I tried Panasonic’s biggest air fryer yet, and it nearly nailed everything

The Air fryer Flex is one of the most genuinely useful air fryers we’ve had on the worktop in a while. The drawer is enormous, the steam function makes a real difference to meat and fish, and the viewing window turns out to be far more useful than the gimmick it sounds like on paper. It’s not perfect: the removable divider that splits the basket into two zones feels like an afterthought bolted onto an otherwise well-built machine, and it’s the one thing standing between this and being a genuine category leader. If you can live with babying the divider, or you mostly cook in one big zone anyway, this is one of the smartest family air fryers around right now.

Pros

• Enormous 9.6-litre drawer swallows a full 30cm pizza whole
• Gentle Steam function keeps chicken and fish noticeably juicier
• Viewing window and internal light cut down on constant drawer-opening
• 360-degree airflow plus top and bottom heat crisps evenly without shaking the basket
• Strong price for the amount of genuinely useful tech on board

Cons

• The basket divider is thin, doesn’t always sit securely, and undermines the two-zone feature
• Drawer is deep but not especially tall, so bigger birds and puffier bakes are tight
• Touch panel picks up smudges fast and doesn’t feel as premium as the price suggests
• No temperature probe, so bigger meat cooks are still down to guesswork
  
  

Quick specs

Price	£199 RRP (commonly found closer to £189.99)
Capacity	9.6 litres, single zone or divided into two
Power	2450W, 2 top heating elements plus 1 bottom element
Temperature range	35°C to 230°C
Presets	8 (Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Pizza, Grill, Reheat, Defrost, Ferment)
Dimensions	27.8cm (H) x 37.5cm (W) x 47.2cm (D)
Weight	9.6kg
Basket materials	PFAS-free non-stick ceramic coating, dishwasher-safe crisper plate and divider

Design and build

From the front, the Flex doesn’t look like much. It’s a neat, restrained black box that doesn’t hog worktop space the way some more aggressively styled air fryers do. Pull the drawer open, though, and the story changes. That depth is the entire point of this machine, and it’s how Panasonic gets away with claiming a full 30cm pizza fits inside without needing to be cut in half. Laying food out in a genuinely single layer, rather than stacking wings or chips two deep, is the real advantage of a big drawer, and it’s what actually changes how you cook day to day, not just a number on the box.

The viewing window and internal light feel like a token extra until you’ve lived with the machine for a week. Most of us open an air fryer drawer far more than we need to, purely out of paranoia about what’s happening inside. The tempered glass window lets you check on browning without losing all the built-up heat every time, and the light switches on only when you actually want it. It’s a small thing, but it makes the whole process calmer while you’re still learning how the Flex’s timings compare to whatever you used before.

Build quality is a mixed picture. At 9.6kg the unit itself feels properly solid on the counter, and nothing about the main housing feels cheap. The touch panel and dual dials are quick enough to use, letting you set temperature and time without much fuss, but the panel surface picks up fingerprints and smudges almost immediately, which looks scrappier than it should on something at this price.

The real weak point is the basket divider. It’s a thin metal insert meant to be one of the Flex’s headline features, letting you run two zones with their own time and temperature. In practice, it doesn’t always sit flush, and it can shift or come loose if you’re loading food quickly, which undermines confidence in the whole dual-zone idea. Panasonic clearly nailed the concept of one big drawer that flexes into two smaller ones. The execution of the piece that actually makes that happen needed another round of testing before it shipped.

There’s also a minor gripe with the drawer’s height. Panasonic’s marketing shows a whole chicken fitting inside, and it does, but it needs to be a modest one. Taller birds or anything that puffs up significantly will find the clearance tighter than the drawer’s volume suggests. A slightly less compact footprint in exchange for more vertical room would make this a better all-rounder.

Performance and real-world use

The headline tech here is a combination of 360-degree airflow with heating elements both above and below the food, and it’s a big part of why the Flex cooks so evenly. With most air fryers, you’re used to giving chips or wings a shake halfway through to avoid one side coming out pale and the other perfect. With the Flex, that habit becomes largely unnecessary. The bottom element crisps the underside of food without you needing to intervene, and it’s particularly effective with flatter foods like pizza, fish fillets or anything breaded, where uneven browning usually shows up first.

The Gentle Steam function is the feature that changes results the most. Panasonic pumps steam from a 200ml rear water tank into the cooking chamber at the touch of a button, hydrating the surface of food and helping hot air transfer heat more evenly. Chicken thighs came out noticeably juicier than in a standard air fryer, and salmon stayed tender rather than drying out. Even reheating leftovers felt closer to properly warming food through than blasting the outside while the middle stays cold.

There are limits to when you’d want it running. Steam isn’t the friend of anything you’re trying to get properly crisp, like roast potatoes, so it’s worth being selective about when you switch it on. With the divider fitted, steam only works on one of the two zones, which means thinking ahead: chicken on the steam side, veg on the other, rather than trying to run it across both at once.

On the modes front, you get eight presets covering Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Pizza, Grill, Reheat, Defrost and Ferment, plus manual control across the full 35°C to 230°C range. Ferment is the outlier, aimed at proofing dough or making yoghurt, and it’s a sign Panasonic is thinking about this as more than a one-trick chip machine. There’s also a companion app with a decent recipe library if you want a starting point beyond the presets. That 230°C ceiling is plenty for most everyday cooking, though anyone coming from a machine with a higher max-crisp setting might notice the gap on frozen foods that rely on a real blast of heat. The bottom heat and airflow combination compensates for a lot of it.

The dual-zone setup sounds best on paper and struggles most in practice. One large drawer for bigger single dishes, or two independent zones with a sync function so both finish together, is smart design when the divider behaves. When it doesn’t sit securely, which happens often enough to notice, you lose confidence the two zones are actually separated, which rather defeats the point of a feature built around flexibility.

Worth noting: the Flex browns food faster than most standard air fryers, thanks to the extra element and steam-assisted heat transfer. It’s easy to overcook a batch or two in the first week by trusting old timings. The viewing window earns its keep here, letting you check progress rather than guess.

Cleaning is genuinely simple. The basket, crisper plate and divider all use a PFAS-free ceramic non-stick coating, and the plate and divider are dishwasher-safe. After sustained use, the coating holds up well and avoids the wear cheaper non-stick surfaces show after a few months.

Verdict

The Panasonic Air fryer Flex is one of the more genuinely thoughtful air fryers we’ve tested recently. The sheer size of the drawer changes how you cook day to day, fitting a full pizza or a proper single-layer batch of wings without the usual air fryer compromises. Add the steam function, which makes a real, tastable difference to chicken and fish, and the viewing window, which quietly removes a lot of the guesswork with a new machine, and you’ve got an appliance that genuinely edges toward replacing the oven for everyday meals.

The divider is the one thing holding it back from an easy top recommendation. It’s central to the product’s whole flexible pitch, and a flimsy, occasionally unreliable piece of metal undermines that pitch every time you use it. Panasonic got the bigger idea right. The execution on this one part just needs another pass.

If you mostly cook in one big zone, or you’re happy to handle the divider carefully when you do split the basket, this is one of the smartest family-sized air fryers on the market at this price. Buy it for the drawer and the steam function, and treat the two-zone mode as a helpful extra rather than the main event.