Acti-fry, (Tefal ActiFry)

Member Name: egg455

Product:	Tefal ActiFry
Date:	01/09/09 (465 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: you use so little oil!

Disadvantages: my acti fry had a faulty fan, big problem!

I bought this product for £130 because it sounded very good and i had read good reviews of the machine.
When it arrived I read through all the instructions and worked out how it worked.
I like the design and look of the machine and found it really easy to use. Simply cup your chips, give them a good dry and pop them in the machine. All you have to do then is add a small amount of oil using the handy spoon and shut the lid and its ready to use.
I had mine for about four months, working fine as was used a couple of times a week.
Then one day I did the usual process of getting my chips, I turned the machine on and everything seemed fine. Then i started smelling smoke, and also saw smoke coming from the machine, i immediately opened the lip and saw flames at the back of the unit where the fan is. I turned it off at the socket immediately and couldn't believe that something like this could have happened. It appears that the fan burnt out and the unit it is placed in caught fire. I have since read that some of these machine have fans which simply stop working and you have this problem.
I loved this machine but will not be buying another one if theses, knowing my luck it would happen again!

Pros
- You use a very small amount of oil to cook the chips so very healthy option
- Very easy to set up
- Nice design
- Quiter than you would expect.
- Allows you to keep an eye on the cooking of the chips with the see-through lid
-

Cons
- Takes about 45 minutes to cook the chips
- Have to keep an eye on the chips while cooking as some tend to sit on the side rather than go around.
- Fan can stop working which can lead to flames. So you have to stay with the machine while its cooking away.
- For the money if you happen to buy one with a faulty fan then you'll be annoyed after a few months if it goes up in flames.

I think the ideas behind the product are great and i loved the fact that you use such a little amount of oil, but really think tefal should think about redesigning the fan that the machine uses.
The machine itself is not very loud and worked well, though did find that time it took a little on the annoying side.

I am not trying to scare people off buying this product, I loved the machine while it worked but felt let down by tefal with the incident and have bought a more traditional chip fryer.
After the incident i found that there had been a report on watchdog which i found interesting, hopefully this might just be a problem with early production units, but i wouldn't like to quote me of that.

Summary: I love the idea of the machine, but i had a faulty one so will not buy again.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Noise:
Quality: