Which Food Dehydrator is Best? Excalibur, Tribest Sedona, Cosori, or Nesco?

Which Food Dehy­dra­tor is Best? Excal­ibur, Tribest Sedona, Cosori, or Nesco? The food dehy­dra­tor will def­i­nite­ly com­ple­ment any mod­ern, healthy kitchen. They have been wide­ly used to dry food to increase its shelf life. How­ev­er, it is trou­ble­some to iden­ti­fy and pur­chase a well-per­form­ing mod­el.

The chal­lenge in the selec­tion of reli­able brands of dehy­dra­tors on the mar­ket is due to the pres­ence of many Chi­nese knock­offs that are poor­ly built. For this rea­son, we have keen­ly select­ed the best dehy­dra­tors on the mar­ket, leav­ing out the Chi­nese coun­ter­feits. The cho­sen mod­els are the most rep­utable and meet qual­i­ty standards.

Dis­clo­sure: As an Ama­zon Asso­ciate, we may earn an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion for pur­chas­es you make when using the links on this page.

Read More: Excal­ibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Food Dehy­dra­tor | Review 

How We Selected The Best Dehydrator

To come up with the best-per­form­ing dehy­dra­tors, we rat­ed them on var­i­ous para­me­ters. First is the abil­i­ty of a mod­el to dis­trib­ute heat even­ly through the trays for com­plete dehy­dra­tion of food. We also checked on the amount of food that a par­tic­u­lar mod­el can dry at a go with­in a giv­en time. Oth­er fac­tors include the ease of oper­a­tion, which involves the sim­plic­i­ty of set­ting and con­trol­ling the whole dehy­dra­tion process. The ease of clean­ing and main­tain­ing these brands was also con­sid­ered before rat­ing each among the best. More impor­tant­ly, these dehy­dra­tors are from man­u­fac­tur­ers who have a long his­to­ry and great expe­ri­ence in mak­ing kitchen appliances.

Excalibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Electric Food Dehydrator

Excal­ibur 3926TB is a mid-range dehy­dra­tor mod­el man­u­fac­tured in the USA by a well-known com­pa­ny that has spe­cialised in the pro­duc­tion of health-relat­ed prod­ucts since 1973. No won­der, the Excal­ibur dehy­dra­tors are very pop­u­lar among USA con­sumers and around the world and appre­ci­at­ed for their great qual­i­ty and effi­cient food dehydration.

Design: The dehy­dra­tor is equipped with par­al­lax hor­i­zon­tal air­flow and Hyper­wave fluc­tu­a­tion sys­tems. The par­al­lax hor­i­zon­tal air­flow enables even faster food dehy­dra­tion with­out fre­quent checks or tray rotation.

While the Hyper­wave fluc­tu­a­tion sys­tem makes the tem­per­a­ture inside the unit vary from high­er to low­er and vice ver­sa, which ensures a uni­form­ly dehy­drat­ed sur­face and deep lev­els of food.

Pow­er: The Excal­ibur Food Dehy­dra­tor has a 7‑inch fan that blows a lot of air to increase the rate at which air is cir­cu­lat­ing in the unit. The fan is pow­ered with the 110-volt, 600-watt motor, which makes it a friend­ly pow­er con­sump­tion model.

Trays: Excal­ibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Elec­tric Food Dehy­dra­tor has nine (9) 15’’ X 15’’ trays that are made from BPA-free polypropy­lene and pro­vide a 15-square-foot food dry­ing space. Such a wide space enables you to dehy­drate dif­fer­ent kinds of your favorite food.

This mod­el comes with addi­tion­al acces­sories like flex­i­ble non-stick mesh tray inserts, which allow the small pieces of food to dry with­out falling down.

Con­trols: It also has a 26-hour timer that can auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch off the unit at a spe­cif­ic set time. More­over, it has a ther­mo­stat that ranges from 105 °F — 164 °F / °C — 74 °C). The ther­mo­stat can be set to a low tem­per­a­ture while dehy­drat­ing food con­tain­ing heat-sen­si­tive nutri­ents and active enzymes. Food that requires high tem­per­a­tures, like jerky meat, can also be pre­served by increas­ing the heat amount.

 War­ran­ty: Excal­ibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Elec­tric Food Dehy­dra­tor comes with a very gen­er­ous 10-year man­u­fac­tur­er’s war­ran­ty, one of the indus­try’s best.

