Best Food Dehydrator For Filament (2024 Updated)

First use was a breeze. Some reading in the accompanying Guide gave me confidence to jump right in. Sliced onions from our garden are now beautifully displayed in jars on pantry shelves, dried to crisp sweetness.

This saved a crop that had to be harvested early because of predicted frost. So much better and more efficient than freezing, saving valuable space in our chest freezer for other things. Can’t wait to try this on so many other things.

Friends have been mighty impressed, too. Found this Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator for a great price used on EBay. Even preowned, the quality and ease of maintenance are obvious. Highly recommend!.

I’ve waited to write a review so I can try a few different types of foods. Overall, I will say this product is worthwhile and worth the sale price I paid. Product quality seems consistent with older units with two exceptions.

The fan and case are my least favorite aspects of the unit. The fan vibrates and makes a racket with the sheet metal at the rear end. I’ve considered some sort of metal/rubber brace to dampen the noise.

The case does not feel very robust, especially at the door opening. I believe mine is out of square as well. The door seems a bit crooked when seated fully. Maybe all of this accounts for the noise. For these reason I do not run the machine in my kitchen area.

I do like the wide range of temperature settings, the large capacity, trays and screens and the dehydrating capability of this machine. Though it’s not the same type of machine that’s Excalibur sold decades ago, I do hope to own and use this machine for as many years those older units provided.

I have used other types and brands of dehydrators before. Nothing beets the Excalibur. Dry in half the times as other machines. Nice even drying of your items as well with the across the tray blowing of air.

Don’t have to rotate the trays all the time either. Love the flexibility of the trays. You can dry larger size items. Even be able to proof bread. I have recommended this machine to several people and will continue to do so.

First 2400 4 tray I ordered was built so poorly and out of square that the door got caught in every try and could barely get it open and shut. Was sent a replacement unit also had similar issues. I took them both apart and inside they were not put together the same and parts were even loose in 1.

I can’t speak to the quality of the more expensive units but the 2400 is not worth the money. Currently waiting on a 3rd unit to arrive. Haven’t gotten to dehydrate a thing yet.

My wife bought me this model as a Christmas gift last year. The features are nice for the price. You don’t have to unplug this dehydrator to turn it off, it has a switch. Also it has a thermostat to set the temperature to dehydrate different things at the right temperature to get uniformed dehydrated items consistently.

No need to rotate the shelves because the fan circulates the air inside the unit. I use the things I have dehydrated to make meals for hunting and multi-day backpacking treks. The guys I go with are often jealous of me.

My meals usually taste better than the commercially purchased freeze dried stuff you get from the outfitters. If you want to make meals for similar reasons, it is best to dry the individual parts of the meal and then combine the dried parts into the same container.

Just my experience, you might have better results trying to dehydrate chili than I did.

I have had several dehydrators over the years and some of them have been better than others. One thing I learned early on about them is that price doesn’t mean much. You can spend a couple hundred dollars on a unit and it turns out to be loud or doesn’t completely dehydrate food.

Most dehydrators are round and have stacked trays, the Excalibur is square so it takes up less space on a kitchen counter and the trays are easier to slide in and out of the front of the unit. One of the nicest features of this dehydrator is the timer; you can set it to turn off at a specific time or have it run for a certain duration.

When I dry vegetables like peas and grapes they require less time than thick cuts of meat used to make jerky. The trays slide in and out of the unit perfectly; there’s no wrong way to insert them because they are all the same size.

As far as cleaning goes, the outside can be wiped down with a sponge. I strongly suggest that you leave the trays out of the unit once you have processed a batch. You can shake out the dehydrator the same way you get crumbs out of a toaster in case pieces curl and come off of the tray.

I prefer a square dehydrator because of the space that they save; the trays are usually more durable than round trays. You can buy replacement trays for this one if you crack one of them but five is the limit of trays that you can have.

The product works great. Love that it has 10 trays to maximize the amount of food I want to dry. You don’t have to use all the trays if you have less to dry but there if you need them. Trays allow plenty of air to flow through and my food did not stick to the trays.

Trays slide in and out easily. The only downside is the unit does not heat to the temperature set on the dial. It is 5-10 degrees below. This did not pose a problem for me as I just turned up the temperature.

I did notice that if I used fewer trays the temperature rose to almost what the dial was set to. This was not a problem for me and maybe it just took a little more time to dry. There is no timer but I didn’t find this a problem.

Gave the rating a 4 because of the temp difference. Would buy this product again.

I placed an order on November 28th and the product was not out of stock. By the 2nd week of December I still hadn’t received a shipping confirmation, so I called only to find out that it was out of stock from an unapologetic employee of theirs.

