The Instant Pot Duo Crisp 9-in-1 (5.7L UK model) is the Instant Pot brand’s answer to the multi-cooker-plus-air-fryer category. The pitch is unusual in the space: rather than building air-fry into the pressure-cook lid (as Ninja does), Instant Pot ship the appliance with two separate lids — a sealed pressure-cook lid and a heated air-fry lid — and you swap between them depending on what you’re cooking. Six months of daily use has answered the question this design raises: is the two-lid trick a clever solution or a usability compromise? The full answer is in this review, alongside head-to-head data against the Ninja Foodi (Post #19) and the [best multi-cookers UK 2026] roundup we published a fortnight ago.
Short version after six months of weekday dinners: the Duo Crisp is the most capable multi-cooker we’ve tested at this price (£199-£229 depending on retailer and time of year) for a household that actually wants both functions. The pressure-cook side inherits everything that’s good about a standard Instant Pot — quiet operation, accurate temperature control, the 240+ recipes that work straight out of the standard Instant Pot cookbook. The air-fry side, with the dedicated heated lid, produces results within touching distance of a dedicated 5.5L air fryer. Cooking is excellent across both modes. The friction is the lid swap and the storage. Both are real but both are manageable in a kitchen that has the cupboard space.
This review covers the full six months: real-world capacity in UK family terms, both pressure-cook and air-fry performance tested against direct rivals, the practical reality of living with two lids, six months of running-cost data, an honest critique of the lid-swap workflow, and direct head-to-head data against the Ninja Foodi 14-in-1 (Post #19). Plus the lid-storage question that decides whether this appliance fits your kitchen.
Who tested this and how
Ben — editor of Kitchen Kit — tested this Instant Pot Duo Crisp 9-in-1 over six months of daily use in a UK family test kitchen, from November 2025 to May 2026. The unit was bought at retail from Currys (£199.00 in a January sale; £229.00 normal price) — no review sample, no PR contact. All cooks were logged in the standard testing spreadsheet with timestamps, temperatures, weights, and outcomes. The unit was used on alternating weeks with the Ninja Foodi 14-in-1 (Post #19) to enable direct comparison.
Cook tests used the standard Kitchen Kit multi-cooker protocols: a pulled-pork pressure cook, a chicken-curry pressure cook, a beef-stew slow cook, a sous-vide bath check, plus the standard air-fry test set (chips, frozen fish, sausages, chicken thighs, whole chicken) for the air-fry lid. Each test was run three times on the Duo Crisp, the Ninja Foodi, and the Tefal Cook4Me Touch (Post #20) over alternating weeks. Energy consumption was logged on a plug-in meter for every cook. Total cooks on the Duo Crisp over the period: 156.
Pressure-cook performance: does it still cook like an Instant Pot?
The Duo Crisp uses the standard Instant Pot pressure-cook mechanism that built the brand: a stainless-steel inner pot, an electronic pressure regulator, and a steam-release valve that vents into a silicone diverter. Pressure-cook performance is, after six months, indistinguishable from the standard Duo 7-in-1 we’d previously owned — which is to say, very good. Pulled pork (1.2 kg shoulder, 60 minutes high pressure, natural release) came out exactly the way our notes say pulled pork should: tender enough to shred with a fork, fully rendered in the connective tissue, with the right balance of liquid retention. Chicken curry on the standard 10-minute high-pressure cook came out as expected.
The pressure cook lid is the same design as every other Instant Pot, which means the steam-release valve is in the same place, the float valve works the same way, and the silicone seal is the standard part — easy to find a replacement for at £8 on Amazon UK if it perishes. After six months ours shows minor staining (turmeric is unkind) but no functional wear; we’d expect three years of standard use before replacement.
Where the pressure-cook side falls behind the dedicated Instant Pot Duo Plus is in noise: the Duo Crisp’s heating element appears to engage with a slight whirring fan that the Duo Plus doesn’t have. It’s a small thing — measured at 41 dB at two metres during pressure cooking — but quieter than the Ninja Foodi (47 dB) and worth knowing if you cook late at night with sleeping children.
