Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer review

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Our Verdict

This is, quite simply, one of the best air fryers we’ve ever tested. It’s easy to use and powerful – which means quick cooking. And it cooks evenly without the need to pause and shake up your food. But its key advantages are its flexibility and huge capacity, which you can use for baking and roasting.

Price When Reviewed

$149.99 (MSRP $179.99)

Best Prices Today: Ninja Foodi FlexBasket

The FlexDrawer isn’t Ninja’s latest dual-drawer air fryer (that’s the Double Stack XL) but it is one of the brand’s best models. I might say it’s the best model the brand has produced.

It’s a unique twist on a dual-basket air fryer, in that you can remove the divider separating the two cooking spaces to create one cooking “megazone”.

You’ll get all the flexibility of a traditional model, as you can use the two 5.2L cooking areas independently and programme separate cooking modes in each.

But you can also use the entire 10.4L space to cook large joints and bake cakes and bread.

If you’re in the US, a slightly different model is available. Instead of the FlexDrawer, you can buy the FlexBasket. It’s a smaller, 7QT model and lacks the UK model’s proving setting, which you can use when making fresh bread. It also has slightly different controls to the UK model: it’s button operation only, whereas the UK model has a dial to choose the cooking mode. Apart from those differences, it’s designed and works in the same way, so you can read this review to get an idea of whether it’d be a good fit for you.

Design and Build

• 35°C-240°C temperature range
• 7 cooking modes
• Easy to use digital display

The FlexBasket is largely made of plain, matt black plastic and thanks to its size, there is really quite an expanse of it. It certainly won’t be the prettiest appliance on your countertop. With its curved corners and plain exterior, it looks like a giant, lidded tub. But it’s sturdily built and its unfussy exterior makes it easy to keep clean.

It’s a big appliance as well, with dimensions of 32.7cm high, 31.6cm deep and a whopping 49.6cm wide. It will take up a huge amount of space along your countertop, although as it’s not very deep, you’ll have plenty of room in front of it for food preparation and to pull out the drawer.

The FlexDrawer’s controls are intuitive and straightforward and it’s unlikely you’ll need to refer to the manual

Although I have a tiny kitchen and needed to rearrange my counter to find room for it, I found that it actually seemed to overwhelm the available space less than the Double Stack, which is a much deeper air fryer that protrudes beyond the line of other countertop appliances.

There’s a single, pull-out drawer with a removable divider. It’s fitted with two non-stick, dishwasher-safe crisper plates (although you can’t put the drawer itself in the dishwasher). The cooking space is huge at 10.4L and can fit a joint of meat, chicken or loaf cake.

The FlexDrawer has seven cooking modes: max crisp (for frozen food), air fry, roast, bake, reheat (for leftovers), dehydrate (for jerky and dried fruit) and prove (for dough). Choose one and a suggested time and temperature will appear on the easy-to-read digital display. You can then adjust it as you wish. The controls are intuitive and straightforward and it’s unlikely you’ll need to refer to the manual.

Still, the supplied manual is comprehensive and includes a number of recipes and an air fryer cooking chart with suggested times and temperatures for popular foods.

There are no settings for specific food types, like chips, which you might find on other air fryers. But the cooking mode is easy to decide on. Your best bet is then to use the mode’s suggested time and temperature and tweak it as needed.

Time and temperature are adjustable for each cooking setting (within certain boundaries – ie, if you set too high a temperature, you won’t be dehydrating fruit or meat, you’ll be roasting it).

The FlexDrawer has a minimum temperature of 35°C and a maximum temperature of 240°C and the cooking time is between 1 minute and six hours, again depending on the cooking mode. This means that you can cook almost anything in it, except for dishes like stews, pasta and rice, which won’t come out brilliantly even if you use a silicone liner. If that’s the kind of food you cook often, we’d recommend the Ninja Speedi or the ProCook Air Fryer Health Grill.

The FlexDrawer has all the features you’d expect to make two-basket air fryer cooking simple. There’s a match function, which allows you to copy the cooking programme from one drawer to the other, plus a sync function. Sync lets you set two separate cooking programmes but ensures they’ll finish at the same time, so there’s no need to keep one dish warm while you wait for the other to finish cooking.

It’s also worth saying that it’s a very civilised sort of air fryer. Like all newer Ninja models, it’ll greet you with a ‘Hello’ on the screen when you switch it on, and a ‘Goodbye’ when you turn it off. Plus, its alert sounds are loud enough to be heard from the next room (although probably not over the sound of the TV), without being piercing