Multiple ways to cook a lot of food, but also plenty to keep clean
Sunbeam Multi Zone Air Fryer Oven: Two-minute review
The Sunbeam Multi Zone Air Fryer AF6000BK wants to be the only cooking appliance in your home – and subsequently one of the best air fryers – offering up a huge 11.4L of cooking space that can be split into two separate zones. That might not sound like a particularly new feature – considering there’s stiff competition from both Ninja and Instant – but rather than just providing two cooking zones, the Sunbeam Multi Zone Air Fryer allows you to cook two small portions of food in each zone thanks to slide-out air frying and roasting trays.
As with other such air fryers, the Sunbeam has the ability to set the same temperature and time for both cooking zones, or different temperatures and times, but have both zones finish cooking at the same time to avoid anything going cold.
When you unbox this air frying creation from Sunbeam, you may feel a little overwhelmed by the number of accessories you get: there are two air-frying baskets, two air-flow trays, two small roasting trays, a large roasting tray and a large air-flow tray. That’s an awful lot more than what you’ll likely find in comparable models, and Sunbeam knows, because there’s a a pull-out tray underneath the main cooking oven for storing all six. The cooking baskets obviously won’t fit in here, so they’ll need to remain inside the air fryer when not in use.
Using the Sunbeam air fryer is intuitive and simple, with all buttons and controls clearly laid out and backlit when you’re setting a cooking program. Once you’ve selected a program and set the air fryer on its way, many of the buttons ‘turn off’ with just the temperature and time settings left visible. You can adjust either or both of these during cooking, which is a good feature to have as it means you don’t need to cancel and restart a program – something you have to do on other models, including the Instant Vortex Plus Versazone. Like an actual oven, the air fryer has a light inside, which comes on when you’re prepping a program. Unlike an oven, however, It turns off soon after, and you’re meant to be able to turn it on during cooking to check progress – but this didn’t always work for me.
Results are generally very good. During my time using the Sunbeam air fryer I cooked various foods including chicken tenders, arancini balls, chicken breast, burgers and salmon. On the whole, everything came out perfectly cooked, especially the tenders and arancini, which were returned with a beautifully crisp outer shell and hot, juicy inner. As for the chicken breast, I initially selected the chicken preset, but it came out a bit raw in the middle still, so I had to put it back in for a little while longer. Nevertheless, food was still cooked well and I appreciated not having to wait for the air fryer to preheat before putting food in.
But for all its positives, it must be said the Sunbeam Multi Zone Air Fryer isn’t the easiest to manage in regard to maintenance. This is a big machine for starters, so you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of space on your kitchen counter to store it. And because of the many accessories, there’s a lot to keep clean. Admittedly, the various trays and baskets should be easier to place on a draining rack compared to a complete cooking basket, but it also means there are multiple pieces to clean instead of just one. You may find that a small sacrifice but, for me, it proved to be a bit of a hassle. I also found when cooking burgers that fat dropped through the air-flow trays onto the floor of the oven, resulting in more clean up. This can be avoided by placing the roasting tray on the bottom, but it would have been nice for Sunbeam to include a dedicated, removable tray for instances such as this.
Maintenance is really the only aspect of the Sunbeam Multi Zone Air Fryer I could find fault with. So if you want an air fryer that can cook an awful lot of food at once, in a multitude of ways, it’s one you really should consider. This is especially true given its RRP of AU$299, which I would consider to be incredibly well priced given its feature set and performance.Sunbeam Multi Zone Air Fryer Oven review: Price and availability
List price: AU$299
Only available in Australia from a number of third-party sellers
Sunbeam is an Australian brand that hasn’t quite yet made it overseas, so you won’t find this air fryer anyone else out of the local market. It was announced and launched in June 2024 with a recommended retail price of AU$299, which makes it more affordable than comparable models, including the 8.
