I should have known better than to have had my head turned by a good-looking Italian, but this air fryer is very attractive, and I have been sharing my home with it for two weeks. It has been great to look at, but cooking with it has been slightly problematic. In this article, I will tell you all about the Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer air fryer, why it looks so stunning, and why it is sadly going to have to go back to the manufacturers.
Table of Contents
The First Cook and That Burning Smell
Every time I get a new air fryer, the very first thing I do is run it empty for about 10 minutes to burn off that new appliance smell. I do this a couple of times a month with new air fryers, and it is not usually a big deal. With this one, however, it smelled really bad.
So bad that I actually stopped it and checked to make sure I had not left any packaging inside. There was nothing in there, so I ran it for about 20 minutes at 200 Celsius with the windows open and the extractor fan running on maximum power. By the end of it, the smell was gone. In fairness, that was a minor issue I could get over. The real problems came later.
The Warped Drawer Problem After Just One Use
To give a little bit of context, this air fryer features drawers that lock in place with buttons you press with your thumb to release them when you want to open the drawer. It is a great safety feature, especially if you have young kids around.
The first proper food I cooked was a 1.6 kilogram chicken. It fitted comfortably in the large drawer, and the results were pretty good. It took about 50 minutes at 180 Celsius, and while it was resting, I cooked roast potatoes in the same drawer, which also turned out very well. However, as soon as everything was done, I noticed something wrong.
The front of the machine had warped ever so slightly. Looking at it from the right-hand side it still appeared flat, but from the left side and feeling along the join, the drawer was no longer aligned with the body of the appliance. This meant the lock on the drawer had completely stopped working after just one use. I could now freely pull it in and out without the catch activating at all. That was the first big problem, but it was not the last.
What Is the Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer Air Fryer?
Before getting into the other issue, it is worth giving some background on this model. This air fryer is produced by Gino D’Acampo, the Italian chef most people will know from This Morning. His range of air fryers is sold by Asda, and there are four models available in three colors.
Even though this is the most expensive of the four, it is still pretty affordable with an RRP of just £89. The color is a pretty close match to what is known as Chartwell Green, a color made famous by Winston Churchill, who used it at his holiday home Chartwell House in Kent. It is often used on front doors and window frames, which makes it a genuinely smart move by Gino’s design team. An air fryer in this popular color is going to match the window frames in a lot of kitchens and become an easy impulse buy as you wander around Asda.
Controls & Features
The control panel is nice and clear. The icons are bold, the buttons are well spaced, and it is pretty intuitive to use overall. The touchscreen surface is not rigid though, and it sometimes needs multiple presses to get it to respond properly, which is a minor frustration.
The control panel includes the standard synchronized finish and matched cooking options. These allow you to cook items with different cooking times and let them finish together, or to set one drawer up with time and temperature and duplicate those settings to the other drawer. There is a preheat button, but it is a standalone preset of 200 Celsius for 5 minutes that simply turns off when the time is up. Honestly, it is just easier to add 3 minutes onto your cooking time rather than using it separately.
The food symbols along the top of the display work as presets, which means there is likely no variation in fan speeds. These are essentially shortcuts for pre-programmed times and temperatures. From left to right you have fries, chicken, fish, cakes, vegetables, and dehydrate. The dehydrate setting is slightly different from the others as timing goes up and down in hours rather than minutes, with a cooler temperature range.
The maximum temperature is 200 Celsius and the lowest is 80 Celsius, unless you use the dehydrate setting where the lowest available temperature is 40 Celsius, with a maximum programmable time of 24 hours. You can also adjust time and temperature midway through cooking, which is a genuinely useful feature.
Also Read: Duronic AF34 Air Fryer Review
Settings
Setting it up is straightforward. You power on from the right, choose your left or right drawer, either select a preset or program manually, and press the start button on the bottom left. At the end of the cooking time it automatically goes into a cooling cycle with the fans continuing to run. It might be a safety feature, but I found it slightly annoying, and it is not something I have come across on many other air fryers I have tested.