Sum­ma­ry: The mod­el is known for its excel­lent qual­i­ty of dehy­dra­tion, and this dehy­dra­tor is wide­ly regard­ed as the best among the raw food­ist com­mu­ni­ty. Since it is not extreme­ly com­pli­cat­ed, it is easy to use. Users are required to have a basic under­stand­ing of how to mod­i­fy their set­tings to suit the dehy­dra­tion of spe­cif­ic food types. The large capac­i­ty of trays is suit­able for large fam­i­lies. Excal­ibur dehy­dra­tor is a high-qual­i­ty brand, and there­fore, the man­u­fac­tur­er gives ten years of lim­it­ed cov­er­age, which guar­an­tees you trust in its making.

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Tribest Sedona Express SDE-S6780‑B Digital Food Dehydrator

The Tribest Sedona Express mod­el is a pre­mi­um domes­tic dehy­dra­tor that is over­filled with a range of advanced features.

Design: The Tribest Sedona Express is built with a hor­i­zon­tal air-flow dis­tri­b­u­tion that ensures even and quick dehy­dra­tion. It has a glass-hinged door and LED light built inside of the cham­ber that eas­es mon­i­tor­ing of the food progress.

This mod­el also comes with a BPA-free plas­tic drip tray at the bot­tom of the dry­ing cham­ber that will catch crumbs that fall from the trays above. This con­struc­tion will sim­pli­fy clean­ing the dehy­dra­tor after use and keep it tidy while dry­ing the operation.

 Pow­er: The mod­el also has a 470 watts 7‑inch diam­e­ter sin­gle fan at the cen­ter of the unit back that blows hot air even­ly through­out the unit for effi­cient dehy­dra­tion. It is also equipped with a wash­able and reusable Air Fil­ter to pro­vide clean air cir­cu­la­tion inside the dry­ing chamber.

Trays: Fur­ther­more, it has 11 stain­less steel trays with a size of 10 inch­es X 13 inch­es and a dry­ing capac­i­ty of 9.9 sq. ft./ 1430 sq. in. That allows users to dehy­drate large vol­umes of food in one cycle.

Con­trols: This dehy­dra­tor has an all-dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el with very advanced tem­per­a­ture and timer set­tings. There­fore, it is quite com­pli­cat­ed and elab­o­rate with many but­tons to push for reg­u­lat­ing tem­per­a­ture and timer settings.

For exam­ple, it not only has straight­for­ward tem­per­a­ture set­tings from 77°F/25°C to 167°F /75°C or a timer for up to 99 hours and an addi­tion­al con­tin­u­ous mode for up to 120 hours. Besides, it has 3 addi­tion­al tem­per­a­ture-timer modes – 1) sequen­tial two-stage dehy­drat­ing options that allow to start the process at high tem­per­ate and then auto­mat­i­cal­ly reduce to low; 2) a high-tem­per­a­ture cycle that does not allow the tem­per­a­ture to drop that is use­ful for dehy­drat­ing meat; 3) low tem­per­ate mode that does not allow to go tem­per­a­ture high that is use­ful for raw food rehydrating.

War­ran­ty: This Tribest Sedona Express SDE-S6780‑B Dehy­dra­tor comes with a ten (10) years war­ran­ty from the manufacturer.

Sum­ma­ry: It is a pre­mi­um dehy­dra­tor and thus comes at a pre­mi­um price. How­ev­er, it has a range of out­stand­ing fea­tures that cer­tain­ly jus­ti­fy its price. For exam­ple, it does not only have the most advanced con­trol set­ting but is also designed to qui­etest dehy­dra­tor on the mar­ket test­ed at only 45 deci­bels and suit­able for noise-sen­si­tive indi­vid­u­als or in an envi­ron­ment where silence is key. Besides, despite han­dling the large vol­ume of food for dry­ing, it has a mod­est foot­print and total size of 12 in x 19.6 in x 14.5 in that allow­ing users to min­i­mize the stor­age and save counter space.

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NESCO FD-75A Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator

Nesco FD-75‑A Dehy­dra­tor Snack­mas­ter Pro is a bud­get ver­ti­cal-style dehy­dra­tor man­u­fac­tured by the USA-based Nesco Lim­it­ed Com­pa­ny, which pro­duces a wide range of kitchen appliances.

