This paper presents a newly established testing rig for planar solid oxide fuel cell. Two sets of nearly identical single-cell stacks except using different designs of flow distributors are measured to show how exactly the cell performance of such single-cell stacks would vary with a change in the degree of flow uniformity. It is found that by using small guide vanes around the feed header of commonly used rib-channel flow distributors to improve effectively the degree of flow uniformity, the power density of the single-cell stack can be increased by 10% as compared to that without using guide vanes under exactly the same experimental conditions. Also discussed are the start-up procedure and effects of hydrogen and air flow rates varying from 0.4 slpm to 1 slpm on cell performance of these two single-cell stacks which are measured over a range of the operating temperature varying from 650 degrees C to 850 degrees C. After 100h of continuous cell operation, the examination of the reduction and oxidation stability of the anodic surface reveals that the improvement of flow uniformity in flow distributors is useful to achieve a more balanced use of the anodic catalyst. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.