The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer review: perfect kitchen BBQ, but with some pesky drawbacks

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: one-minute review

Ninja is a trusted (and arguably the biggest) name in the air fryer market for a reason. Several of the brand’s products feature in our best air fryers roundup, thanks to their top-tier performance, but that high quality comes with a premium (sometimes eye-watering) price tag. The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer EG351UK, too, comes with a premium price tag, but one that’s somewhat more affordable than its siblings while offering the same top-grade quality we’ve come to expect from Ninja. If your air fryer budget maxes out at £200 (roughly $250 / AU$450), this just sneaks in there.

It’s still not cheap, but for that price you get a top-notch air fryer and indoor grill that offers pretty consistent results across its five cooking functions. The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer makes baking, grilling (even from frozen), air frying, dehydrating, and roasting easy, though you may need to use some trial and error with certain foods and functions to get optimal results.

The included user manual and inspiration booklet are helpful, with notes on nearly any question you may have, but the food guidelines can be a bit optimistic at times. This isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker but means you should keep a close eye on your food as you get to grips with it, as I had some issues with uneven cooking over overdone foods on the outside with the air fryer function. Thanks to the probe attachment, however, you have several avenues to check when your meat or fish is cooked, giving you some peace of mind.

The issues I had mostly arose with air frying foods and were exacerbated by the 5.7-liter cooking pot’s lack of a handle, which made shaking foods like fries and vegetables for even cooking tricky. However, the other cooking functions offered impressive results, delivering perfectly baked muffins, delicious flatbreads and succulent chicken.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer, however, is how much cleaning it requires for maintenance – and how tough it is to keep the appliance and its various attachments (particularly the splatter guard) clean, despite following the included instructions. That’s something which could potentially cause further issues with performance over time.

Aside from this, the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer is a solid air fryer for those who regularly grill and air fry their foods, combining the two in one appliance. If you haven’t the space for a BBQ, it offers the same delicious results, with considerably less smoke, and is easy to use for seasoned air fryer users and newbies.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: price and availability

• Price: £199.99 (roughly $262 / AU$419)
• This model is available in the UK, but not US or Australia
• Available from Ninja and third-party retailers

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer has a premium price tag of £199.99 (roughly $262 / AU$419), meaning it’s one of the more affordable options if you have your heart set on a Ninja. It costs slightly less than the Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone Air Fryer and considerably less than the Ninja Double Oven and Ninja Combi Multi-Cooker, so if you’re after Ninja quality under the £200 mark, it’s a great choice.

While this air fryer is on the pricier side, considering it packs in five cooking functions, including the ability to grill, with solid results, it’s worth the price tag for those who plan to utilize its various functions. There’s also a two-year guarantee included for those who register with Ninja, giving you extra peace of mind.

You can buy this air fryer from Ninja or third-party retailers like Amazon and Argos, with the latter likely to offer discounts during sales periods like Black Friday. You’ll find today’s best prices below. Unfortunately, this model isn’t currently available in the US or Australia.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: specifications

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: design

• Modern black and steel-brushed design
• Thermometer probe for meat
• High-maintenance cleaning
• No handle for shaking

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer comes in a black and steel-brushed finish, with its top opening upward (like most grills) to reveal its 5.7L cooking pot inside. In the box, you get two ceramic-coated plates that slot easily into the cooking pot, a grill plate for grilling foods, and a crisper plate for most other cooking functions. On the front is a digital display, with its cooking functions clearly shown below and sizable buttons to adjust its settings.

Despite its capacity, this air fryer isn’t as physically intrusive in my kitchen as others I’ve reviewed. It still takes up a decent chunk of counter room, making it potentially less suited for smaller kitchens but much easier to home than the Philips 5000 Series Dual Basket Steam Air Fryer, for example.

This air fryer is about the right size for a household of four, depending on what you plan to cook, with plenty of room for veggies and smaller items on the crisper plate and the grill plate easily fitting four chicken breasts or burgers. However, when it comes to larger items, like a whole chicken, for example, you may have some difficulty. While the Ninja website claims the appliance can fit a 1.4kg whole chicken in the cooking pot, the crisping plate is recommended for roasting, but this means the chicken needs to be smaller, about 1kg.

Fortunately, I was able to use the included thermometer probe to check my chicken was definitely cooked. The probe jack connects to the appliance, with the other end inserted into the thickest part of your meat, and allows you to set the meat type you’re cooking (and desired doneness for relevant meats).

The appliance then displays your food’s internal temperature and desired temperature and tells you when it reaches that temperature. This is usually a few degrees off the actual temperature the meat should be, as the air fryer tells you to rest the meat and counts down the resting time, too. The guidance on this is pretty thorough in the user manual – and on pretty much everything, in fact – and meant my meat always (internally, at least) was cooked to perfection.