The instruction booklet is clear and comprehensive, and it is printed in a single language, which is actually a novelty. You also get a printed A4 color sheet with two of Gino’s own recipes, one of which is for an air-fried chocolate fondant pudding.
Testing Gino’s Recipe
I decided to try out the chocolate fondant pudding recipe to see if the timings and temperatures were accurate, because that is not always the case with included recipes. The instructions said to preheat for 3 minutes, cook for 13 minutes, and then leave the puddings to stand for 2 minutes.
After 13 minutes they came out looking slightly overdone, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding. When I cut them open after the 2 minutes resting time, there was a beautiful runny chocolate center and they tasted great.
A Pattern of Overcooked Results
The puddings were not the only thing I cooked. I tried a variety of different foods, most of which turned out well, but as the days went by I started to notice a recurring pattern with some of the results. I regularly cook a particular cake recipe and I could only fit one tin in the larger drawer of the Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer air fryer, so I decided to use my Cosori dual drawer at the same time to cook the other half on identical settings.
The difference in results was clearly visible, with the Gino version coming out noticeably worse. I also tried a prepared joint of pork from Marks and Spencer and even though I reduced the cooking time and temperature as advised for air fryers, the results were far from presentable.
Is the Gino D’Acampo Air Fryer Running Too Hot?
At this point I had a strong suspicion that the air fryer was running hotter than its set temperature. I set it to 200 Celsius, placed my oven thermometer inside, and after 10 minutes it had reached 215 Celsius. For an air fryer with a maximum setting of 200 Celsius, that is either impressive or slightly worrying depending on how you look at it. A couple of hours later I repeated the test at 170 Celsius and the thermometer read 190 Celsius.
For anyone wondering whether my thermometer might be at fault, I ran the same test on my Cosori dual basket air fryer and it read a spot-on 200 Celsius after 10 minutes. The Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer air fryer is consistently overheating, which explains the pattern of burned and overcooked food I had been experiencing.
Energy Consumption Test
I also tested the energy consumption, which I do by running the air fryer from cold at 200 Celsius for 10 minutes and measuring the result in kilowatt hours. I compared the Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer air fryer results against the Philips 3000 Series, which is the same capacity and the same split of one large drawer and one small drawer. The results were worth noting for anyone conscious of running costs.
- Attractive Chartwell Green design that suits many kitchen styles.
- Affordable at £89 with a straightforward, clear control panel.
- Automatic 3-year warranty, no registration required.
Specification Table
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Brand | Gino D’Acampo |
| Model Type | 9L Dual Drawer Air Fryer |
| Total Capacity | 9 Litres |
| Drawer Configuration | One large drawer, one small drawer |
| Maximum Temperature | 200 Celsius |
| Minimum Temperature | 80 Celsius (40 Celsius on dehydrate) |
| Maximum Cook Time | 24 hours (dehydrate mode) |
| Presets | Fries, Chicken, Fish, Cakes, Vegetables, Dehydrate |
| Control Type | Touchscreen panel |
| Preheat Function | Yes, 200 Celsius for 5 minutes |
| Sync and Match Cooking | Yes |
| Warranty | 3 years automatic |
| Color Available | Chartwell Green and others |
| RRP | £89 |
| Where to Buy | Asda |
| Actual Tested Temperature at 200C Setting | 215 Celsius |
Is the Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer Air Fryer Worth Buying?
To quickly recap the experience, the drawer warped and stopped locking after just one use, and the air fryer consistently runs hotter than its set temperature, which leads to overcooked and burned food. It is possible I got unlucky with my particular unit, and that is always a fair point to consider with budget appliances.
On the positive side, this air fryer does come with an automatic three-year warranty and there is no need to register your purchase, which is a genuinely good thing to see at this price point. But despite looking absolutely stunning in the kitchen, the Gino D’Acampo 9L Dual Drawer air fryer is sadly heading back to Asda.
If you have bought one and had a similar or completely different experience, please share your thoughts in the comments, because people considering buying it will find real-world feedback incredibly helpful.
Read More: Ninja vs Cosori vs Philips Air Fryer
