I have a full size convection oven. I also have a really fancy countertop convection oven I got last year for like $120. I rarely use the regular oven anymore.

Why?

For one thing my full size oven is gas, and I’d rather use electric. My stove and furnace are the only gas appliances I have, but I try to run them as little as possible. For another, I live alone and often cook smaller portions. I don’t need to heat up that much oven for just a burrito or whatever, that’s wasteful.

And finally, my countertop convection oven has a suite of settings and features my standing oven can’t remotely compete with, and it can still cook something the size of whole chicken/roast and a side dish, just like my big oven. For example it has a meat probe that automatically shuts off the heating element when the internal temp reaches whatever it needs to be for the meat type and cook level you want. Perfect every time, no hassle, no guesswork, no adhd memory wipe leading to overcooked food. It also has a bunch of preset modes, and any changes I make to them get saved in the memory until I change or reset them, so when I find something cooks better at a different temp or time I can just save that on a setting I don’t use, and have to ready for next time.

It’s not that I don’t know how to use my oven. I do. I bought it myself 12 years ago and know exactly what it’s capable of with its luxurious 6 buttons and basic features. That’s why I wanted the countertop model.

My slow cooker is the same sort of thing - it’s an 8-in-1 pressure cooker, rice cooker, slow cooker, yogurt maker, etc. it does a lot of things and I use it frequently. It’s worth the hype.

Alright, now you tell me how I'm supposed to put a fan of my oven and how I'm supposed to make it preheat 10 times faster.

I'm not knowledgeable about air fryers, so I can't really comment there, but slow cookers / crock pots are fantastic and in my opinion, should be in everyone's kitchen. Maybe I'm biased, though, because I really like soups and stews and sauces and things, which they're great for. Not things you'd cook in an oven, and my stovetop at least doesn't have any kind of timer mechanism.

I find that my air fryer leaves things much crisper than a regular oven, even one with a fan (which my current one doesn’t have and I’m not replacing right now because I want to redo the entire soviet era kitchen with modern furniture and integrated appliances). It also heats up to 200 degrees in under a minute vs nearly 10 minutes for the big oven.

It was a great convenience buy. I barely use the big oven now, only for things that don’t fit in the air fryer. And for some things I use the wood-powered oven instead.

Why do people get so hyped about a smaller and more limited specialized version of the thing they already have?

Because they're better and/or easier to do specific things with.

I haven't seen an electric oven without a fan or without a timer in my lifetime

I'm 42 and have never had one WITH a timer, but congratulations, I guess 🤷

Fact is that some of us lack certain resources such as energy, attention stamina, or time to make everything using standard equipment.

I for one know I'd never get my super healthy post-workout smoothie made without my nutribullet, or eat much cauliflower and skinless chicken breast (when I can afford it) without my air fryer.

I support avoiding redundancy in general, but there are advantages to those that make them worth it if you get enough of a quality of life improvement for them.

I use my air fryer basically every day and really appreciate that it can finish cooking some things before my oven would even finish preheating. Cleaning is also much easier, I imagine it uses considerably less energy, and it tends to cook stuff more evenly in my experience. And it isn't some fancy product, just the cheapest one I could find when I decided to try one out years ago. I've used my oven for a couple of things that wouldn't fit in the air fryer over the years, but otherwise it's basically been reduced to a stovetop with a clock.

I also use it for things I would otherwise microwave because it cooks it much better even if i have to deal with a short preheat. So nowadays my microwave is just left unplugged until I need a quick injection of heat, like for freezer-burnt ice cream or melting some butter or cheese.

I don't think I'd get enough use out of a slow cooker to commit to the space, but I imagine it's a similar story for people that would use it often. Same deal for like a rice cooker or ice cream machine. Also, my family was able to get an old toaster oven for cheap after our real oven broke, so these appliances can offer a cheaper alternative too.