The employee stated that they wouldn’t even have it in stock until at least two weeks after Christmas. About a week later I received an email stating that they canceled my order because they didn’t have an expected in stock date.

Mean while I could’ve order this product through someone else, but figured it was better late than never. Trying to find this product at a decent price has been challenging.

Dried a batch of onions in it this weekend, I have tried other dryers. This drier dried evenly through out and did not brown the onions like my other driers do adjustable heat with fan really help If anyone knows where to get tray liners for it I would like to know.

Very effective and flexible multi-purpose drier with good capacity and options

But no rubber tip as stated in the item description

product never here

I was so happy to find a small dehydrator for my neighbhors figs. for the most part it was fine. the top shelf was a little tight but the figs came out great. It is now apple season and I’m going to try my hand at that.

I’m finding that there are a lot of options. Dehydrated spaghetti sauce? I guess its worth a try!.

I am very pleased with the Excalibur Dehydrator. It effectively dehydrates fruit when fully loaded. The information and recipe books are a great help as well. I am looking forward to making some jerky this autumn.

I had the same issue with the trays not fitting flat on the base. Drove me crazy for a day! I loaded the trays with fruit hoping that the weight would make the first tray sit flat. but nope, still a gap and the weight on the center caused the center metal fan gaurd to press against the fan.

Either the trays do not go with the unit or the fan gaurd was made wrong for the unit. I ended up removing the metal fan gaurd (which was way to easy to remove) and amazingly the base tray set flat. This was my first time dehydrating and i dried 8 trays of fruit in a half day.

I love it! The initial fit issue is why i gave it a 3. It works great, after the modification, and I love all the trays and tray accessories.

Our old dehydrator was a Nesco that finally gave up after about 25 years, the replacement I just purchased in Feb has now overheated twice and ruined 7 trays. The first time it overheated only a single tray was being used, now it has done it again with the heat set to 95 (a low setting) and with 6 trays, all of which are now ruined.

When I say ruined, I mean that they have distorted and no longer fit properly. Sad because the new trays did not fit properly either, but our old ones did so those were the ones we were using. This is no longer the quality product that I’ve come to expect from Nesco–although the Fleet Farm description says Made in USA the product label says Made in China.

The thermal fuse would blow on the old one, I wonder if they forgot to put the thermal fuse in the new one?.

First of all, to give you some idea. I bought this dehyrdator THREE times over two months. The first time was a gift , and bought from HD- the trays were warped. I thought ok, let me try Target so that its not part of the same lot.

The trays were not warped, however about 4 hrs in, the motor became louder and louder and sounded very unstable, to the point that it vibrated itself off my table. I thought, let me try one last time and order from HD.

Third time was NOT a charm and the motor was loud after a few hours and as I was typing in my complaint directly to Nesco the motor completely lost it and there was the loudest banging sound coming from it that I was horrified and shut the whole thing off.

The trays also never sat on the base properly. The first tray that sat on the tray would hover over it leaving a gap for the air to come out. The only way it would sit right was if all 8 trays were on it and the weight of the other 7 trays pushed the first tray down to meet the base.

I can’t understand how there are so many good reviews for it. I bought this thing three times, and none of them worked right. Made in the USA?!! What an embarrassment. And if you buy it from Target you can’t get a refund back to a gift card if you buy with a gift card, you get a merchandise credit card which means I’m now limited to buying from the store and not online.

Ridiculous.

Large capacity, works quickly and cleans up ok. Trays are NOT dishwasher safe.

Works Great!! Quiet and lots of room for dehydrating. Still haven’t come close to filling it even with 4lbs of beef for jerky. Glad I purchased it!

Completely satisfied with product and service. Very quick dispatch, decent packaging. Food dehydrator works well, easy to operate, easy to keep it clean, fairy quiet when in use. Bought as a present for wife, she loves it.

Sturdy commercial unit. Does get hot on the outside but much better than the plastic units. Dried beef jerky and apples and them came out perfectly.

This dehydrator is amazing! It works better than expected, it came quickly and in perfect condition!

I’ve owned the dehydrator for about 14 days and it’s been in use for 10 of those days. Positives:1. You don’t need to rotate the trays ever. All 10 trays dehydrate at even rates. 2. The temperature is very accurate.

I set it at 110 F and measured for 1 hour. It stayed at 110 F most of the time. It spent 10% of the time fluctuating between 108 F and 113 F. 3. The 15 x 15 trays are fully stainless steel and can be used end to end.

All space can be used. 4. The interior is stainless. The build is sold and the dehydrator seems like it will last years. 5. It’s easy to use. You can set 2 timers for up to 99 hours. I often set one for 140 F for 2 hours, then 110 F for 6 hours.

