It may be too ambitious a gadget for a first-timer, but I think I’m a little overwhelmed, and there are definitely some issues here and there. But, look, if you want a tl;dr - it’s amazing.
I will say, we’ve only used the air fryer function so far but next is the Smoker function and I’ll update this as and when we use the other functions (there are 7, including dehydrate, which is pretty cool.)
Okay, from the very beginning: it arrives in a huge box; it’s much bigger than it looks in the photos. It comes with some minor assembly needed - you just need to use the wee Alan (Allen?) key to attach the two handles on both sides. The handles aren’t quite flush, which is a bit lame. It just makes it feel like the quality isn’t quite there.
You’ll also need to slide the grease tray into the back slot at the very bottom - this will catch all the run-off oil and guck.
A really annoying thing is the On/Off button - it is in the stupidest place imaginable: under the unit itself, behind the right leg. It’s all but impossible to get to without flipping the whole unit upside down. It’s also ever so slightly sticky, so we weren’t sure if we had actually turned the unit on.
Because that was another issue. When we turned everything on, nothing happened. We tried different plug sockets; we hit the Start button again; we turned it off and on again... nothin’. Husband then hit the Reset button on the actual plug and it came on. I don’t know whether we’re going to have to do that every time - we’ll just have to see. EDIT: I have an update with this, I’ll add it at the bottom.
Another issue is the recipe book and instructions provided. We wanted to make chicken wings for our first attempt and the recipe book is covered in photos of them so we assumed the recipe book would include air fried chicken wings. It does not. It’s daft. We had to look at a YouTube video for timings.
For the record, we set it to 200 degrees, let it pre-heat, and then let them cook for 20 minutes.
It beeps to let you know when it’s pre-heated, by the way, so there’s very little faff involved there. At the 10 minute point, it told us to flip the food over, which we dutifully did. They looked yummy but a bit anaemic so I had my doubts, but we let them cook for the full 20 minutes. I took a photo of the end results - they are lovely chicken wings. I prefer them a little crispier so I guess we’re going to have to experiment with timings and temperatures but they’re lovely.
The instructions say to only use it outdoors but we used it in the kitchen with the windows and doors open and the fan going - the manual says it can put out carbon monoxide so I think being safe with this thing is really important.
I do have one major complaint, though: I registered the unit with Ninja and almost straight away started getting scammy phishing emails - I have to think one precipitated the other because most of the subject titles mention Ninja and the timing is just too strange not to be connected. So either Ninja sold my email address or their customer data was scraped - I don’t know enough about this stuff to know for sure but it’s worth bearing in mind.
It’s all really easy to clean, by the way. We put the chicken wings on the grill tray instead of in the air fryer basket, and it’s very non-stick. Then we just gave a wipe down to the rest of it to remove any oil or residue.
So there you have it.
Oh! You get two packs of wood pellets for the Smoker (they go in the the little mail slot on the left side) and Ninja say you can ONLY use the Ninja wood pellets. I’ve been looking into that a bit and it’s nonsense. You can use any food-safe wood pellets with the Woodfire Grill.
So, yes, I don’t think I’m as impressed as I thought I’d be... the slight build quality issues and the stupid On button and the loudness of it as it’s cooking the food, and the expense, and the fact that it didn’t start first time and being inundated with annoying emails from phishers... I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t think I would buy it again, especially at full price. But maybe as we get to know it better and use the Smoker and Grill functions this summer it will really come into its own.
I’ll definitely update this as we use it more so you can get a better idea of it all before spending that much cash on something that might be a bit disappointing.
EDIT: so we used it again and, once again, the unit didn’t switch on until we hit the Reset button again. That just doesn’t sit right with me, somehow, so we called Ninja to ask if that’s a fault. After about half an hour of answering questions, we were told that if you unplug the unit from the wall, next time you use it you’ll need to press Reset; if you leave it plugged in and just turn it off on the unit itself, however, it will store your settings and turn on normally.
Thing is, I don’t think it stores any settings (?) so I honestly don’t know if we were being fibbed to there. But there you have it. No clarity whatsoever!









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