PANASONIC NB-H3203KSM 32 Liter Oven Toaster Grill (Black)

Easy to use. Fits 8nto a modern kitchen

A bit big for a single person, but I wanted the features as my small 16 liter Bajaj OTG messes up my cakes in the winter as it struggles to maintain temperature. Takes up a large amount of space, but if it enables me to churn out whole wheat bread in the winter, then it’s worth it.

First the pros – what I like about it…

The Panasonic name… Familiar to me since childhood although the quality has gone to the dogs. It joins my Panasonic meat mincer and cake mixer.

The double glass. That was a neat idea to keep the heat in, but is thwarted by the enormous amounts of heat lost from the top of the OTG. Looks like baking in winter will be challenging. It gets hot enough to cook a dosa or an egg or warm up some water on the top if it were flat.

Quality of the mains wire is quite good. It seems to be heat resistant. It has a 15Amp plug but I connected it to a 5 Amp extension board and there is no heating on the 5Amp plug, switch or wire.

The timer seems to be pretty accurate. I timed the 20 minute mark and checked it with a stop watch

The fermentation setting. I do a lot of sour dough and the Himachal winters can be quite severe. Now my Bulgarian yoghurt, sourdough, idli dosa batter everything has found a warm place to ferment.

The door has two inbetween stop positions between fully open and fully closed.

The temperature dial has 70 as its first setting, which means probably I might be able to use the midway setting between 0 and 70 and use the oven as a food dehydrator.

The rotisserie. I’ve always wanted one since I first saw one. The supplied recipe book has no recipe for rotisserie chicken. (Actually I didn’t find any of the recipes useful. It’s not even targeted at Indian users as the tandoori chicken recipe uses curry powder) I might mostly settle for roast chicken but am eager to try out rotisserie chicken at least once.

The size. Finally I can buy an easily available roasting pan, my Lodge cast iron loaf pan and muffin pans will also fit quite comfortably. The days of measuring the inside of my oven before purchase of an accessory and sighing are over.

A convection fan and light…. Firsts for me but the fan is practically non existent it only makes some sound. I even went to the extent of holding a burning strip of paper near the vents but to no avail. Maybe it will free up after running a bit?

Okay now for the cons:

Crumb tray is as thick as thin cardboard. It was already bent in one corner on arrival and I bent it back with 2 fingers.

Handle is so wide that if you’re grilling paneer tikka (or pizza) on the top rack it is not visible if the OTG is placed on a lower level. (Workaround for me was to place the OTG on a shelf where the top of the oven lines up with the top of my forehead). This led me to constantly open the oven door to check whether it was done and so it took 45 mins to grill the paneer. I should have probably used both heaters.

Heating appears to be quite slow even in summer. Maybe it is normal for this oven.

Practical issues:

The double glass turned out to be just for show, not for insulation. Water vapour condenses between the glass and doesn’t dry for a couple of days. Hope it won’t cause rusting. The manual states that this is expected. I have to unnecessarily keep the oven cracked open till the condensation has dried up which is annoying. It also makes it difficult to read my oven thermometer which I place on a rack.

Product description said it is made of stainless steel. It is actually made of powder coated mild steel and barely as strong as my existing Bajaj oven.

Enamel tray, probably also MS. All of these will start rusting one day. Must start searching for compatible SS trays. (Unbelievably, it started rusting on second use, although it is just pin head sized and has occured where enamel coating was not done correctly. I miss my Bajaj oven’s aluminum tray)

Stains remain even after washing the tray after soaking it for 2 days. Not sure if some coating came off into my food. Will never use it directly again. Even the ‘chromish’ handle has stains which I will need to polish off if at all possible. My product had been unboxed and re-boxed so it could have been used and returned.

