For programmers: Air fryers have perfected the race to idle.
For everyone else: Probably, but the insulation may not matter as much. Heating up a traditional oven takes anywhere from 15 to maybe 5 minutes, if you got a really powerful one. During that time heat escapes the device.
Meanwhile air fryers usually heat up in about a minute and get the actual cooking done faster.
So unless you are broiling something for a really long time, air fryers may still come out on top, just because they get done quicker, saving energy in the process.
Oven pizza is a 22 minute job. My air fryer is done after 9.
There’s also something about air volume and thermal mass, but you get the point.
What’s more, my oven sucks up to 3kW and has a 72l volume of air to heat up, from what I see most air fryers are between 1 and 2 kW and hold 4-7l of volume… The scales are pretty different, insulation or not (air fryers have less surface area for heat to escape from, also).
I don’t have one, but I use my bread machine a lot 'cause it uses a fraction of the power of my oven, aside from kneading automatically.
