Cosori Premium 5.8 Quart Air Fryer Review

Hopefully, you’re already sold on the value of an air fryer. The quick-cooking and the reduced-fat, when compared to traditional frying methods, are just two of the many benefits. If you ARE already sold, maybe you just need help figuring out which air fryer is right for you. That’s a big reason why we do what we do here at AirFrying.net, like take an air fryer for a test drive so we can share real-world usage experience with you. Our latest air fryer test drive was with the Cosori Premium 5.8 Quart Air Fryer, which we received for free in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Buy Now On Amazon

Specifications of the Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air Fryer (model CP158-AF):

• 11.8 inches x 11.8 inches x 12.6 inches
• 1700 watts of power
• 5.8-quart capacity
• 11 temperature/time preset buttons (steak, chicken, seafood, shrimp, bacon, frozen foods, french fries, vegetables, root vegetables, breads, desserts) plus preheat and keep warm buttons
• Included accessories:
  • Recipe book includes 100 recipes with color photos

Getting Started

As a marketer, I really appreciated the packaging and materials – everything is functional AND attractive. The “package” in the photo above includes the user manual, the recipe book, and a reference guide, as well as information about registering your product to extend your warranty an extra year (worth it, in my opinion) and joining their Facebook community. Because I like to jump right in, the reference guide was a sufficient starting point to get going.

Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air Fryer reference guide

The user manual includes French and Spanish text, so what may seem like a lot of info at first isn’t overwhelming. (BTW, it’s worth noting that you can change the LED control panel to display Celsius instead of Fahrenheit if you’re so inclined. Simple instructions are included in the user manual.)

Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air Fryer user manual

The included recipe book is impressive. There’s a color photo of each recipe and there are 100 of them covering breakfast, entrees, appetizers, sides, and desserts. Don’t peruse while hungry…

Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air Fryer cookbook

Performance

Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air Fryer

One of the things I like a lot about the GoWISE USA 4.6 Quart Air Fryer is the alarm function which allows you to set a reminder 5, 10 or 15 minutes into the cooking time. It’s very helpful, but not automatic – you have to program it in. Cosori takes that extra step away with five of their preset settings that give you a “shake” reminder. If you start with the shrimp, frozen foods, french fries, vegetables or root vegetables preset – even if you change the temperature and/or time of the preset – you will get a five-beep and control-panel-blinking “shake” reminder halfway through the cooking time. This is really helpful when air frying these types of foods that benefit from a shake/mix during cooking. If you ignore the first alert, it will beep again and display a solid “shake” after one more minute of cooking.

The Cosori LED touch screen control panel with “shake” reminder

We air fried a lot of foods in this Cosori, including tater tots, plain chicken breasts, frozen hash browns, tofu, frozen mozzarella sticks, chocolate chip cookies, frozen jalapeno poppers and grilled cheese sandwiches (SO many grilled cheese sandwiches, but tis the season!). Everything came out delicious and as expected. I found myself choosing the frozen foods preset and using that for all manner of foods (some frozen, some not) so I could get a “shake” alert halfway through. For example, tofu and grilled cheese are two things you need to attend to during their cooking time. Tofu needs a shake just like most frozen convenience foods and the grilled cheese needs flipped.

Air fried tofu ready to be added to vegetable curry

All 11 of the presets provide a general guideline for air frying that particular kind of food, but the reference guide and the cookbook provide more guidance on editing the preset temperature and cooking time depending on your specific need. For example, the preset for root vegetables is 400 degrees F and 12 minutes. The reference guide and the cookbook recommend changing the time to 8 minutes for Brussels sprouts. Oddly enough, the cookbook recommends 12 minutes for carrots and the reference guide 10 minutes. There are also discrepancies with zucchini (the reference guide says 6 minutes at 350 degrees while the cookbook says 10 minutes at 300 degrees) and tilapia (350 degrees for 6-8 minutes in the cookbook, 370 for 8 minutes in the reference guide). These inconsistencies are unfortunate.

Quality

I’m really enamored of the outside finish on this air fryer. The GoWISE USA air fryer we just reviewed has an attractive brushed stainless steel finish, but oy, the fingerprints. This finish is also brushed but it hides fingerprints so well! Of course greasy fingers still leave greasy marks, but regular handling isn’t noticeable and that’s a big plus in my book.

I’m not as much of a fan of the detachable nested basket, not that I had any problems with this one. Quite the contrary – the basket release from the base feels solid and works well. The plastic cover that slides back and forth to cover and reveal the release moves easily – maybe a tad too easily. For me, it’s about moving parts and those being eventual weak links. I liked the fixed handle and removable crisper tray of the GoWISE USA air fryer so I find myself leaning in the direction of preferring that style, but this one hasn’t been problematic at all.

Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air fryer basket

A few times while air frying in the Cosori, I noticed steam/condensation leaking out the front between the bottom of the basket and the base of the unit. Air frying particularly wet food like tofu will naturally put off a lot of water, but I was surprised to see it coming out that way instead of it being directed out the exhaust fan in the back. I’ve not experienced this with other air fryers.

Ease of Use

Cosori is all in on preheating the air fryer – every recipe in the 100 recipe cookbook instructs to preheat. But what’s really nice about this Cosori air fryer versus the Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360 is that preheating is still optional and under your control. Preheat is a one-touch function that makes it very easy to get the unit up to temp while you’re prepping your food. Once it beeps and tells you it’s ready, you can load in your food then use one of the preset functions or manually program the time and temperature. The default for Preheat is 400 degrees F, but you can change that to suit your recipe. You can’t manually change the time – it will be dictated by how long the machine requires to get to the temp you select. For example, it’s five minutes for 400 degrees and four minutes for 370 degrees.

There’s also a Keep Warm preset that allows you to leave your food in the air fryer after cooking (or put external food in to hang out in a warm space if there’s a need for that). The temperature is fixed at 170 degrees F and that’s not changeable, but you can adjust the time as needed.

Ease of Cleaning

I’m a fan of the Cosori’s non-stick coating. It really did make clean up easy, especially since we don’t currently have any air fryer parchment liners that fit this size basket. Many times we used it, it only required a few wipes with warm soapy water to remove crumbs and oil before drying to get it ready for the next use. Even though you can put air fryer baskets in the dishwasher, I prefer not to in an effort to prolong the life of the non-stick coating. But if you prefer to clean the basket in the dishwasher, know that the two pieces (which you’ll need to separate to properly clean) will take up a lot of space.

Meal Size

I really like the large square size of the Cosori’s basket. The Amazon listing says it can fit a six-pound whole chicken and I believe it. At 9 inches x 9 inches x 3.75 inches, there’s a lot of room in there. I could easily fit two grilled cheese sandwiches at once, and that was using Dave’s Killer Bread, which is a big loaf. Unless you want to go extra big with a toaster oven-style air fryer like the Emeril Lagasse Power AirFryer 360, I think the Cosori is the perfect size for an average-sized family. Also, per the photos on the Cosori web site, the difference in external size of the Cosori 3.7 quart vs. the 5.8 quart is negligible when considering counter top space. So if you’re sold on the features and functionality of the Cosori, go for the 5.8 quart. You won’t regret the extra cooking capacity.

Summary

The Cosori Premium 5.8 QT Air Fryer does a terrific job cooking food evenly and quickly, even in large amounts. It’s easy to use and easy to clean so I definitely recommend it if you are interested in a larger capacity air fryer.

Buy Now On Amazon