Low maximum temperature of 230, but my oven thermometer shows 240. Am planning to buy a new Taylor thermometer just in case and will update the review accordingly. If it does show 240 even on the new thermometer, then the temperature markings are suspect. (Update: the Taylor thermometer shows 210 while my Fluke DMM with its thermocouple probe shows 220, so now I’m totally confused)

Docking stars for the cons and for the almost useless manual. Still it will serve its purpose. I had taken a loan on my Slice credit card for another item which was credited to me as an Amazon Pay coupon. After I cancelled that item I was left with a large balance which would take me ages to finish buying groceries so since this was on my wish list for a few years, I went ahead and bought it.

Not ecstatic about my purchase. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I really don’t care where it’s made as long as it’s value for my hard earned money. It does say made in the PRC but has an Indian warranty card although the India website doesn’t feature any OTGs. If you want more information, try visiting Panasonic’s Hongkong or Singapore website. I’ve been paying extra attention to the thumb screws for the baking forks lest I lose them and they be difficult to find.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my 16 Liter Bajaj OTG came with kabab skewers and supports to place them, nothing of that sort with this one -a bit of a disappointment at this price point. I bought additional skewers on Amazon.

The build quality should have been beefed up a bit. While it does seem strong enough, the OTG is quite wide, so they should have used thicker gauge racks. I wish the oven was insulated from all the sides. It would have conserved heat and thus electricity.

If I set the thermostats to 230 and turn it on they keep clicking on and off unnecessarily even before the set temperature is reached. This could be due to local hot spots created by poor air circulation. This will cause the thermostat contacts to unnecessarily wear out sooner than necessary.

I’m disappointed with my purchase -especially after the condensation build up between the glass sheets, but I’ll have to get used to the cons. This is my first large oven, so I’ve no idea how the build quality compares with other similar products. I’m glad this one doesn’t have any electronics as once those conk out they become useless.

Somehow, this oven has grown on me and even though it will be used occasionally, I feel glad when I see it in my kitchen. I used the oven as a dehydrator successfully and used it to dry a packet of brown bread at 70 deg to make bread crumbs but had to keep opening the oven and wipe out the condensation. The fan has become silent now, so I need to do another test to see if I can detect any air circulation. (Update: Fan does work and is quieter now.

The stains on the handle never came off. My guess is it was a display piece in a showroom and hence handled by people. That explains the open box. I had added a couple of stars but am deducting them again as dust has started collecting between the sheets of glass. The sheets are held by rivetted brackets so they can’t be taken apart for cleaning. I’m planning to forego my warranty and take the OTG apart this weekend. I will also be sealing the gaps between the glasses with Anabond. Hopefully this will resolve the inter glass condensation + dust issue as well.

Just updating my review. The fermentation mode is confusing because the text is written between both knobs so a new person may think that the fermentation mode is active when the temp knob is at zero. I almost destroyed my bread which I was proofing in the oven.

I paid close to 12k for this. At that price I feel like I’ve been robbed. The price has dropped quite a bit as my guess is that there were very few takers at that price.

Good product, beautifully build.
Temperature control seems accurate (checked with oven thermometer). However temp drops a significantly when the food is kept. Has double glass door, dual thermostat to control both top and bottom coils, very good build quality, pricy, but worth it. The so called “missing baking fork” is actually hidden in the backside of the thermocol packing! See picture
Overall looks good, cake came out nice. A few cons:
1) Power cord is short at 1m (same is the case for many OTGs)
2) It is only 1500W, which could be a bit under powered (some OTGs have 2000W, but at higher litres). the max temp goes only to 230C, with the food kept inside, the temp rarely reaches beyond 180C. So it may not be very good for high temp baking.
3) The Control layout seems to be non-optimal: There are separate modes on the dial to turn on/off upper or lower coil, but this could have been done just by dialing the temp control knob all the way to 0 of each coil. On the contrary, the rotisserie works only with upper coil, and fan operates only in 2 coil mode. Strange! The convection fan also seems to be having very low air flow, I doubt if it is even making any difference at all.
The delivery was not good, it had a dent, though minor, it is noticeable. better to buy from a store.