Design: The mod­el is spe­cial since it has a top-mount­ed fan that blows air down­wards, not nec­es­sar­i­ly through trays but through an exte­ri­or pres­sur­ized cham­ber. This hot air is then blown hor­i­zon­tal­ly across all trays, allow­ing even, fast, and nutri­tious food dehydration.

Anoth­er dis­tinct fea­ture is the pres­ence of an opaque Vita-Safe exte­ri­or that obscures harm­ful light, which is destruc­tive to food nutrients.

Such inno­v­a­tive design allows the Nesco FD-75‑A dehy­dra­tor to dry the food­stuff even­ly and effi­cient­ly which is rare in ver­ti­cal­ly stack­able dehydrators.

Pow­er: This dehy­dra­tor is pow­ered by the 600 watts motor that is locat­ed on the top cov­er. Such type of design is very wise since it keeps the motor safe from any liq­uid drop and leaks inside.

 Trays: NESCO Snack­mas­ter Pro dehy­dra­tor comes with 5 BPA-Free plas­tic trays. Besides, the user can add 7 extra trays to expand it to 12 trays. Each expand­able tray of this mod­el has a diam­e­ter of 13.5 inch­es. This fea­ture allows one to dehy­drate a large quan­ti­ty of food at a go.

Con­trols: It also has an adjustable ther­mo­stat with a tem­per­a­ture range of 95 ᵒF / 35 ᵒC — 160 ᵒF / 71 ᵒC (with 10 ᵒF — 15 ᵒF incre­ments). Such tem­per­a­ture flex­i­bil­i­ty allows the user to dry food, which requires low tem­per­a­tures like fruits, veg­eta­bles, and del­i­cate herbs. Also, it gives a high­er tem­per­a­ture range to dry food like fish and jerky meat, which require a lot of heat.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this dehy­dra­tor does not come with a timer, so if the user needs to set a timer for auto­mat­ic shut-off at the end of the cycle he/she should buy a sep­a­rate timer device.

War­ran­ty: Nesco FD-75‑A dehy­dra­tor comes with a 1‑year Lim­it­ed Warranty.

 Sum­ma­ry: The Nesco FD-75‑A dehy­dra­tor is a very pop­u­lar machine not only because it has a very afford­able price but also because it is able to dry food very even­ly despite the ver­ti­cal design which is known to dehy­drate food not as effi­cient­ly as a hor­i­zon­tal­ly designed dehy­dra­tor. Besides, clean­ing this mod­el is quite easy since it has a top-mount­ed fan, and drip­ping food liq­uid does not reach into the heater chamber.

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Cosori and Samson “Silent” Stainless Steel Dehydrator

Sam­son “Silent” Stain­less Steel Dehy­dra­tor is avail­able in 2 mod­els with 6 and 10 trays. Although it comes under the Sam­son brand, the well-known man­u­fac­tur­er of mas­ti­cat­ing and hydraulic press juicers and oth­er healthy kitchen appli­ances, the dehy­dra­tor is man­u­fac­tured in China.

Design: The dehy­dra­tor has a par­al­lel air cir­cu­la­tion sys­tem, that releas­es the heat­ed air from the back of the unit, and then the air is dis­trib­uted across all trays. Such dry­ing tech­nol­o­gy is known as very effi­cient that tends to dry food evenly.

Besides, the entire dehy­dra­tor unit is made of stain­less steel. It also has a glass door to give you a clear visu­al obser­va­tion of the dehy­drat­ing food with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly alter­ing the process.

Addi­tion­al­ly, it has a drip tray at the bot­tom, which holds crumbs and oth­er food drippings.

 Pow­er: To enhance air cir­cu­la­tion while dry­ing, the dehy­dra­tor has a pow­er­ful 7 inch­es fan. In terms of pow­er con­sump­tion, this mod­el is 1000 watts.

Trays: It also has 6 or 10 stain­less steel trays with a dimen­sion of 12 inch­es by 13 inch­es with 1.25 inch­es of space between the trays. Each gives a wide space to dry your favorite food. This mod­el comes with six (6) or ten (10) Bisphenol‑A free mesh lin­ers for easy dehy­dra­tion of small­er food mate­ri­als in your kitchen.

Con­trols: It is easy to con­trol Sam­son’s “Silent” dehy­dra­tor since it has 4 dig­i­tal push but­tons and an LCD con­trol pan­el. The “Temp/time” but­ton sets a ther­mo­stat with a tem­per­a­ture range of 95 degrees Fahren­heit — 167 degrees Fahren­heit with 9 degrees incre­ments. Such a wide tem­per­a­ture range enables the user to dry dif­fer­ent types of food that require a vary­ing amount of heat.

