Martin Lewis is back with another interesting take on something that everyone has. You may remember that he said not to use debit cards, but this time it’s the air fryer. It’s too bad that it doesn’t support the useful electronic kitchen appliance very much.

The air fryer has become very popular, especially since the pandemic and the rise in the cost of living that followed. The kitchen appliance is said to be much better for you. Also, they should be cheaper to run than ovens on average. That being said, we might have been too quick to judge this small electric oven. It might not be everything it’s said to be.

Martin Lewis Tells It Like It Is About Air Fryer
Lewis said in a recent episode of The Martin Lewis podcast that ovens are sometimes cheaper than air fryers. Martin, who is 50 years old now, said that microwaves give off steady heat. Ovens, on the other hand, only heat up to the highest temperature they can reach and then only in short bursts to keep that temperature. Because of this, ovens don’t always run at full power.

In fact, Martin Lewis gives an example of a situation in which ovens are much more cost-effective. “If you were making a full roast dinner and cooking a lot of jacket potatoes, it would probably be cheaper to put them in the oven than to put five or six of them in the microwave, because the microwave only heats one thing at a time.”

This does not mean that the air fryer is completely bad, though. It’s clear that the air fryer/microwave would win in the above case if there were only one jacket potato instead of ten. No matter what, we can’t always do the math to figure out which option is cheaper for the same amount of food. Or, could we?

The math behind how cost-effective the kitchen is
Martin Lewis gives us an equation that will give us the answer to the last question, along with a problem that comes with it. If you want to find out how much electricity something uses, you can find out its wattage and then multiply that number by 34p ($0.42) per hour of use. […]

When it comes to heating things, the equation is wrong because an oven will need about 2,000W. If you turned on a 1,000W microwave for 10 minutes, that would use one KWH, which is about 6p. A sixth of 34p ($0.42) is about 6p. That means it costs 6p ($0.07) to use the microwave for that long. In that case, yes, it is a very useful equation. Just to be clear, the equation also works for air fryers.

Lewis even gets help from someone else: The Money Edit. They come to the conclusion that an oven costs 21p per year to run, while an air fryer costs only 13.6p ($0.16). On the other hand, air fryers with more power will naturally have higher average running costs. Some, like the 2000W one, cost 34p each time they are used. As Lewis said, they also back up the idea that the amount of food is another important factor.

The simple conclusion that Martin Lewis comes to is: “If you’re cooking something small and simple in there, it’s probably cheaper in the microwave and the same goes for the air fryer.”

This is not the first time Martin Lewis has given his professional opinion on money issues. He also talked about how dangerous debit cards are in general. The money marketing expert also says that people should switch from debit cards to credit cards because credit cards protect you from fraud.