Air fryers are the new Dyson. Everyone wants one. Even those who have never set foot in their kitchen seem to believe air fryers are magical cubes that will automatically make their food taste like it came from a restaurant.
The appeal is easy to understand. They promise crisp food with little or no oil, take up less space than an OTG oven, and can turn a handful of potatoes into something resembling fries without much effort. For a certain kind of home cook, they have become almost indispensable.
LUMA by EDT arrives with a proposition that makes it hard to ignore: instead of the usual metal non-stick coated basket, there is a thick, transparent glass bowl. You can actually watch your food cook. It is an unusually handsome appliance, the sort of thing that does not immediately make you want to hide it inside a cabinet.
I spent some time cooking with it, putting it to test on everyday snacks and things that required a little more attention. The results were mostly good, though getting there was sometimes a matter of figuring out how LUMA wanted to be used.
Luma by EDT
Despite the substantial glass, non-toxic bowl, LUMA does not take up an enormous amount of counter space. The dual-bowl model measures about 29.2cm by 23.8cm by 28.2cm high, with the 4.5-litre and 2.5-litre bowls sharing the same heating unit. For comparison, a 4.1-litre Philips Airfryer measures about 36cm by 26.4cm by 29.5cm. LUMA is, in fact, more compact on the counter. The difference is in the weight: at 6kg, it is considerably heavier than the 4.5kg Philips.
So while it does not need a sprawling kitchen counter, I would still give it a permanent spot if possible. Moving the unit around becomes tiresome, particularly when the second glass bowl also needs somewhere to live.
Trial mechanics
The first thing I made in it was a tofu stir-fry with peppers, which seemed like a reasonable place to start. I tossed cubes of tofu with sliced peppers, a little oil and seasoning, and let LUMA do the work. There was no complicated recipe to follow and, importantly, nothing that needed babysitting over a pan. I used the steel wire rack the air fryer came with so the tofu can crisp on every surface. It is key to grease the wire rack so the tofu does not stick to it, and that is a lesson I learnt the hard way.
When I started cooking more, I realised the the mechanics deserved a little attention. LUMA’s heating element sits in the lid, so the heat is concentrated from above. Food can brown and burn at a faster rate if left in at higher temperatures or longer period of time. So for dishes that require no charring or burning, keeping an eye on the temperature, using the taller bowl and a quick shake midway makes a difference.
In practice, this is where things become slightly less seamless. The glass bowl is thick and surprisingly heavy. The lid housing the heating element has small grooves on the sides to hold and lift, but still gets hot and is equally heavy. This becomes more noticeable when you are cooking something that needs to be checked more than once.
Luma by EDT
What begins as a simple instruction (shake halfway through) can mean lifting the lid, setting it somewhere, getting a firm grip on the glass bowl and putting everything back together. With a little practice, it becomes routine, but it is one of those small inconveniences that adds up over time especially in small Indian kitchens that already have limited counter space.
I also used LUMA to make roasted tomato soup, which was perhaps one of the more unexpected things to come out of it. I roasted tomatoes, garlic and onions until they softened and picked up some colour, then blended everything into a soup. The roasting brought out a deeper, sweeter flavour than simply cooking the tomatoes on the stove would have.
Baking is another matter of adjusting expectations, mostly because of space. A regular cake tin may not fit comfortably inside the bowl, so if baking is going to be part of your LUMA routine, you may find yourself looking for smaller tins that fit the dimensions.
The air fryer is particularly well suited to small-batch baking. If you are using it to bake a mug cake, a couple of cookies or a small portion of brownies for one or two people, that can actually be an advantage. There is something rather satisfying about being able to bake just enough to satiate cravings without firing up a full-sized oven.
LUMA is perhaps best understood as an appliance that rewards a little familiarity, and once you get there, it becomes easy to see where it fits into everyday cooking. For smaller households, particularly those who are cautious about cooking with teflon, the LUMA can be a useful addition to the kitchen.
EDT’s LUMA air fryer is avaiable online on their website edtworld.com and on Amazon at ₹11,998 for the dual bowl setup and ₹8,999 for the single bowl setup.
Published – August 31, 2026 05:27 pm IST
