Expert rating
Benefits
- Reduced counter space
- Racks double cooking space
- Quick and easy to use
The inconvenients
- Uneven cooking for certain types of foods
Our Verdict
The Double Stack is another innovative design from Ninja, aimed at people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to fit a two-drawer air fryer on their kitchen counter. It makes even more use of the space it uses thanks to racks that double the cooking space in each drawer. It’s quick and efficient, but we found its cooking performance slightly inconsistent.
Best prices today: Ninja Double Stack XL
$229.99
Two-drawer air fryers are a game changer. They make it easy to ditch your oven altogether when preparing a meal, even if you’re cooking for the whole family. This means faster and cheaper meals.
But the limiting factor for most people is available counter space. Many of us simply don’t have enough room in the kitchen to add another microwave-sized appliance to the army of countertop gadgets that clutter up the entire counter space. Enter the Double Stack XL.
In many ways, I’m the perfect guinea pig to test the Double Stack, because my kitchen is closer to the size of a guinea pig than to the actual size of a person. It wouldn’t look out of place in a campervan. As a result, counter space is limited and I was keen to try it.
By the way, if you’re in the US, the Double Stack XL is called The DoubleStack XL (no spaces between words), but they’re otherwise the same device.
Design and build
- Cooking racks double cooking space
- Much narrower than other two-drawer models, but projects further
- Matching and synchronization functions
What Ninja has done with the Double Stack is essentially flipped a conventional two-drawer air fryer on its side, so that the drawers are stacked on top of each other. The Double Stack is approximately the same dimensions as the Foodi Max Dual Zone, but space savings are achieved by utilizing the “dead” space above and in front of a conventional air fryer.
This means it will dwarf your other countertop appliances, so it may not be the perfect option for every small kitchen. Yet there’s still plenty of space above to fit under standard kitchen cabinets, and space in front to open the cooking drawers.
The official dimensions of the Double Stack are 38.5 (H) x 28 (W) x 47 cm (D) (15.14 inches x 11.25 x 19.22 inches). We have a dedicated article on how much counter width the Double Stack can save you, but if you take a look at it next to the Ninja FlexDrawer you’ll get a good idea. Keep in mind that the Double Stack is considerably deeper.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
The Double Stack is largely made of matte gray plastic. Like all of Ninja’s dual drawer air fryers, it lacks the steel panels you’ll find on the Speedi and Health Grill & Air Fryer, which give the appliances a more sturdy, premium look and feel. I also found that the silver finish of the plastic grips on the front had suffered a few minor scuffs during the testing period. But overall it feels solid and well made.
Grill racks really elevate it as a cooker – raising a cooking layer, allowing you to stack two different types of food at once in each drawer.
The design of the device means that there is no obvious place to place the digital control panel, so the engineers chose to have it protrude from the right side, in front of the air vents, which require space anyway. Although it seems to expand into an otherwise useful area, it’s a good reminder not to clutter your air fryer on the counter.
The control panel is where Ninja outperforms almost every other brand. It’s intuitive and simple to use, with a mix of button and dial programming. It features the time-saving Match button (allowing you to copy a set of cooking instructions from one drawer to another, if you want to use all the space to cook one food) and Sync buttons (which ensure that both cooking programs finish at the same time, even if they are completely different).
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
The Double Stack has fewer modes than many other air fryer models: there’s air fry, maximum crispiness (for frozen foods), bake, roast, reheat, and dehydrate. But you can adjust these functions based on time and temperature so that they cover almost anything you would want to cook in the appliance.
As a tip, there is a peel-off label on the front of the air fryer, with suggested cooking times for popular foods including chicken, chips, sausages, steak, fish and vegetables. Plus, you’ll receive a quick start guide, which contains recipe suggestions and cooking charts, so you won’t have to rely on guesswork.
The Double Stack comes with two vegetable baskets and two grill racks. Grill racks really elevate it as a cooker – raising a cooking layer, allowing you to stack two different types of food at once in each drawer. This provides much more space and flexibility. Ninja suggests cooking veggies on the bottom and protein on top, but in testing I found it performed well when used more flexibly.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Performance and Features
- Quick and crispy results
- Perforated drawers limit food types
- Uneven cooking results depending on the type of food
Although the Double Stack design saves space, it also requires some compromises.
It has a capacity of 9.5 L/10 QT on both drawers, making it one of the most spacious air fryers on the market. However, because the heat sources are located at the back of the unit (a heating coil is behind each drawer), rather than at the top, the drawer backs are necessarily perforated to allow hot air to circulate.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
This means you will have to be very careful not to overcrowd them and makes it unsuitable for certain types of moist cooking. You will be not Prepare rice or stews in the Double Stack just like you can in the Ninja Speedi, unless you buy silicone liners.
I used the Double Stack in place of my regular air fryer for a month and found it to be a fast and efficient cooker, producing crispy, well-cooked food reliably.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
The racks make a huge difference in its capacity and allow you to cook every part of a meal together. And thanks to the Sync function, you can ensure that both cooking programs finish at the same time.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
But I encountered a problem, which becomes evident when cooking larger quantities of food, such as roast potatoes or chips. And it’s unevenly cooked. Since the heat source is at the bottom of the drawer, food cooks more quickly on one side than the other.
I used the Double Stack in place of my regular air fryer for a month and found it to be a quick and efficient cooker.
The uneven results are made worse by the fact that there is no shake/backlash alert while cooking. Many air fryers have such an alert, which goes off at around 60% of the cooking program. But if it exists on the Double Stack, I haven’t found it.
During the testing period, I found that there was a noticeable difference between food cooked in the front and back of the drawer, with a distinct shaded coloring ranging from pale to golden, even when the drawer was far from being too full.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
This means you’ll need to set an alarm on your phone or remember to shake your food while cooking to achieve perfectly even results.
This is really the only problem I’ve had with the Double Stack but it keeps it from getting a perfect score.
Pricing and availability
The Ninja Double Stack is widely available in the UK and US.
This is an expensive device in the UK, retailing at £269.99 and at this point there is no price advantage to choosing a retailer, with a plus/minus difference of around £1. It is available at Ninja, John Lewis, Argos and Currys. That’s around £50 more than the FlexDrawer and £90 more than the Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone, both of which are comparable models in terms of functionality and cooking space. Whether or not it’s worth it really depends on how much you value a little more counter space.
In the US, it’s a bit cheaper, with an MSRP of $229.99. You can buy it at Ninja, Amazon, and Walmart, among other retailers. Again, that’s about $50 more than the FlexBasket, which is just an 8QT device in its US version. However, it’s actually inferior to the Foodi Two-Drawer 10 QT, which may make it a more attractive choice.
If this isn’t the air fryer for you and you want to see more recommendations, take a look at our roundup of the best air fryers, best Ninja air fryers, and for more cooking capacity cooking, of the best. air fryer ovens.
Should you buy the Ninja Double Stack?
Ninja offers such a wide range of air fryers that there is a perfect option for everyone. Whether it’s the right one for you depends on your home and the type of cooking you do.
The Double Stack is perfect for preparing smaller meals with much more variety. If you often want to cook fish or chicken, as well as three types of vegetables for two to four people, the Double Stack will suit you perfectly and will at the same time help you find a little more space on your work surface.
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