The which arrived from Banggood is interesting for several reasons – some of them nothing to do with cooking. Why use an air-fryer at all? Well, convenience, health, safety? Will that do for starters? Any why this one?
This nice-looking hot air fryer came complete with Chinese-only manual – and what I can only assume is a Chinese plug, but thankfully, for reasons well beyond me, Chinese manuals always seems to have little bits of English in it – like numbers for example.
After I opened the box only to see a plug I’ve never come across before, I grabbed the manual and was pondering cutting my wrists when I noted “220v – 50hz 1400W” and “2.5L” followed by “0-60” and some Chinese symbol which turned out to be the manual heat timer range 0-60 minutes. But before I jump ahead, lets quickly cover plug replacement.
Thanks to the above confirmation that the device does actually run on 220v (handy to know) I went off to my spares cupboard and pulled out some pliers and a standard Southern European 16A plug (the light-coloured plug in the photos) – and yes these do have an earth, no they do not distinquish live and neutral (the Chinese plugs, it seems, do).
The next line I could read in the manual included “80-200°C” followed by heiroglyphics. For any American friends looking in – sorry – they don’t offer a °F option. The Chinese must default to °C just as we do in Europe. Actually, now I think about it the full spec is in English on the Banggood site.
Who makes this and how much does it cost? Well, that depends who’s AD you read, Banggood say “Xiaomi Youpin” but Amazon say “Yaeele Liven G-5” and Amazon don’t actually sell the product, stating “available through these sellers – please note this is LIVENGRAND not DIGGOO” – possibly I’m not the only one with translation issues? Anyway, that’s enough about Amazon as their supplier claimed the price is €363 with free shipping. Good luck with that.
In case all of that isn’t confusing enough, the packaging mentions “Oasis series” and to be fair it does say that on the product box. The frier comes in dark green (Jasper) with black top while the handle and logo are in gold.
The Bangood pricing depends on where you live. In Spain it can be bought from Spain for €92.62 or from CZ for €75.78 – both 1 week delivery, both pennies for postage. If you are in the UK, you can order from China (NOT Europe) for £93.85 with free shipping if you will settle for 7-11 weeks or £7 for 3 weeks delivery.
Operation
Thankfully, operating the G-5 fryer is WAY easier than figuring out the price. The display is easy to read and everything is controlled by the 5 buttons along the control panel bottom. The fryer has eight food presets and a (leftmost) menu button to switch between them. There is also a manual option (second button).
My wife decided go in at the deep end by cooking a 2-person piece of belly pork (sprayed with oil from our handy to prevent drying out while cooking) so she chose manual setting – as the pork required 25 minutes at 200°C – well beyond the time allowed on the meat preset. The centre power button is multi-function. Press to turn on (which turns on the FAN and display) – press again to switch on the heat (and heat indicator top right of the temperature/timer display), long press to turn off the unit.
The heat indicator will of course alternate on and off all by itself throughout the cooking process, depending on heat settings. When controlling the fryer manually there are also (on the right) + and – buttons to adjust temperature or time.
Twenty-five minutes later and my wife was enjoying the perfectly-cooked belly pork as I went off to do this write-up. Cleanup is (apparently) easy, the single supplied tray (but not the outer drawer) will go in the dishwasher.
We would recommend however cleaning the DRAWER simply with warm, soapy water. Job done.
Well, this was easy (compared to building then writing about laser engravers), it would have been easier still with an English-language manual but then after the first few minutes we managed regardless – perhaps supplying a little card with a QR-code and multi-lingual online instructions might be the way forward?
At 2.5L capacity, this Liven Air Fryer unit is much handier for my wife and I than the monster 5L air fryer we’ve been using up to now. I like it. Chips, anyone? Toast? Ok, I’ll admit I didn’t think of toast until now 🙂