Just when I thought I’d seen it all with air fryers, Philips popped up with the versatile, innovative 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer. With options for a single or a double basket, multiple cooking functions, and clever extras, it has to be one of the best air fryers of all time.
If you didn't already know, Philips were behind the first air fryer that hit the UK market and they've been quietly and confidently producing some of the best air fryers for over 15 years since. So, it's reasonable to expect that they'd be delivering some special products.
The latest 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer comes with all the features that I wish I knew about before buying an air fryer, especially the adjustable basket size. It's not a launch that'll send shock waves through your kitchen, it's one that's so clever, you'll wonder why you never had one before.
Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer review
Dimensions |
43.7 x 30.1 x 29.5 cm |
Weight |
5.8 kgs |
Power |
2450 watts |
Pre-sets |
10 |
Capacity |
7.1-litres |
Temperature range |
40-200°C |
Cooking functions |
Reheat, bake, grill, roast, vegetables, meat |
Who would Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer suit?
Naturally, the Philips 1000 Series' FlexDrawer feature suits people who are cooking big meals, whether that's for a hungry family or when you're meal prepping for the week ahead.
You can use the full 7.1-litre baking tray for big, single bakes, but for the times when you want to cook two foods at once, you have two 3.55-litre trays. According to Philips, this is enough for nearly 1kg of chips, 1.2 kg of vegetables, and a whole 1kg chicken. So, even seemingly bottomless stomachs can be filled up.
Having lived with this for a week, I like the idea of this as an introductory model for people not sure what exactly they need from their air fryer. It’s reasonably priced, covers plenty of different styles of cooking, and offers versatility. I could see it being a great model for beginners, but with a word of warning that this is fiery and you won’t need the full pre-set time that the screen will recommend.
Unboxing the Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer
The Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer comes neatly packaged. The robust box does a great job of keeping it in good condition when it’s making its way to your kitchen without becoming too bulky or heavy.
Inside, there are some soft plastics that won’t be widely recyclable (unless you have a supermarket near you that accepts them). In an ideal world, these would be compostable or recyclable, but sometimes, needs must. They keep the Philips 100 Series shiny and attractive, so they do a great job.
You’ll spot that Philips sends two trays and a divider separately, so you get to assemble the drawer in whichever way you would like to. It’s really easy to drop the plates in and you get a good insight into the star shapes that Philips air fryers are famous for having. I like the simple, but interesting set-up, so overall, it’s a great first impression from the Philips.
What is Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer like to use?
Depending on which components you put into the drawer, the Philips menu will offer you a screen of pre-sets. If you’ve opted for the dual drawer function, you’ve got the option to split the heat settings on each half and control each independently or synchronise how they’re cooking. If you’re using it as one large drawer, as you might expect, you get a menu of settings for one drawer.
Philips’ menu walks you through all the classic pre sets (chips, meat, vegetables, baking, reheating) as well as letting you choose the time and temperature for a specific recipe if you want to. The screen was clear, responsive, and readable without glasses (major achievement for me), so I was keen to get cooking.
Test 1: chips
The first test that I run on all air fryers is on chips. After all, if you can't cook a decent batch of chips, what good is your air fryer?
I wanted to see whether I could cook a meal from frozen, so I opted for packing half the drawer with a large portion of chips and half the drawer with four fish fingers.
I trusted the pre-set on the Philips, which recommended 20 minutes for finishing both and having them table ready. At the time, this sounded pretty lengthy, but I wanted to trust what Philips recommended. However, when the air fryer beeped to let me know my meal was ready, the drawer presented me with fries that looked on the dark side of well done. They were still edible, but much more crispy than I would have liked, so I tried again.
This time, I used a full drawer and gave my chips 14 minutes at 180°C. The results were much better than the pre-set. My plate was stacked with golden fries, looking crispy on the outside, but tasting fluffy just one bite in. With a little adjustment, the Philips proved itself to be brilliant.
Test 2: fish fingers
Naturally, I followed the same adjustment that I made for my first meal with my test on frozen fish fingers. These tend to need a little longer than chips, so I gave them 15 minutes at 180°C and got really good results.
Rather than the overly crispy crumb that the pre-set produced, these were steaming on the inside, but with nice crunch on the outside. The balance was perfect. You’ll need to play around with what suits you and don't rely on the pre-set, but it's proof that this can deliver nothing short of perfection.
Test 3: grilled vegetables
I thought that the aggressive heat was limited to my frozen food, so I used the vegetable pre-set on my Mediterranean vegetables. This was a mix of courgette, pepper, garlic, onion, and tomatoes. When the timer beeped at eighteen minutes, it was clear that the grill setting went heavy on the heat. Too were more charred than my normal golden bubbles. If you like your food well done, these were fine. They didn’t taste burnt, but I don’t think they were far off being overdone.