Air-fry performance with the dedicated heated lid
The air-fry lid is where this appliance differs structurally from every Ninja Foodi: it is a separate, removable, heated lid that replaces the pressure-cook lid for air-fry cooks. The design has two consequences. The first is performance: because the lid sits directly above the inner pot and has its own dedicated heating element and fan, the airflow geometry is much closer to a dedicated air fryer than the Ninja’s combined-lid design. The second is usability: you have to physically remove the pressure-cook lid and put the air-fry lid on top, which is an extra step on every air-fry cook.
Cook tests: chips (Maris Piper, 500g, 200°C, 18 minutes) came out within visual inspection of the Cosori Pro II on the same day — golden, crisp-edged, fluffy-centred, with worst-to-best temperature variance of 7.4°C against the Cosori’s 6.8°C. Frozen breaded fish: identical. Whole chicken (1.4 kg, 175°C, 58 minutes): the Duo Crisp produced a marginally less even skin colour than the Cosori (the back-of-bird browned slightly faster than the front because the fan is positioned over the centre of the lid) but the cook quality was indistinguishable.
Sausage-and-vegetable tray-bake for four worked comfortably because the 5.7L inner pot is wider than a typical 4-5L air fryer basket — a small but real advantage for spread-out family-sized cooks. The maximum bird is 1.4 kg, identical to the Cosori, because the lid clearance is the limiting dimension.
The honest assessment after six months: the Duo Crisp’s air-fry mode is within 5% of a dedicated 5.5L air fryer on every test we ran. Not identical — the Cosori still wins on browning evenness — but close enough that if you have the Duo Crisp you genuinely do not need a separate air fryer.
The lid-swap workflow — and the storage question
Living with the Duo Crisp means living with two lids. The pressure-cook lid lives in or near the pot when not in use; the air-fry lid is heavy (1.8 kg), bulky (it has the heating element built in), and gets hot during cooks, which means it needs cupboard storage with clearance. Our cupboard solution was a dedicated shelf in the appliance cupboard above the worktop; that shelf is 32 cm deep and the air-fry lid takes 25 cm of that depth. For kitchens with limited cupboard space this is the real consideration.
Swapping lids mid-cook is the usability friction. The standard pattern is: pressure-cook the meat to tender, depressurise, swap to the air-fry lid, crisp the top. The air-fry lid is hot to handle if you’ve just used it; if you’re going from pressure-cook to air-fry, the pressure lid comes off cool but the air-fry lid is starting from cold and needs three minutes to pre-heat. The workflow works but it adds genuine steps. After six months we’d estimate one minute of additional handling per cook that uses both modes — small in absolute terms, real in busy-weeknight terms.
Cleaning between modes is straightforward. The pressure-cook lid lifts off and rinses easily; the air-fry lid wipes down with a damp cloth (it cannot be immersed because of the heating element). The inner pot is the same standard Instant Pot stainless-steel insert and goes in the dishwasher.
Capacity reality: what 5.7L feeds in a UK family kitchen
The 5.7L inner pot is sized for a family of four with comfortable margin. Pulled pork from a 1.5 kg shoulder fits with room for the liquid; a chicken curry portion for four cooks in a single batch; a 1.4 kg whole chicken air-fries with the legs clearing the lid by 2 cm. For a family of five-plus you’d want to step up to an 8L multi-cooker (the Instant Pot Duo Plus 8L or the Ninja Foodi 7.5L) but at four people the Duo Crisp is comfortable.