The same but­ton also reg­u­lates a 1 to 24 hours timer which shuts off the machine at the end of the pro­grammed time.

War­ran­ty: Cus­tomers are assured of a qual­i­ty mod­el since the man­u­fac­tur­er gives 5 years war­ran­ty for the heater, con­trol pan­el, and fan.

Sum­ma­ry: Although, Sam­son’s “Silent” Stain­less Steel Dehy­dra­tor is rather a sim­ple dehy­dra­tor it is worth con­sid­er­ing since it has a rea­son­able price com­pared to oth­er stain­less-steel devices. It is very easy to use and clean. Besides, being silent while dry­ing food allows you to use it in noise-sen­si­tive areas.

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STX International STX-DEH-1200W-XLS Dehydra Commercial Grade Stainless Steel Digital Food Dehydrator

STX Inter­na­tion­al STX-DEH-1200W-XLS Stain­less Steel Food Dehy­dra­tor is a large com­mer­cial device pro­duced by the USA-based STX Inter­na­tion­al Com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in sell­ing home and com­mer­cial kitchen equipment.

 Design: Apart from being 100% stain­less steel this machine has a unique com­mer­cial-type design where the front part of the device where the trays are locat­ed is sep­a­rat­ed from the back part where the motor is locat­ed for eas­i­er clean­ing and maintenance.

It is a Hor­i­zon­tal Air-Flow type of Dehy­dra­tor with a fan and motor mount­ed at the back of the unit that pulls the heat­ed air hor­i­zon­tal­ly at all tray levels.

Pow­er: Since it is a hor­i­zon­tal air-flow dehy­dra­tor, its 7’’ fan blade blows a lot of air even­ly towards all dry­ing racks. Addi­tion­al­ly, it has a dehy­drat­ing pow­er of 1200 watts.

 Trays: Notably, this brand pro­vides a lot of space to dehy­drate food­stuff since it has 10 stain­less steel dry­ing rack, which has a dimen­sion of 16’’ wide by 14.5’’ deep each. Every dry­ing rack has 3/8 inch square holes, which can accom­mo­date small-sized food materials.

Con­trols: The STX Dehy­dra dehy­dra­tor has a 100% dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el at the top of the unit. This con­trol pan­el allows you to con­trol all its oper­a­tions smooth­ly. For instance, there is a 15 hours timer that can be set to shut off the unit after a spe­cif­ic peri­od automatically.

There are sev­en Pre-Set Tem­per­a­tures on the con­trol pan­el, which show sug­ges­tions at which a spe­cif­ic food type should be dried. Its heat tem­per­a­ture ranges from 97 °F / 36 °C to 165 °F / 74 °C. This enables users to dry veg­eta­bles and fruits at low tem­per­a­tures and oth­er kinds of food like fish and crack­ers at high temperatures.

War­ran­ty: STX Inter­na­tion­al STX-DEH-1200W-XLS Stain­less Steel Food Dehy­dra­tor is cov­ered with 3 years man­u­fac­tured warranty.

 Sum­ma­ry: This dehy­dra­tor is very large and will suit real dehy­drat­ing enthu­si­ast who plans to dry a lot of food or small busi­ness. It dries food even­ly, is easy to use, and is clean as the front and back parts of the unit come apart con­ve­nient­ly, it is also well-built looks like a tank, and will serve its own­er for many years. Besides, after pur­chas­ing this mod­el, you are giv­en a cook­book by dehy­drat­ing expert Tam­my Gan­gloff con­tain­ing over 270 dry­ing recipes.

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L’EQUIP FilterPro 6 Tray Food Dehydrator

L’Equip Fil­ter Pro Dig­i­tal Food Dehy­dra­tor is man­u­fac­tured by the rep­utable South Kore­an L’ Equip Com­pa­ny that is well known as a pro­duc­er of healthy kitchen appliances

Design: L’Equip Fil­ter Pro Dig­i­tal is a ver­ti­cal food dehy­dra­tor with a fan locat­ed at the bot­tom of the base unit. The fan cir­cu­lates the hot air from the bot­tom to the top through the holes in the tube locat­ed in the cen­tral part of the machine. This is the typ­i­cal air dis­tri­b­u­tion for ver­ti­cal dehy­dra­tors with expand­able trays.