That thorough user manual also comes with instructions on how to clean the air fryer and its attachments – a pretty high-maintenance affair. Ninja recommends hand washing the plates and splatter guard, understandably, after each use. The company even provides you with a cleaning brush with a scraper to help. While handwashing the cooking pot and crisping plate is pretty painless, I found cleaning the ceramic-coated grill plate and splatter guard a challenge (even with the included brush). Tough residue eventually came off the grill plate’s many crevices with some elbow grease and soaking, but despite following the instructions and cleaning the splatter guard after every cook, during my week of testing, more and more grease built up on it.

I thoroughly cleaned it after each cook and even followed the deep cleaning instructions, boiling it in a pot, but that tough grease did not come off, and some had even made its way behind the splatter guard. The instructions mostly focus on cleaning the detachable parts rather than the appliance itself, so I tried wiping it off with a cloth to no avail. The problem is that while the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer is largely smokeless, the tough grease started to cause more smoke, and I could not get it off following the included instructions. Over time, this could become a larger issue. So, for optimal performance, you need to be very thorough in your cleaning of each nook and cranny.

This isn’t the only design issue I had with this appliance. In addition to its high-level maintenance, the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer lacks a handle for its cooking pot, making shaking foods more difficult. Many competitors offer a heat-proof handle to grab, so you can easily shake veggies, chips, and other food items, but the Ninja 5-in-1 only has slightly protruding edges on its cooking pot for this, meaning you need to pick up the whole pot and shake it. This is tricky because you need to lift the 5.7L pot and try and shake its contents evenly, but also because those contents are hot. It’s an addition that could have made air-frying certain foods much more convenient.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: performance

• Air frying results are inconsistent
• Baking, dehydrating, roasting, and grilling are excellent
• Great recipes in inspiration booklet
• Quality-of-life features like automatic preheat function

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer has five cooking functions: grilling, air frying, baking, dehydrating, and roasting.

The grill feature is by far the highlight, with the included inspiration booklet offering recipes to help you utilize the feature, alongside tips and recipes for marinades, seasonings, and more. To kick off my testing, I tried one of the booklet’s kickstarter recipes: barbecue chicken breasts.

The recipe required frozen chicken breasts, with the cooking time set to take about 25 minutes, which I was a bit skeptical about. However, after 25 minutes and several bastings, I had perfectly cooked BBQ chicken fillets that were sticky and smoky on the outside but succulent inside. This doesn’t account for the seven-minute preheat time, with the appliance automatically preheating on most functions. If you’re in the no-preheat club, have no fear, as there’s a button to skip this if you want to.

Burgers provided the same consistent results, but when the appliance chirped to let me know to flip the burgers halfway through cooking, it didn’t give me much time to do so as the time continued to tick on. Frustratingly, this meant the cooking time ended, and the resting timer began, but the burgers weren’t done, and I had to reprogram the grill to finish them off as I couldn’t easily add on a few extra minutes. To ensure they were cooked, I inserted the probe and set the function to beef and ‘medium well’, which allowed me to save my food.

While I usually have a control chicken wing rub I use for tests, I decided to use the Everyday Spice rub laid out in Ninja’s booklet. After following the booklet’s advice of waiting 30 minutes before grilling and checking the food guidelines, I added my wings to the grill. While I followed the recommended time and temperature Ninja gave for chicken wings, mine came out quite overdone on the outside but perfectly cooked and tasty inside.

Again, when cooking any meats in this appliance, I highly recommend utilizing the probe more than the food time guidelines, as it’s a safety net if your food appears to be overdone on the outside, but you don’t want to pull it out in case it’s not cooked inside.

It’s not just meats this grill provides solid results for, either. Following another of Ninja’s recipes, I made flatbreads for the first time and cooked them to perfection, each taking only two minutes on the preheated grill.

These high-quality results were pretty consistent across the appliance’s functions, as I perfectly dehydrated my leftover flatbread parsley in four hours, baked tasty lemon and blueberry muffins, and roasted my aforementioned harissa chicken with (relative) ease, so it was juicy inside and slightly crispy outside.

The only issue I had with the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer’s performance was its air fryer function. I will caveat this by saying a lot of air fryers require some experimentation for optimal results, and food guidelines are helpful but not always 100% accurate. Ninja acknowledges this in a way, noting in its air-frying food guidelines section that its times are a guide, and you need to adjust to your preference, check your food frequently, and shake or toss it. I kept this in mind when testing carrots, courgettes, frozen fries, and fresh fries, and regularly checked on and shook my with some overdone and some underdone. For example, many of my carrots had burnt edges and were almost roasted after roughly 15 minutes, while others were underdone.

Considering this is a premium air fryer, these results were disappointing, especially after the brilliant results of the other functions. Like many air fryers, it may take some trial and error to get optimal results with this function, but if you want an appliance that air fries consistently well off the bat, this may not be the appliance for you.

Should you buy the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer?

Buy it if

Don’t buy it if

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: also consider

Not certain that the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer is right for you? Here are two other options you might like to consider.

How I tested the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer?

I used the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer for a week, cooking a wide variety of foods including fries, chicken wings, fresh vegetables, and muffins. I tested all the air fryer’s various modes and cleaned the air fryer in line with the instructions provided in the manual. For more details, see how we test.

First reviewed March 2025.