NuWave Brio 3Q (3-Quart) Digital Air Fryer Review

NuWave Brio 3Q is one of the cheaper digital air fryers. The model name “3Q” is abbreviation of basket capacity which is 3 quarts or 2.84 liters. It’s not quite among the best selling models but it’s popular enough for be considered relevant so how does it compare to competition?

Cooking

NuWave Brio 3Q works in temperature range from 100°F to 400°F and has 6 presets for fries, frozen fries, nuggets, steak, poutry and fish. You will also find recommended settings for each type of food in manual however you shouldn’t necessarily follow them religiously as often they don’t cook optimally.

Just like other air fryers NuWave Brio 3Q also has preheat function. Most of the time you will want to use it as it makes food crispier and often helps it to cook more consistently.

Actual cooking performance varies. Some foods turn out decent (like meat, poultry or fish) whereas other are mediocre (like onion rings and sometimes fries depending on type). It cooks fine for the most part but taste wise it’s not among the best models in its class. It does have stainless steel meshed basket net which helps food to be cooked more evenly so that’s a pretty cool feature many don’t have. On the downside it can be a bit hard to clean if it’s dried up with grease.

Controls

NuWave Brio 3Q has 6 buttons excluding those for time and temperature adjustment: “On/Off”, “Reheat” (warms food by reheating it at 360°F for 4 minutes), “Watts”, “Menu”, “Preheat” and “Start/Pause”. All of them are self-explanatory with exceptions of “Watts” button which basically switches between 3 wattage settings – 600, 900 and 1,300. It’s somewhat useless function as most won’t will only run it on default 1,300 Watt settings, especially since all presets use it by default.

Quality

Overall quality of NuWave Brio 3Q isn’t great but it’s reasonable considering it’s inexpensive. Materials are cheap and it feels a bit flimsy. Even though most of the consumer feedback is positive there’s still somewhat concerning amount of complaints about it stopping working properly in less than 1 year of use. This doesn’t seem to be an issue with most units but it does seem to be less reliable than other models generally are.

Conclusions

NuWave Brio 3Q is kinda mediocre air fryer. It’s not a bad one but there are alternatives that are better made and can cook some of the foods a bit tastier for similar pricing so it’s tough to recommend. However it shouldn’t be left out that most consumers seem to love their Brio Q3 so perhaps we have missed something vital about it.

NuWave Brio 3Q Digital Air Fryer Specifications:

• Voltage: 120V
• Frequency: 60Hz
• Power supply: 1,300 Watts (default)
• Basket capacity: 3 quarts / 2.84 liters
• Model Number: 36011