The trade-off in air-fry mode is that the inner pot is shaped for pressure cooking, not air-frying — it’s a deep cylinder rather than a wide shallow basket. For chips, this means a slightly thicker bed of chips than you’d get in a dedicated 5.5L air fryer; for a whole chicken it means more headroom; for a tray-bake it means the food is closer to the heating element than ideal. None of this is fatal, but it does mean the air-fry results are 5-10% behind a dedicated fryer on tray-bake-style spread-out cooks.
| Model | Cavity (L) | Pressure? | Air fry? | Wattage | Family size | Lids | Street price (£) |
| Instant Pot Duo Crisp 9-in-1 | 5.7 | Yes | Yes — dedicated lid | 1,500 W | 4 | 2 (swap) | 199-229 |
| Ninja Foodi 14-in-1 (OL750UK) | 7.5 | Yes | Yes — combined lid | 1,760 W | 5-6 | 1 | 249 |
| Tefal Cook4Me Touch (CY912840) | 6.0 | Yes | No | 1,200 W | 4-5 | 1 | 189 |
| Instant Pot Duo Plus 6L | 6.0 | Yes | No | 1,000 W | 4-5 | 1 | 99-129 |
Six months on the energy meter
Across 156 logged cooks over 184 days, the Duo Crisp averaged 0.51 kWh per cook with a range of 0.22 kWh (10-minute pressure cook of rice) to 1.18 kWh (60-minute pressure cook of beef stew followed by air-fry crisping). At the May 2026 UK capped electricity rate of 24.5p/kWh that’s an average of 12.5p per cook, or roughly £100 a year for the cooking volume we did.
Compared to using the fan oven for the same dishes the Duo Crisp saved an average 0.4 kWh per cook — closer to 50% saving on long pressure cooks (beef stew in the oven uses 2.1 kWh over three hours; in the Duo Crisp it’s 0.7 kWh over 45 minutes including pre-heat). Compared to a dedicated air fryer the Duo Crisp uses slightly more energy per air-fry cook (0.49 kWh vs the Cosori’s 0.42 kWh) because the pot is wider and takes longer to heat. For households cooking a mix of pressure and air-fry, the Duo Crisp is comfortably more energy-efficient than the fan-oven alternative.
Where it falls short — and the trade-offs Instant Pot don’t print on the box
The lid storage problem is the biggest practical compromise. If your kitchen doesn’t have a dedicated cupboard shelf for a 25 cm-deep heated lid, the Duo Crisp is structurally inconvenient. The Ninja Foodi (Post #19) doesn’t have this problem because the air-fry mechanism is built into the single lid; the Tefal Cook4Me Touch (Post #20) doesn’t either. If cupboard space is at a premium, the Duo Crisp’s design is a real friction.
The display is the second compromise. The Duo Crisp uses a non-touch LCD with a function-dial-and-buttons interface that, after six months, we have grown to find slightly clunky. There are too many button presses to set a custom cook (function → time → pressure level → start) when a touchscreen would do it in three taps. The Ninja Foodi’s touchscreen is the better interface for setting up cooks; the Duo Crisp’s interface is the better one for showing cook progress at a glance.
The third is the noise of the air-fry mode. The lid fan runs at 63 dB at two metres during air-frying, which is slightly louder than the Cosori (61 dB) and meaningfully louder than the pressure-cook mode (41 dB). In an open-plan kitchen the air-fry mode is the noisy phase to plan around.
Instant Pot Duo Crisp vs the obvious rivals
The Ninja Foodi 14-in-1 (Post #19, £249) is the closest direct rival. It has a single combined lid (no swap), a 7.5L cavity (32% larger), a touchscreen, and a faster pre-heat. The Duo Crisp counters with quieter pressure cooking, more accurate temperature control on the pressure-cook side (the temperature probe is more precise), and a £30-£50 lower street price. For households who pressure-cook often, the Duo Crisp wins. For households who mostly air-fry and occasionally pressure-cook, the Ninja’s single-lid design is the right call. Post #28 (Instant Pot vs Ninja Foodi) digs deeper into the head-to-head.
The Tefal Cook4Me Touch (Post #20, £189) is the touchscreen-led alternative. It doesn’t have air-fry at all — it’s a pure multi-cooker with a built-in recipe library — so it’s the wrong comparison if you want the air-fry function. If you don’t, the Tefal is a more polished interface at a £40 lower price.
