Expert’s Rating
Pros
- 8-litre capacity
- Alerts to phone when food is ready
- Easy to use
Cons
- Doesn’t produce reliably crispy food
- Smart recipes are hit and miss
- Pricey
Our Verdict
The GeoSmartPro is capacious and easy to use. But it’s expensive and what you’re paying a premium for is the app – particularly its smart recipes, which we found disappointing.
Price When Reviewed
$216.66
Best Prices Today: GeoSmartPro smart air fryer
What can you add to an air fryer to encourage people to award it some of their limited kitchen countertop space? Some manufacturers opt for further cooking methods, such as a rotisserie function or grill. But that’s not the only way to go.
When I was testing the GeoSmartPro, I mentioned to a colleague that I was having issues getting an air fryer connected to my Wi-Fi.
Right away, he responded: “Why does an air fryer need to be online?”
It’s a reasonable question, and one reasonable answer would be: it doesn’t. But it does create a point of difference between one appliance and rival models. Less cynically, it opens up some new possibilities, such as remote operation, cooking alerts delivered to your phone, and in-app recipes with automatic cooking times.
The GeoSmartPro isn’t the first smart air fryer we’ve tested. We’ve also looked at the more budget-friendly models, Xiaomi’s Mi Smart Air Fryer and the Proscenic T21. But to get the GeoSmartPro’s smart features, you’ll need to pay more. So, are they worth it?
Design & Build
- 8-litre capacity
- Touchscreen display
- Shake alert but no keep warm setting
It’s odd to think that an appliance as modern as an air fryer can have a traditional form, but it does. Most original air fryers were cylindrical, with a single, pull-out drawer and that’s pretty close to the GeoSmartPro’s build.
It’s a squat, sizeable (39.9 x 30 x 30.5cm) appliance, with rounded-off edges and a bright LED display at the front, above a single-drawer cooking space. The door has a glass panel and the oven has an interior light, so you can see how your food is getting on.
It only comes in black, like most air fryers, which means it’ll feel like a hulking countertop presence.
The GeoSmartPro has an 8-litre capacity, meaning that you can use it to make a family-sized portion of food. You can also buy accessories for it, including silicone baking cups and a liner, and baking trays for cakes, although these add-ons can get pricey.
Inside, it’s non-stick coated and comes with an aerated tray for the base, which can also be placed higher in the drawer for smaller portions of food. Set-up is easy. You’ll just need to attach the drawer handle and wash and dry the interior of the cooking compartment. The basket and tray are dishwasher-safe, but as with all air fryers, we wouldn’t recommend putting them in the dishwasher too often.
It’s controlled via a touchscreen display with keys for time/temperature (which you then adjust via the + and – buttons), start/pause, power and a menu key. There are eight cooking preset icons but you can’t choose them by pressing on the icon itself – you’ll need to use the menu button and scroll through, which is not quite as handy.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
It doesn’t have a keep warm function but if your food needs to be turned over or shaken up halfway through, it does beep to alert you to this.
If you have the smart features enabled, it’ll even send a text alert to your phone, although it’s verbose and weirdly translated: “Turn the pot to remind. The food has been cooked for a period of time. Please confirm the cooking status of the food in time and turn the pot / side of the food reasonably.”
Emma Rowley / Foundry
The alert could as easily have read: “Shake”.
The air fryer has a loud beep whenever you press a button, or to let you know when to shake or turn your food, and a series of five beeps when the cooking programme has finished. The beeps are loud enough to be heard from the next room, which is good news when you’re in the next room – much less so when you’re standing right next to the appliance. There’s no option to mute it.
App, Performance & Features
- Eight presets for different food types
- In-app recipes can be hit or miss
- Doesn’t produce the crispiest results
Many air fryers have presets such as bake, roast, air fry, dehydrate – useful, as they’re focused on the cooking result you want. The GeoSmartPro doesn’t. Instead, its presets specify food types: chicken leg, steak, fish, cake, pizza, sausage, chips, bacon.
Things start to fall apart, though, when you realise that some of the recipes don’t involve an air fryer at all, like the one for wild mushroom gravy
The problem is deciding on a setting if you want to cook something that’s not specified on the above list. There’s some help in the manual, which has a table of suggested cooking times and temperatures, but it’s pretty vague and not very comprehensive.
This is where its smart recipe feature should, in theory, come in handy.
The GeoSmartPro app contains 60 from-scratch recipes you can browse and follow. Most are simple dishes such as baked potatoes, grilled cheese, egg toast or pita bread pizza, but a few are more complicated, like mixed berry turnovers.
Once you’ve prepared the dish according to instructions, put it in the air fryer. Then press ‘Start’ at the foot of the recipe page in the app, and the correct cooking time and temperature will be chosen.
Nice in theory. Things start to fall apart, though, when you realise that some of the recipes don’t involve an air fryer at all, like the one for wild mushroom gravy, which requires use of a skillet, whisk and hob – but no air fryer. Mmm. Air fryer gravy. It’s mind-boggling that it’s there at all.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Obviously, we’d expect to see included recipes optimised for air fryer cooking. That’s why it’s also curious that some of the recipes specify that you pre-heat the air fryer – when the GeoSmartPro has no pre-heat setting.
The smart features don’t feel well thought out or integrated usefully into its functionality. And the recipes themselves are hit and miss.
The first smart recipe I tried was for potato wedges – and it exposed a key problem with the air fryer. I prepared them precisely according to the recipe and started the air fryer using the app. When they’d finished cooking, they seemed perfectly done – but they weren’t crispy at all. The recipe suggested that for crispier results, you should add another 5-10 minutes of cooking time. So I did. Five minutes later, the resultant wedges were blistered and slightly overdone – and still not crispy.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
The next smart recipe I tried was for roast potatoes, again using the suggested time and temperature. The result was the same. They were nicely cooked, but not crunchy. In an effort to crisp them up, I cooked them for longer and ended up with another non-delicious waste of potato.
Emma Rowley / Foundry
But if you’re cooking food with less moisture content, like a cheese toastie, you’ll get crispy, crunchy results. Typical beige air fryer food like nuggets and fries come out pretty well too. Just don’t rely on the smart recipes.
Price & Availability
The real issue with the GeoSmartPro air fryer is its price. With an RRP of £189.99 and a day-to-day price of £169.99, it’s one of the more expensive air fryers we’ve tested. You can buy it from Amazon, or direct from GeoSmartPro.
While it has a large, 8-litre capacity, it’s not anywhere near as huge as an air fryer oven, nor is it multifunctional, nor is it dual-drawer – as the pricier models we’ve tested are. To see air fryers with these features and all of our top recommendations, have a look at our round-up of the best air fryers we’ve tested.
Should you buy the GeoSmartPro air fryer?
The GeoSmartPro is capacious and easy to use. Its smart features can also prove handy if you’d like alerts to your phone when your food is cooked, rather than listening out for a distant beep, or you want the option to set the air fryer going remotely. Bear in mind, though, that remote operation is limited in its usefulness by the fact that you need to put the food into the appliance in the first place – and it’s not a good idea to leave most things at room temperature for very long.
That leaves the smart recipes, which aren’t really as smart as they should be.
Altogether, it’s a bit too expensive for what it offers, and if you want one, we’d recommend waiting for the price to come down before you buy.