Round two of tests, modified with my timings, was cut to twelve minutes rather than eighteen. The vegetables came out tender, but hot. I had crispy tips to the onion slices and brown bubbles on the courgette, but without them looking overdone. It was all the proof I needed that this person underestimated itself in the preset times, so it’s worth interfering to get a slightly lighter cook.
Test 4: cookies
I have a sweet tooth and I like to test out the baking function on all air fryers too. It’s a really neat way to see whether these appliances can end up replacing your oven. With my knowledge that the Philips errs on the side of overcooking, I set this to 180°C and put the cookies in for eight minutes. It’s a little less time than I would give them in my conventional oven, but that's exactly the kind of adjustment I make for my air fryer cooking.
It wont surprise you to know that this nailed the cookies. Mine came out cooked through, with crispy edges and a gooey middle. The chocolate melted, but then set into six perfect cookies (two are missing from the image above, because I devoured them before my camera had a chance to take a picture). I think these were the greatest success of all the tests (so much so, I made them again and again).
Test 5: reheating pizza
The test for reheating food could have potentially been a tough one for the Philips. It’s a powerful air fryer and reheating is best done with a gentle, low and slow temperature. I gave my day old pizza ten minutes on their reheat temperature, which was enough to give life and warmth to the pizza, from the base right through to the cheese. The toppings didn’t dry out per-se, but they were definitely drier than the other air fryers make my pizza. I would have liked for them to keep a little more moisture.
In hindsight, this is easily fixed with a sprinkle of water over the top of the pizza or some in the bottom of the air fryer drawer, but you don't have to do this for other models, so it's worth noting down before sending you off to invest in the Philips 1000 Series.
Cleaning Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer
The good news is that the basket and drawer of the Philips is dishwasher safe, so I could put all the parts in my dishwasher and they came out clean. The oil and burnt parts of the food didn’t stick or stain, even when I deliberately tried to burn chocolate onto the basket to make it tough to clean.
If you have a small dishwasher or you want to make sure that you keep your air fryer baskets in top condition for longer, you can wash these by hand. The grease and oil slid out of the bottom of the drawer and a soft sponge with washing up liquid did a sparkling job of getting the air fryer clean. I'd recommend steering clear of anything abrasive so that you keep the non-stick in tact, but that's all part of knowing how to clean an air fryer properly.
How does Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer compare?
The really compelling feature on the Philips 1000 Series Air Fryer is the flexible drawer size. If you've done your research, you'll know that they're not the only people to offer this up. In fact, the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer Air Fryer is one of the market leaders for offering these features. Without a discount, it retails at £120 more than the Philips Series 1000, so there's a bit of a price difference. Whether you choose to spend more money depends upon a few of your needs.
The first is capacity. The Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer has 10.4 litres of space inside the drawer, which is another 3.3 more than the Philips Series 1000. There's an argument that most people don't need enough space to fit another small roast chicken in what's already a large drawer, but if you want to cook a leg of lamb or extra large portions, the Ninja Foodi is great.
I like the Ninja Foodi for its consistent, speedy cooking as well as the useful pre-sets. Whilst both air fryers are easy to use and maintain, I think I find Ninja more intuitive. They keep things a little more basic and tend to use words as well as icons rather than just icons on the Philips, but that's quite a personal preference rather than something I would push you towards. At the end of the day, both air fryers are great. The Philips is cheaper, but a little more fierce, whilst the Ninja is larger and a little more simple.
Should you buy Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer?
Philips has done a beautiful job of simplifying the flexible drawer concept. This makes a brilliant large, single-drawer air fryer as much as it is a speedy dual-drawer model when needed. You'll need to watch the fierce cooking temperature and reduce the time, but beyond that, it's a brilliant buy.
How we test air fryers
At woman&home we have a series of standardised tests that we put our air fryers through. They all have to cook chips, fish fingers, grilled vegetables, cookies, and reheat a pizza. This tests whether they can do speedy cooking, low and slow, as well as sensitive and more specific bakes and grills. It also makes it really easy to compare air fryers to each other in a numerical sense, because we have a spreadsheet of how each performs.
Beyond the practical, foodie bits, our tests asses whether an air fryer is easy to use, whether the screen is nice to read, what cleaning is like, and how it compares to other models on the market. By the end of my tests and the formal review, you should have a really good idea of what this is like to cook with. If you still have questions, feel free to email me. I'm always happy to chat about all things air frying.
You can find out more on our dedicated page for how we test air fryers.
