Soufull XL by Cozyna (5.8QT) with airfryer Cookbook (Over 50 Recipes) and a Basket Divider

The thing simply works, is safe and easy to use, and cleans up well. The nearly 1 gal volume takes a little longer to heat up than in one of the "fry baby" type fryers, but the larger amount of oil helps in retaining heat between batches, so it goes back up to temperature quickly as well as allowing for larger batches.CLEANING: It does pretty much take up the entire dish washer, but that's for everything but the main heating element. Nice to do that instead of dealing with a greasy mess in the sink.AUTOFILTER: This is really what makes this fryer worth buying! No handling hot oil, the storage container works quite well, and the filter does a good job. We are getting a lot of batches with the oil, better than when we had to fiddle with it manually with an old fryer we used to use.OIL LEAKAGE: None at all. Ever. We took the advice from others here in the comments and left the oil fill just a bit short of the "max" fill line (with the basket in), and it works like a charm. Set it and forget it until later. Since it holds less than a gallon, if you buy your oil in a gallon jig, simply add some of the used oil back in the each time you fill it to replace what got absorbed by the cooked food. By the time the entire gallon container is empty, the oil is ready to be thrown our for a fresh new gallon anyway.THERMOMETER: For those concerned about the thermometer setting not being digital, the dial settings are within 5 degrees of the oil temperature, and on top of that, there are "clicks" that give you stops along the way that measure to be accurate all the way up to the top stop of 375.USAGE: We are using it more than our old fryer because filtering and cleaning are easy, and we don't have to make tiny batches nor wait long between batches. The food tastes great too. We use peanut oil - we bought it in one gallon jugs, perfect for this - just don't dump all of it in the fryer (see oil leakage below). One annoyance is that like any other fryer, there is a little "oily steam" that gets past the filter. Use this on your stovetop where the hood can draw it away, or (what we do), plug it in on the patio where the grill is (weather permitting).All summed, this is a good fryer for people who want to deep fry fairly often at home.

I almost didn't buy this fryer because of all the people who said the oil had leaked all over their counters instead of going into the storage container, but a couple of reviewers seemed to have figured out what the exact problem was, so I took a chance. I'm so glad I did, because the food I've produced so far has been incredible (French fries, hush puppies, and veggie tempura). If I were rating this fryer only on the food and the ease of cleaning, I would absolutely give it five stars.However, I had to take off a star because of the MAJOR piece of information the company left out of the instructions. The oil storage container has a screw-on cap (the one you take off to pour the oil back into the fryer). If you take this cap off before draining the oil, everything goes perfectly. I've drained the oil twice now, and not a single drop has leaked. However (and I tested this out with water), if you leave that cap on while draining the oil, the air inside of the container has no place to go, and the oil would bubble up and go everywhere except into the container.Ideally the company would solve this by changing the design slightly so that the container wouldn't even fit under the fryer if the cap were in place, or at least change the instructions to highlight this, but in lieu of doing either of those things they should at least ship the unit with a piece of paper marked "IMPORTANT" in huge red letters, and explaining this important step.Other than that huge complaint, I have a couple of small ones that wouldn't stop me from buying this again. For one, the light that tells you whether or not the heating element is on is extremely hard to see. It's hiding behind the temperature dial, and I think you'd have to be about 12 feet tall to see it clearly. Even if I look at it from the side, I still have to cup my hand around it to tell whether the light is on or off - it just doesn't get bright enough.My second complaint is that the oil doesn't actually get to the highest temperature listed on the dial, 374 degrees. I tested it with my own thermometer, and it never got above 340. However, that was hot enough to make delicious, non-soggy food, so I'm still satisfied. But if you'll be frying things that need to be at a very specific temperature or higher than 340 degrees, this might not be the fryer for you.If you're nervous about the oil leak issue, do what I did the first time. Put the fryer on a rimmed baking sheet to catch any leaks, and don't turn the dial to the drain setting until the oil is cool. It won't drain when the oil is too hot anyway, but if you wait until the oil is cool then you can watch it drain immediately. However, if you follow the very important instruction of leaving the cap off, you won't have a problem.Pros:-Drains and filters the oil for you-Comes with a storage container for the oil that fits easily in the fridge-Just about all parts go in the dishwasher-Fries a decent amount of food without needing a ton of oil-Basket can be raised and lowered without taking the lid off, reducing the chance of oil splatterCons:-Bad design and directions make it VERY easy to accidentally drain oil all over your counter-Thermostat is not accurate-Oil does not get as hot as it's supposed to-The unit is very big. Putting it in the dishwasher pretty much takes up all the space - it needs its own loadStill, despite the cons, I highly recommend this fryer, based on my results.