Panasonic Flex NF-BC1000KXC Air Fryer review: an excellent, spacious air fryer with one frustrating flaw

Air fryers have gone from novelty to kitchen essential at an almost alarming pace. Ninja has long been the brand to beat – partly because its machines are simple to use, partly because they’re everywhere, and partly because once you’ve done chips at a fraction of the cost of running a full oven, it’s hard to go back.

But as the space has matured, rival brands have realised they can’t 'out-Ninja' Ninja, so they’ve started adding features the market leader doesn’t have. Steam. Windows. Extra heating elements. Bigger, weirder drawers. Smarter ways to cook a whole meal at once.

Enter the Panasonic Flex (NF-BC1000KXC) Air Fryer – a 9.6-litre beast sporting not only with a removable divider for dual-zone cooking, but with a viewing window and light, 360-degree cooking with heating elements above and below the food drawee, and a built-in water tank designed to keep food moist while still crisping the outside.

I’ve been cooking with this air fryer over the past month – from lazy weeknight dinners to big weekend English breakfasts – to see if Panasonic’s clever ideas hold up in real life. This is how I got on.

Panasonic Flex Air Fryer review: price and availability

Panasonic first teased the Flex Air Fryer back in September 2025, naming the appliance its biggest air fryer model to date and positioning it as a compact oven alternative with unique and innovative features not many of its rivals have.

Since then, it’s landed properly in the UK, and the specific model I tested, the NF-BC1000KXC is now available from Panasonic’s official store or Amazon for £189.99 / $255 / AU$377. Although, I can’t seem to find it listed in stores outside of Europe, so it’s likely not available in the US just yet.

Nevertheless, that price undercuts plenty of the more premium, dual-drawer air fryer crowd while offering a bigger overall capacity than many big-name rivals. Still, it’s not cheap compared to some of the more affordable midrange options, like the Instant Vortex Plus VersaZone air fryer, but for the amount of useful cooking tech you’re getting here, it sits in a pretty sweet spot.

Panasonic Flex Air Fryer review: design and build

From the front, the Panasonic Flex looks almost…cute? It’s neat, fairly understated in black, and it doesn’t take up more worktop space in the way some of the more aggressive air fryer designs do. Then you pull the drawer out, and it just keeps going.

That depth is the headline feature here, and it’s why Panasonic can confidently say the 9.6-litre basket fits a full 30cm pizza. In practice, it’s almost liberating – no more cutting pizzas in half to squeeze them into smaller drawers. I also loved being able to lay out food in a single layer without stacking everything, which is often the real limiter with air fryers, whatever the litre volume might say on the box.

The viewing window and internal light feel like “nice-to-have” features until you live with them. Then you realise how often you normally open an air fryer drawer out of pure paranoia. Panasonic’s tempered-glass window lets you keep an eye on browning without dumping heat every five minutes, and the light can be toggled on when you actually need it. It’s a simple idea, but it makes the whole cooking process calmer especially when you’re adjusting to a new machine’s timings.

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As for build quality, this is where the Flex starts to wobble (literally). The overall unit feels solid enough, and at 9.6kg it’s not exactly flimsy on the counter. But some of the key touchpoints don’t feel as premium as I expected for an appliance costing just short of 200 quid. The touch panel is fine functionally, yet it attracts smudges like nobody’s business, which looks a bit gross after a few uses. While I like that Panasonic uses touch controls plus two dials (it’s quick to set temp and time), the panel itself doesn’t have that edge that makes it look or feel expensive.

The bigger issue is the metal drawer divider. I think whoever designed this at Panasonic really needs their heads looking at. It’s astonishingly thin and flimsy for something that’s meant to be one of the product’s defining features. In the hand, it feels like I could bend it without much effort, and once it’s inside the drawer it doesn’t always feel secure or aligned, but I’ll talk more about how frustrating this is in the Performance section Nevertheless, Panasonic nailed the concept with the Flex - one big zone or two smaller zones depending on the meal but the execution of that divider feels like a big mistake. Big. Huge.

Another design note, while not as annoying as the flimsy divider, is the drawer’s height, which feels a little shallow. Panasonic’s own marketing shows a whole chicken, and yes, you can cook one, but it’ll have to be a small one. If you’re trying to roast a taller bird, like a turkey, or you’re cooking something that puffs up, clearance becomes a real consideration. I actually think the Flex would be a better product if it was slightly less “compact” overall and gave the basket a bit more room vertically.

