by David Redmond
If you listen to our Talking Technology podcast with V I Labs, you’ll know that
I recently purchased the new accessible Talking air fryer from Cobolt.
I’ve now had some time to use it on a few occasions, and I’m generally quite
happy with it. Is it mind-blowing? No, but is it really good at doing what it
says on the tin? Yes, it absolutely is.
What is this Talking Air Fryer?
The Cobolt Talking Air Fryer has a 4-liter capacity and has a cylindrical
shape. It’s compact and has just one drawer, with 5 raised circles on the
front. Those circles are touch surfaces, that you use to control the device.
The Air Fryer speaks information like the set duration and temperature and
counts down as your food cooks. You get helpful reminders to rearrange your
food at the halfway mark, and there’s a loud beep at the end to let you know
things are complete.
A fryer temperature high message plays regularly for a bit after cooking is
complete, but that eventually stops too.
It’s a typical Air Fryer really, with the added advantage of having speech to
aid those who are visually impaired or blind.
Is the Cobolt Talking Air Fryer any good?
In my view, this is a very solid product. It works as you’d expect, and I
haven’t had any issues with it. It’s a small Air Fryer so isn’t really ideal
for families I would argue, but for a single person or even a couple, it would
probably get you by.
The speech is clear, and I personally didn’t find it too annoying even though
it does talk a lot. I do find the fryer temperature high warnings overkill a
bit, but I inevitably just plug the device out by this point anyway.
I wasn’t immediately happy with the lack of physical buttons. I still think the
use of real buttons would have been preferable, but I didn’t find
touch-sensitive but-tons too bad in reality.
I’m conscious that some people may have limited dexterity and I don’t know if
this is the perfect Air Fryer for them, but for me, as someone with sight loss,
the touch-sensitive buttons worked okay.
The product isn’t perfect.
When unboxing the Air Fryer on the podcast I mentioned that I found the
toggling function of the temperature and duration buttons really weird.
Basically, every 5 seconds the Air Fryers buttons for adjusting the temperature
and duration swap their function. So, let’s say you press the button to
increase time, you might instead hear 200 degrees, in which case you have to
wait five seconds, so the button goes back to adjusting the time. This is
really stupid, and I do still find it quite annoying.
It slows you right down and is just one of those quality-of-life things that
bugs me a bit.
I wish the sound to indicate that everything was complete was a bit less harsh,
it’s quite an annoying beep and is kind of irritating, but that’s only a small
detail, I guess.
Overall while the product could be improved, I can honestly still say it’s a
good product. Sure, there is room for upgrades to version two, or even with a
software revision, but with that said I do really like the product.
How much does it cost?
This is one of the great things about the Cobolt Talking Air Fryer. It’s
specialist tech but it does not come with the specialist tech price.
The device cost £99, which really isn’t too bad.
Now I did get caught a bit as I did have to pay customs on the shipment to
Ireland, so here’s how it all worked out for me.
The Product itself was £99.95. Shipping to Ireland was £17.15, so my total bill
from Cobolt came in at £117.10. In euro that’s €136.64. I then had to pay
customs of €31.11, so my total cost all in was €167.75.
To me, I honestly don’t think that’s too bad. Cobolt clearly isn’t being
exploitative with pricing here, and it’s not their fault I got stuck with a
customs bill.
I do wish the order process were a bit smoother as I did have to place the
order by phone. Maybe some distributor will offer it online in Ireland someday,
but for now that’s where we stand.
Conclusion
The Cobolt Talking Air fryer is in my view a strong product. There are
absolutely things I’d like to improve in future, but I’ve got to hand it to
Cobolt here.
If you don’t care about apps, and just want to get an accessible Air Fryer with
speech, it’s hard to go wrong with this option.
Well done to everyone involved in this project, they clearly set out to launch
a simple accessible product, and in my view, they’ve mostly succeeded.
Vision Ireland Technology News.
