You might stick to cooking oil while making chips after trying this, but it'll be a much closer competition than you're expecting. Swan's large-capacity air fryer impressed us with its meat-cooking abilities in particular, but it'll handle everything else you toss inside it... provided it's supposed to be cooked. This 11-litre dual basket fryer replaced far more of our usual cooking than we were expecting it to.
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Design
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Features
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Ease of Use
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Versatility
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Value
We’ve historically been dismissive of air fryers as an alternate to actually frying something, but the Swan 11l dual-basket air fryer has gone some way towards changing that. Not all the way, mind you. Some (most) food tastes better fried in some sort of fat or oil. Even if your physical heart objects, there’s a part of every person that knows this is true. That said, cooking vast quantities of excellent red meat in short order was enough to make us look upon Swan’s air fryer more fondly than we’ve regarded others.
Part of this is convenience. Preparing food in the conventional way carries a substantial threat of making a mess, particularly when oil is involved. Chucking it into a massive-capacity air fryer like Swan’s eleven-litre effort cuts down on cleanup considerably. Add the option to prepare two separate lots of chow at once, and you’ve got a fire-and-forget solution for supper. Or lunch. Breakfast, too, once or twice.
Space invader
It’s not obvious from the images we’ve used, but the Swan 11l air fryer is roughly the size of a mid-sized microwave. The company makes a vertically-stacked version of the same unit (which isn’t sold here, yet) that’ll absorb less counter space. But if you’re using the side-by-side version, it’s best to keep it on an open surface. We took to stashing this one on a shelf out of the way when it wasn’t in use, because it’s just too big to leave out in the open. Your kitchen will differ, of course, and there’s a case to be made for making it your centrepiece, but anyone lacking space at home should buy this one in person.
It’s simple to operate, at least. The face-plate consists of several central touch buttons, a left-hand indicator of which mode you’ve selected, and then the temperature/time dial with a button in the centre of the ring. Without reading the manual (a part of the packaging we intentionally ignored), the interface is simple enough that you’ll figure it out after about five minutes of faffing. After that, it’s just a question of whether you want to use presets or chart your own path.
One big drawer
Technically, the Swan 11l is a dual-drawer air fryer. In practise, it’s a single massive drawer with an elevated non-stick lining and a removable partition. If you want to use the whole thing to cook four t-bone steaks at the same time, that’s perfectly possible. Just yank out the divider, select Dual Cook, set your time, and forget Swan’s fryer exists until the shake notification goes off or it goes ‘ding’.
It’s a little smarter than that, if you’re cooking more than massive amounts of rump steak or marinated beef short ribs in a single go. Those were enormously successful experiments, by the way. If you’re cooking two different elements, the temp/time dial lets you select independent cooking times. The divider and internal elements do a decent job of keeping your separate cooks to themselves. A sync function allows for everything to go ‘ding’ at the same time. It’s extremely easy to convince two well done and two medium rare aged steaks to complete cooking simultaneously.
We didn’t only cook deceased bovine, of course. Everything from fish to pies to chicken to leftovers in need of reheating spent time in the Swan’s basket. Veggies are also welcome, if you’re a ruminant. Swan has a preset for that. It’ll do chicken (two of them — there’s enough space), pizza (which we didn’t attempt), or warm up frozen baked goods (hello, Woolies fans) in short order.
Undercooked features
There are areas where Swan’s fryer could have done a bit better. The main one, aside from its massive countertop footprint, is the drawer. It works as a single unit and makes it simple to operate. But having two drawers would improve versatility. Sticking one basket on while prepping the next saves just a shade more time in the kitchen. Plus, turning items in one basket requires yanking the whole thing open at once, hampering cooking times.
A few smarter features would also have been welcome. Several air fryers also include a window, so you can check progress without opening the drawers. Then, there’s also app support, something that’s absent here. Their omissions are at least understandable. The Swan 11l air fryer retails for only R3,300. We wouldn’t expect a companion app or glass windows at this price. But they would have made an already-decent appliance even better. This is fine, though. We’ll happily settle for affordability in 2026.
Swan 11l Dual Basket Air Fryer verdict
The Swan 11l air fryer isn’t perfect. At R3,3k, it doesn’t have to be. But it gets the major aspects right. Food is cleanly and evenly heated, there’s more than enough space to feed a large family on a single cook, and it makes a mean steak. Four or five at a time, in fact. The ability to sync sides for better-timed meal preparation is welcome, too. If you’re still using a single-basket effort, or one that is getting on in years, Swan’s dual-basket air fryer will make cooking food the ‘old’ way seem less attractive than it did. That’s a win for Swan.