Panasonic Flex Air Fryer review: performance

Let’s start with the headline tech, because Panasonic isn’t just doing “air fryer but bigger” here. The Flex combines 360-degree air flow with multiple heating elements, two up top and one at the bottom. This is a big part of why it cooks so evenly. With my usual air fryer, I’m used to giving chips and wings a shake halfway through, or flipping certain foods to avoid the dreaded “one side pale, one side perfect” problem. With the Flex, however, I found myself doing that less. The bottom heat helps crisp the underside without needing constant attention, and it’s especially effective when you’re cooking flatter foods like pizza, fish fillets or breaded items.

Then there’s the “Gentle Steam” feature. Panasonic pumps steam from a 200ml rear water tank into the cooking chamber at the touch of a button, designed to hydrate the surface of food and help hot air conduct heat more evenly. In my kitchen, this was the feature that most consistently changed the results. Chicken thighs stayed noticeably juicier. Salmon came out tender rather than slightly “dry baked”, which is a common air fryer issue. Even reheating certain leftovers felt less like resurrecting them and more like actually reheating them.

You’ll have to be careful using this feature with certain foods, however, as it won’t work well if you want crispy results, like roast potatoes. If you’re using the divider, Panasonic notes that the steam function can only be used on the left zone. That’s not a dealbreaker, but it does mean you need to think about how you 'zone' your meal. If I was doing chicken (steam) and veg (no steam), I’d put the chicken on the left. If you want steam on both zones at once, you can’t – at least not in the split configuration. I never found this to be an issue during my cooking with it, though.

As for modes, you get eight presets: Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Pizza, Grill, Reheat, Defrost and Ferment, plus manual control from 35°C to 230°C. Ferment is the quirky one, aimed at yoghurt making or proofing dough, and while I’m not fermenting every week, I appreciate the ambition. It’s also a good sign that Panasonic is thinking beyond chips and nuggets, and the free Panasonic Kitchen+ app with over 80 recipes certainly leans into that idea.

On the subject of temperature, 230°C is plenty for most everyday air frying, but if you’re coming from a model with a higher “max crisp” style temperature, you may notice the difference on certain frozen foods that rely on a blast of extreme heat for a proper, satisfying crunch. The saving grace is that bottom heat and airflow combo. It crisps efficiently even without the extra few degrees, but I still would’ve liked Panasonic to push the ceiling slightly higher for pure crisping power.

The dual-zone concept is, in theory, a best-of-both-worlds setup: one huge drawer for big items (pizza, wings, tray bakes), or two independent zones with their own time and temperature, plus a sync function so everything finishes together. In practice, I mostly loved it, until the divider started acting up. Because it doesn’t always feel firmly seated, it can slip or fall if you’re loading food in a hurry, which is maddening when you’re mid-cook and trying not to dump heat. It also means you never feel 100% confident that you’ve truly separated the two zones. For an appliance that’s literally called 'Flex', that’s pretty unforgivable.

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Still, the core cooking performance is excellent. In fact, it’s almost too good if you’re used to a more “standard” air fryer. The first week, I overcooked a couple of batches simply because the Flex browned food faster than I was used to with my everyday Ninja air fryer - likely thanks to the additional heat source and the way steam can help heat transfer. It doesn’t take long to adapt, but it’s worth saying – don’t assume your usual timings will translate perfectly. The window helps a lot here, because you can easily keep an eye on progress (when you remember it’s there).

Cleaning is thankfully straightforward. The basket, crisper plate and divider use a PFAS-free non-stick ceramic coating, and the crisper plate/divider are dishwasher safe, which is a bonus. After a month of use, it’s stayed pretty spick and span considering what I’ve put it through.

While my experience with the Panasonic Flex was mostly positive overall, I guess my 'wish list' item would be a temperature probe. Ninja has made the digital cooking probe feel almost essential on some of its models, and Panasonic’s ambitions to rival the brand would’ve matched perfectly with something that takes the guesswork out of bigger meat cooks. But, I guess – like with anything – you can’t have it all.

Panasonic Flex Air Fryer review: verdict

The Panasonic Flex NF-BC1000KXC Air Fryer is one of the most innovative air fryers I’ve used in a while. The big drawer is a game-changer for real family cooking, and the fact it can take a full 30cm pizza without you getting the scissors out is reason enough for some households to upgrade.

Add the viewing window, proper bottom heat, and Gentle Steam function, which makes chicken and fish come out noticeably juicier, and you’ve got an appliance that really does flirt with the idea of replacing your oven for day-to-day meals. At £189.99, it feels like strong value for what you’re getting, especially as Panasonic originally pitched it as a major, “largest to date” launch.

But I can’t ignore the abomination that is the drawer divider. It’s too flimsy, and too central to the Flex’s whole identity to be anything other than a meaningful flaw. Fix that, give the basket a bit more height, and Panasonic would have a category leader on its hands. As it stands, it’s still an excellent air fryer but just one that falls a frustrating step short of perfection.