Negatives:1. The doors really aren’t that great. Mine aren’t flimsy but they are not sealed like I was expecting. I’m used to the typical dehydrator with a nearly sealed chamber and filtered air outlet, likely near the bottom.

The fan blows warm air quickly so I’m not concerned about bugs flying in. I’ve made raw fruit leathers that were incredible. I’ve made wraps out of young coconut meat and a little bit of the water that tasted like crepes that could be stuffed with fruit and a cashew cream cheese I made in the machine by dehydrating a fleshly made cashew cream with the juice of 1.

5 lemons and a little nutritional yeast. I’ve made vegetable wraps out of spinach, zucchini, and chia seeds that made delicious sandwich wraps, and incredible bite sized snacks. I can’t imagine there is another dehydrator that is in this price range that is built this well.

Overall my rating would be a 4. 4 so rounded down to 4. If I was in the market for a dehydrator, I’d buy this one again. It would get a 5. 0 if the door was better. My fingers are crossed for a door upgrade kit although that may not be realistic for Excalibur.

I was very impressed with the Excalibur food dehydrator. The two zones let me dehydrate different veggies at the same time using different durations and temperatures. The digital display is easy to understand, the trays are durable, and the machine is easy to clean from top to bottom.

I used to work with this at a restaurant to make the garnishes for desserts and cocktails we served and works great! I used it for years and it always worked great! Easy to set up, to use and to clean, you just wash the trays and wipe if any juice dropped on the bottom.

You can make sooo many things in here, fruits, veggies, jerky. you name it! I love how creative you can get with this!.

TranslateShow in original languageVoilà déjà quelques mois que je l ai et Étant barman je cherchais un moyen de déshydrater mes fruits pour mes cocktails et une passion m est venue à me faire quelques super pots de fruits, légumes pour décorer et également servir en cocktails ou plats.

Un léger bruit de moteur pour une déshydratation de quelques jours peut gêner si l appareil est placé dans une salle où l on vit, a installer dans un coin d un garage c est le must. Dommage que l anotice soit en anglais mais on trouve facilement les techniques sur internet.

Merci.

There is a lot of hype around Excalibur dehydrator in the dehydrator community, but I don’t find these machines live up to the hype. First of all, the entire machine is made of plastic. It’s very bulky.

It’s hard to move in and out of storage if you don’t have a permanent home for it. The door just sits on the machine, so it will fall off when you move it around. I personally find the trays hard to clean.

This plastic mesh sits on top on a sturdy plastic frame. You remove it but it’s flimsy and moves around when you try to clean it. It also doesn’t go in the dishwasher. The outside of the machine is hard to clean.

Let say your machine was in storage and you put it out at harvest to dry some stuff, all the groves and ridges catch all the dust, I find it very annoying to clean. Excalibur claims you don’t need to rotate the trays, you absolutely need to rotate the trays.

The fan at the back is small and things closer to the fan will dry faster, midway through the drying cycle you need to rotate the trays for eveness. Specially with fruit roll up, flax crackers and raw granola.

When drying herbs, you need to close the machine prior opening the door or you will blow all the dried herbs on your face. I tired many dehydrator through out the years and this one was the slowest. The parraflexx sheets have Teflon in them and are very expensive.

I have 2 Excalibur, one my grandmother gave me, then eventually purchased a second one after it died. After a few years I sold it and bought something different, mostly because the machine is plastic.

Pro: made in America. Tempurature control. Same model for years and years. Long lasting. There is a lot of resources and recipes online for Excalibur. Cons: expensive. Plastic. Slow at drying. Need to rotate trays.

Very bulky. Door just sits on and falls off easily. Hard to clean. Fan is small.

I love this Excalibur dehydrator. If has 9 trays so enough space for drying large amounts of food. Everything I have dried so far has come out like a charm. I was hesitant at first because it cost more than many dehydrators.

It is an investment but my older dehydrator was not drying very well. I do not regret that I made this purchase. It is a larger machine. About the size of a large microwave. It is fairly quiet. I decided to put mine on top of my dryer since space was limited on my counter.

I would highly recommend this machine.

Quality dehydrator built to last. I like the fact the trays are square and not round like some of them. You can get more on each tray because they are square and larger than most. It takes electricity running for hours to dehydrate a batch of food, so having 9 trays makes it more economical to run because you can dehydrate more food at one time.

I put the racks in my dishwasher even though they don’t fit perfectly, but they come out like new after each washing. The dehydrator is rather large, so I keep it on my enclosed porch when I am not using it.

If you’re into drying food, you can’t go wrong with Excalibur.