Yes, exactly. Problem being that it does not fry with air, but with the oil that you need to put in it anyway to fry your chips. That's the thing to be debunked, that air can not fry anything and to fry you need oil or grease. Seems that almost everybody is blindly believing to the marketing name instead of actually realising that the item is still frying with oil. The oil that they put in it. C'mon.

I don't understand. Is anybody actually confused by this? It is just a word.

Do you get bothered by recipes that have you drizzle oil on vegetables and then roast them?

It's about being correct.

Almost none of the terms we use are "correct" in some absolute sense.

No queen has ever slept in my queen sized bed, nor am I aware of any rectangularly shaped queens. My airpods aren't made of air. When we combine words or even parts of words we don't produce meaning by simply summing the meaning of the parts.

Absolutely zero harm is caused by calling something an "air fryer" rather than a "countertop convection oven", especially since "air fryer" more easily conveys the idea that you can cook things like french fries in one reasonably effectively without deep frying in oil.

Oh, I agree with you. People just love being technically correct (the best kind of correct) on the internet for some reason. Is an air fryer actually a convection oven, yes, but do I care, no.

Yea everyone knows how they work, you aren't lifting the veil here. But as other comments point out, air fryers are actually very similar to ovens. You seem to be confused that the word "fryer" means that they need oil. Oil is optional, just like in an oven. Would you call oven cooked chicken "fried" because it was basted in olive oil? The same chicken can be air-fried, basted or not. Even then, basted chicken, and basted potato chips, use far less oil than an oil fryer. This has some health benefit, it's also way more convenient.

Apart from being clever marketing, I believe they use the word "fryer" to describe the immersion in a very evenly and highly heated fluid, in this case air. While not very different from a fan-forced oven, the design of a small chamber with a vented basket and high air circulation does create a more uniform thermal environment over the entire surface area of the food, than the usual convection oven with a flat tray.