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Kitchen · Dreo · 2023

Dreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer

A probe and a water mister instead of presets, which is a chef's tool priced like one.

The air fryer you can run while someone is on a call — #4

Overall

7.4

out of 10

Axis scores

Kitchen is scored on these 5 axes. The total is their plain average — nothing is weighted.

Dreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer — axis scores out of 10Horizontal bar chart of editorial scores out of 10 across 5 axes. Bars run from a shared zero baseline; longer is better. Dreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer: Performance 9.0, Value 6.2, Durability 7.0, Ease of use 7.4, Quietness 7.2.PerformanceDreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer — Performance 9.0 out of 109.0ValueDreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer — Value 6.2 out of 106.2DurabilityDreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer — Durability 7.0 out of 107.0Ease of useDreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer — Ease of use 7.4 out of 107.4QuietnessDreo ChefMaker Combi Fryer — Quietness 7.2 out of 107.2Editorial score out of 10 — higher is better
  • Performance — How well it does the core job
  • Value — What the same money buys elsewhere
  • Durability — Failure and fade reports past the one-year mark
  • Ease of use — Setup, daily operation, cleaning, maintenance
  • Quietness — Operating noise — a higher score means quieter

Specs

Capacity
6 quart basket
Probe
Dual-sensor cook probe, wired into the basket
Water tank
200 ml atomizer reservoir
Modes
Chef, Classic, and Probe

As published by the manufacturer. We didn't measure these ourselves.

Is it for you

Buy it if

  • Proteins you want arriving at a target internal temperature rather than after a set time
  • You will happily run an app and refill a water tank to get there
  • Cooking is something you enjoy rather than something you get through

Skip it if

  • Your cooking is mostly frozen food at high heat, where none of this buys you anything
  • You want an appliance with nothing to update, connect, or refill
  • It costs several times what a competent basket fryer does, and crisps no harder

The probe is the machine, and everything else is support for it. You cook to an internal temperature instead of to a clock, which is how a restaurant cooks a steak and how nobody cooks with an air fryer. Chicken breast stops being a gamble. The catch is that the reading is only as good as the placement — seat the probe near a bone or too shallow and the machine confidently follows a number that is wrong, and it will not tell you so.

The water tank is the part nobody mentions until they own one. It holds about a cup, it feeds a mister that keeps surfaces from drying out before the interior is done, and you fill it by hand. That is a small chore, and it arrives every single time you cook. Whether it stays charming or becomes the reason the machine migrates to a cupboard is a question about you rather than about the appliance.

A meaningful share of what this thing does lives in the phone app — guided recipes, remote monitoring, step-by-step video. That is genuinely useful and it means a firmware update or a dead app is now part of the durability question, on a machine from a brand with a short history. None of the dial-driven ovens in this category can break that way.

Reviewer consensus is that it runs hot and overshoots the set temperature in the modes that do not use the probe, and that the fan speed range is narrow next to an actual combi oven. Probe mode papers over the first problem by watching the food instead of the air, which is a reasonable answer, but it means the machine is at its best in exactly one of its three modes.

The parts count is the highest of anything here. A pump, a reservoir, a probe on a cable, a contact in the basket that has to survive being washed and slammed shut a few thousand times. Reviewers have also noted the drawer rattles. None of that is a defect. It is simply more surface area for something to go wrong once the warranty is over.

Judge it as a precision cooker that also air-fries, not as an air fryer with a gimmick. Under that framing it earns the outlay. Under the other one it never will.

Last updated . The scoring method is on how we rank.