Besides, the Fil­ter­Pro food dehy­dra­tor is specif­i­cal­ly known to have a fil­ter air sys­tem that ensures your dehy­drat­ed food is free from con­t­a­m­i­nants. This fea­ture gives you the con­fi­dence to con­sume dried food.

A plas­tic mate­r­i­al that makes it up is BPA free hence ensur­ing your safe con­sump­tion of dried food

Pow­er: The mod­el has a dry­ing sys­tem of 530 watts, and this makes it an ener­gy-effi­cient device.

 Trays: On pur­chase, the mod­el comes with six (6) rec­tan­gu­lar 17″ x 11″ trays, where the two bot­tom trays are deep for mak­ing yogurts and dehy­drat­ing large pieces of food. It has a capac­i­ty of 15 trays with each tray pro­vid­ing 1.2 square feet of the dehy­drat­ing sur­face. The trays are made from durable BPA-free plastic.

The dehy­dra­tor set also includes six (6) tray mesh inserts and two (2) uni­form sheets. The mesh inserts are designed for dehy­drat­ing small food items such as herbs to fall via tray holes. While uni­form sheets are designed for dehy­drat­ing liq­uid food or fruit leather.

 Con­trols: Besides, the L’Equip Fil­ter Pro dehy­dra­tor is equipped with a dig­i­tal ther­mo­stat with a tem­per­a­ture range from 95 ᵒF / 35 ᵒC to 158 ᵒF / 70 ᵒC. This allows dehy­drat­ing var­i­ous foods like jerky, fruits, veg­eta­bles, fish, crack­ers, and herbs. This mod­el has an LED dig­i­tal 1 — 24 hours timer for auto-shut­off. More­over, it has a heat con­trol sen­sor to ensure con­sis­ten­cy and even dehy­dra­tion of food.

 War­ran­ty: L’Equip Fil­ter Pro Dig­i­tal Dehy­dra­tor comes with a 10-year war­ran­ty on base and motor, and 1‑year on trays & accessories.

 Sum­ma­ry: To come to the point, the L’Equip Fil­ter Pro Dig­i­tal Dehy­dra­tor is well made afford­able machine with a sophis­ti­cat­ed dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el and man­u­fac­tured by a rep­utable com­pa­ny. To assure cus­tomers of a long dry­ing time, the man­u­fac­tur­er gives a 10-year war­ran­ty. Besides, it has an expand­able design and will suit dehy­drat­ing small and large food batch­es. For most dehy­drat­ing tasks, this is an excel­lent device, how­ev­er, it will work effi­cient­ly with a max­i­mum of 8–12 trays depend­ing on the type of food.

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Hamilton Beach 32100A Digital Food Dehydrator

Hamil­ton Beach 32100A is a rep­utable dehy­dra­tor mod­el that has effi­cient and con­tin­u­ous air­flow. Such air­flow enables thor­ough and even dehy­dra­tion of food with­out fre­quent tray rota­tion. It also has an auto-shut­off 48 hours timer that allows you to dry your favorite food and car­ry out oth­er activ­i­ties with no wor­ries. More­over, it has an adjustable dig­i­tal ther­mo­stat with a tem­per­a­ture con­trol range of 100 degrees Fahren­heit to 160 degrees Fahren­heit. That enables you to dry a wide vari­ety of foods, depend­ing on their heat requirements.

Indeed, it has a capac­i­ty of five trays, which offers enough space suit­able for dry­ing home­made snacks and oth­er kinds of foods. In addi­tion, the mod­el comes with a fine mesh wire sheet which enhances the dehy­dra­tion of small-sized food mate­ri­als. This dehy­dra­tor comes with a sol­id sheet for fruit roll enthu­si­asts to serve its pur­pose. The mod­el is ener­gy effi­cient since its dry­ing sys­tem is 500 watts in terms of ener­gy consumption.

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Summary

Most­ly, decid­ing on the mod­el of the dehy­dra­tor to pur­chase is cum­ber­some. How­ev­er, through keen mar­ket research on the fea­tures of the dehy­dra­tor you need, pick­ing a rep­utable brand is sim­ple. The above mod­els have spe­cial fea­tures that make them stand out to be the best. These fea­tures include a wide tem­per­a­ture range, low noise lev­el, ener­gy effi­cien­cy, even heat dis­tri­b­u­tion, and the pres­ence of an auto-shut­off timer. Such and oth­er fea­tures make them your go-to brands.