 guitar. There are plenty of guitars at that level that sound good, are are built well, and are easy to play. They're good enough for most amateur players. You can actually use and enjoy a $400 guitar, just like most people can make good food with an air fryer.
We diverge at this point.
The air-fryer is the $100 department store guitar. There are $400 (and better $600) convection ovens which I would be absolutely glad to discover in a kitchen -- if I was called on to throw down a nice meal for the President of the United States. (And I cooked him a meal already when he was Vice President.)
If I found an $80 Costco special, my first exclamation would be "oh [excrement], what am I going to make with this?" I've done plenty of System D* cooking. But just like with musical instruments, there is a lower end under which "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
There are plenty of countertop appliances I'm 100% enthusiastic about -- particularly immersion circulators. Get one ASAP. It will up your cooking game. Rice cookers. That's part of a complete kitchen. I'm a big fan of Indian wet spice grinders for making pastes -- great things with no comparison in the occidental kitchen. A blowtorch for brulees and similar (keep these away from POTUS if you're cooking for him). Vacuum sealers for marinades. A good food processor -- I only use Robot Coupe. All good. These are necessary kitchen tools.
And then we have air fryers, instant pots, slap-chops, George Foreman grills, rotisserie toaster ovens and pasta extruders. These are the "$100 department store guitars" of the culinary world.
I wish I knew some sleazy gadget that promises to give a new guitar player Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani skills (take your pick -- fill in your favorite player) for just four easy payments of $19.99.
That's what we're talking about.
* System D means sleazy, cutting corners, MacGuyver'ed, hacker kitchen techniques we don't talk about in polite company -- deep frying well done steaks to speed the order up, because well-done customers can't tell the difference. That sort of thing.