Our Rating:
4.8
Instant Vortex Plus 6-Quart Clear Cook Air Fryer Review
Ranked #2 (Runner-up)
Best Air Fryer of 2025!
Authors: Anna N, Nicole R, Kevin W, Robert J
Introduction
The Instant Vortex Plus 6-Quart Clear Cook Air Fryer is an exceptional engineered appliance that secures a strong 2nd place finish in our 2025 rankings. While another model edged it out for the top spot, the Vortex Plus carves its own path to excellence, not through raw power, but through a masterful focus on the user experience!
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It’s the versatility of its 6-in-1 suite of cooking features that makes it a standout choice. For the home cook who values a seamless, quiet, and predictable cooking process, the Vortex Plus is an amazing kitchen companion, and its runner-up rank#2 status is a testament to its thoughtful smart designs!
Design and Build Quality
The Vortex Plus presents a sleek, modern aesthetic that feels both stylish and highly functional on the countertop.
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Finishes & Form Factor: The appliance is available in a glossy black or a more premium stainless steel finish. The stainless steel model, in particular, has a sophisticated look that resists fingerprints far better than its glossy counterpart. Its angular design is countertop-friendly, fitting neatly under standard kitchen cabinets. Our hands-on use confirmed that its thoughtful, squared-off shape is a deliberate and effective design choice.
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ClearCook Window: The single most transformative feature is the ClearCook window. This isn’t just a simple window; it’s an active cooking tool. Paired with a dedicated internal light, it allows you to monitor your food’s progress in real-time without ever opening the basket. This prevents the massive heat loss that plagues traditional air fryers, ensuring a stable cooking temperature and more consistent results. Watching fries turn golden brown without interrupting the cooking cycle is a game-changer.
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OdorErase Technology: The available OdorErase technology is another significant quality-of-life improvement. This built-in air filtration system is remarkably effective at neutralizing cooking smells. While testing, we found it noticeably reduced the lingering odors often associated with air frying, keeping the kitchen environment much more pleasant, especially when cooking pungent foods like salmon or Brussels sprouts.
Controls
Instant Brands has perfected the user interface, creating a system that is astonishingly intuitive and a genuine pleasure to use.
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Intuitive Interface: The control system brilliantly combines a sleek, responsive touchscreen with a single, satisfyingly tactile control dial. This hybrid approach is the gold standard for usability. The screen displays the six cooking functions, time, and temperature with perfect clarity, while the dial makes adjusting those settings quick and precise. It’s so well-designed that most users will be able to master it right out of the box without ever glancing at the manual.
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Guided Cooking Prompts: The Vortex Plus holds your hand through the entire cooking process with clear, on-screen messages. It tells you when it’s “Preheating,” when it has reached temperature and it’s time to “Add Food,” and even provides a mid-cycle reminder to “Turn Food.” These prompts remove all the guesswork, ensuring even novice cooks can achieve perfect results with confidence. After several weeks of daily meals, these little prompts became an indispensable part of a seamless cooking rhythm.
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Smart Customization: While the six presets for Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Broil, Reheat, and Dehydrate are incredibly convenient, they are also fully customizable. You can easily tweak the time and temperature for any recipe, and the appliance cleverly remembers the last settings you used for each function, streamlining the process for your favorite, frequently made meals.
Performance
The Vortex Plus is a highly reliable and consistent performer, delivering excellent results across a huge range of foods.
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EvenCrisp™ Technology: This is the heart of the Vortex Plus’s cooking prowess. The system is engineered to circulate super-heated air with an intensity that drives it down and around the food, creating a perfect golden finish and incredibly crispy texture every time. During our testing, everything from frozen french fries to fresh chicken wings emerged with a satisfying crunch on the outside while remaining perfectly moist and tender inside, all while using a fraction of the oil of deep frying.
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Consistency: The Vortex Plus operates at a maximum temperature of 400°F and utilizes a mandatory preheat cycle. This reflects a design choice that prioritizes precision and consistency. It ensures food is always introduced to a perfectly heated environment, producing reliable and evenly cooked results without fail. While some competing models may reach higher temperatures for a deeper char, the Vortex Plus delivers perfectly cooked food time and time again, eliminating the risk of undercooked centers or rubbery textures.
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Basket Design: The 6-quart basket’s design is a subtle but critical element of its performance. Its wide, square shape provides a larger, flatter surface area than many competitors. This allows you to spread food out in a single, uncrowded layer, promoting superior airflow and ensuring every single piece gets evenly crisped. This design directly contributes to better, more consistent cooking outcomes.
6-in-1 Versatility
This appliance is far more than just an air fryer; it's a compact and capable multi-cooker.
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Air Fry, Roast, and Broil: The primary Air Fry function is flawless. The Roast function is perfect for larger items like pork tenderloin or a small chicken, creating a juicy interior and a beautifully browned exterior. The Broil function uses intense, top-down heat, which we found ideal for melting cheese on nachos or getting a perfect finish on a gratin.
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Bake and Reheat: The Bake function effectively turns the appliance into a mini oven, capable of handling cakes, pastries, and breads. Crucially, you can place a separate metal or glass baking dish inside the basket, opening up a world of possibilities for wet batters and doughs. The Reheat function is a revelation, reviving leftovers like pizza or fried chicken to their original crispy glory in a way a microwave simply cannot.
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Dehydrate: The low-and-slow Dehydrate function is a fantastic bonus, operating at low temperatures for extended periods. It's perfect for making healthy snacks like homemade fruit leather, kale chips, or beef jerky.
Living with the Vortex Plus
Beyond its cooking capabilities, the Vortex Plus is designed to make life in the kitchen easier and more pleasant.
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Quiet Operation: One of the most striking attributes of the Vortex Plus is how quiet it is. This is a significant quality-of-life benefit that cannot be overstated. We were consistently surprised by how quiet it is under operation; it’s not as loud as other air fryers we tested so you can easily carry on a conversation or listen to music in the kitchen without it being a distraction.
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Effortless Cleanup: Cleanup is an absolute breeze. The non-stick cooking basket and the removable crisper tray are both dishwasher-safe, which simplifies the entire process. Even when washing by hand, the high-quality non-stick coating releases food particles with minimal effort, making post-meal cleanup fast and painless. Our daily experience confirmed that the non-stick surface is exceptionally durable, showing no signs of wear even after heavy use.
Conclusion: The Runner Up
The Instant Vortex Plus 6-Quart Clear Cook Air Fryer earns its place as our #2 air fryer of 2025 by being a masterclass in user-focused design. It wisely trades a few degrees of maximum heat for a suite of features that deliver a vastly superior daily cooking experience. The combination of the convenient ClearCook window, the brilliantly intuitive interface, its whisper-quiet operation, and consistently excellent cooking results creates a truly exceptional appliance!
While another model may offer more raw power, the Vortex Plus is the champion for home cooks who prioritize a pleasant kitchen environment, predictable outcomes, and the sheer joy of a well-designed tool. It is an outstanding choice and a harmonious addition to any modern kitchen! 🎉🎉🎉