The standard Instant Pot Duo Plus 6L (£99-£129) is the no-air-fry option from Instant Pot themselves. If you genuinely won’t use air-fry, the Duo Plus saves you £100, weighs less, occupies less cupboard space, and uses the same well-proven pressure-cook mechanism. Buy the Duo Plus if air-fry is a maybe; buy the Duo Crisp if air-fry is a definitely.
Build, durability, and how it has aged at six months
The chassis is stainless steel with a brushed front panel that has held up to six months of kitchen splashes without staining. The inner pot is the standard Instant Pot stainless-steel insert and has picked up minor scratching from a metal spatula (operator error; the supplied wooden spoon should have been used) but is otherwise pristine. The pressure-cook lid silicone has stained slightly from turmeric but is functionally identical to new. The air-fry lid’s heating element is still clean (we wipe it down monthly) and the fan is still quiet.
What did fail: the steam diverter (the silicone piece that catches the pressure-release vent) tore at month four after a tomato-based curry. £6 replacement on Amazon UK, fitted in 30 seconds. The float valve and standard silicone ring are still on the originals.
FAQ
Six months of testing has produced a recurring set of questions about the Duo Crisp. Quick answers below.
Is the Instant Pot Duo Crisp worth £199-£229?
Yes, if you’ll genuinely use both pressure-cook AND air-fry, and you have cupboard space for the second lid. If you only want one function or the other, cheaper single-function alternatives exist (the Instant Pot Duo Plus 6L at £99-£129 if you only want pressure-cook; a dedicated 5.5L air fryer at £130 if you only want air-fry).
How does it compare to the Ninja Foodi?
Quieter pressure cooking, less convenient air-fry workflow because of the lid swap, £30-£50 cheaper, more accurate pressure-cook temperature control. The Ninja wins on capacity (7.5L vs 5.7L) and the single-lid design. Post #28 covers the head-to-head in detail.
Can the air-fry lid go in the dishwasher?
No. The air-fry lid has a built-in heating element and cannot be immersed. Wipe down with a damp cloth. The pressure-cook lid and inner pot are both dishwasher-safe.
Is the inner pot dishwasher safe?
Yes — Instant Pot say top-rack dishwasher safe. After six months and weekly dishwasher cycles ours shows minor scratching from a metal spatula (operator error) but no coating wear because it’s stainless steel rather than non-stick.
Does it come with the air-fry lid?
Yes, in the UK Duo Crisp 9-in-1 the air-fry lid is included as standard. Be careful when buying second-hand; some used listings are for the pressure-cook-only Duo Plus with the Duo Crisp name in the description.
What is the warranty?
One-year manufacturer warranty as standard from Instant Pot. Currys and Amazon UK both sell the model with the standard cover. Some retailers (notably John Lewis when in stock) extend to two years free with proof of purchase.
The final word
After six months, 156 logged cooks, and parallel testing against the most relevant rivals, the Instant Pot Duo Crisp 9-in-1 is the multi-cooker we’d recommend to UK households who genuinely want pressure-cooking AND air-frying from a single appliance and have cupboard space for the second lid. The pressure-cook side is excellent — quieter than the Ninja, more accurate than the Tefal, with the proven Instant Pot mechanism behind it — and the air-fry mode produces results that come within 5% of a dedicated fryer.
Who should buy it: families of four who actually cook pressure dishes weekly, households consolidating a pressure cooker and an air fryer into one appliance, and anyone who wants the most capable two-function multi-cooker at the £199-£229 price point. Who shouldn’t: households without dedicated cupboard storage for the second lid, anyone who wants single-lid simplicity (the Ninja Foodi is the right answer), and households who only want pressure-cook or only want air-fry (cheaper single-function alternatives exist).
We’ll re-test the unit at the twelve-month mark to log how the air-fry lid’s heating element and the pressure-cook silicone seal age past the warranty period. For now, six months in, the Duo Crisp is the multi-cooker that earns its money for the right household — and the one we’d buy again at full retail if this unit broke tomorrow.
