To me, crockpot is for soups or stews.i have used it to keep my queso dip warm at a Super Bowl party. It for damn sure ain’t for ribs, or any other type of ‘bbq’. Hell no.
We’ve had an air fryer for awhile now. It’s basically circulated air convention cooking. You can ‘fry’ with it, using a spritz of oil, and your food will turn out crispy. We did wings in it the other night, and they were delicious. We have done breaded ‘fried’ recipes, and they turn out tasty and crispy if you mist them with a little cooking oil. It does lower the fat content vs traditional frying.
Our air fryer has a ‘grill’ plate to put inside it. It will give you grill marks, but that’s as close to ‘grilled’ as it gets. No grill flavor, but that’s to be expected as it’s not grilled.
Hell, you can even bake bread in them!
I look at the air fryer as a handy kitchen multitasker, Jack of all trades, but master of none. Cool tool, but not the solution to every problem.