Excalibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Food Dehydrator | Review

 

Excal­ibur 3926TB is one of the best-known food dehy­dra­tors in the dehy­drat­ing field that the Excal­ibur Com­pa­ny makes. Excal­ibur is a famous man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pa­ny that is locat­ed in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia, in the USA.

It has been spe­cial­iz­ing in the man­u­fac­ture of most essen­tial kitchen appli­ances since 1973. Excal­ibur 3926TB dehy­dra­tor has gained pop­u­lar­i­ty among their cook­ware over the years in the dehy­drat­ing mar­ket. Its many fea­tures enable the users to dry their favorite food­stuff com­plete­ly. More­over, this mod­el is known to be quite ver­sa­tile and pos­sess­es an effi­cient dehy­drat­ing sys­tem-par­al­lax straight airflow.

The most impor­tant fea­tures of this dehy­dra­tor mod­el are com­pre­hen­sive­ly detailed in this review.

Will you con­sid­er an alter­na­tive food dehy­dra­tor? Check out the arti­cle — 7 Best Food Dehy­dra­tors for Healthy Kitchen.

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

Horizontal Technology and Design

Infor­ma­tion about spec­i­fi­ca­tions and fea­tures regard­ing air­flow in any dehy­dra­tor mod­el is quite essential.

Par­allex Air­flow: The Excal­ibur 3926TB food dehy­dra­tor has a hor­i­zon­tal air­flow design called Par­allex air­flow sys­tem. At the rear part of this unit, a sev­en (7) inch­es fan con­tin­u­al­ly pulls cold air from the sur­round­ing, which goes through heat­ing. After­ward, the hot air is spread over the food on the trays.

This air­flow design is known to enable even cir­cu­la­tion of heat on all trays hence ensur­ing effi­cient dehy­dra­tion. Con­tin­u­ous dis­tri­b­u­tion of hot air through­out the unit ensures that the user dehy­drates a lot of food ingre­di­ents with­in a short time.

Hyper­wave Fluc­tu­a­tion: To back up the Par­allex air­flow sys­tem, this dehy­dra­tor mod­el has a Hyper­wave Fluc­tu­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy. This tech­nol­o­gy enables the tem­per­a­ture to fluc­tu­ate, allow­ing the food ingre­di­ents to cool after a giv­en time. The main aim of fre­quent cool­ing of the food ingre­di­ent is to pre­vent the food ingre­di­ents’ core from dry­ing and hard­en­ing. If the out­er sur­face of food ingre­di­ents hard­ens, the mois­ture inside the food­stuff might not whol­ly escape. Mois­ture remains inside the food­stuff put it at risk of har­bor­ing harm­ful micro-organ­isms like bac­te­ria, which might make it go bad.

Though dry­ing food with this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is efficient.

Exterior Design and Power

Notably, the mate­ri­als mak­ing up the out­er case of this dehy­dra­tor mod­el are made from FDA-approved food-safe Noryl plas­tic. This mate­r­i­al does not emit harm­ful fumes as long as the device oper­ates at a tem­per­a­ture below 160 degrees Fahren­heit. Addi­tion­al­ly, its trays are made from food-grade plas­tic mate­r­i­al, which is BPA-Free. Final­ly, this mod­el comes with a detach­able door for easy load­ing up of food ingredients.

Besides, you need to dry larg­er food ingre­di­ents like whole fruits; this dehy­dra­tor design allows you to remove some trays to cre­ate more space. This will make the process even easier.

 In par­tic­u­lar, this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is a 600 watts unit that enables its fan to blow hot air hor­i­zon­tal­ly and dehy­drate the food over the nine trays. That means most peo­ple can eas­i­ly con­nect this kitchen appli­ance to the ordi­nary kitchen elec­tri­cal sock­et and dry their food with no issues.

Elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion: Excal­ibur has a mod­er­ate pow­er con­sump­tion rate; on aver­age, it will con­sume about 0.34 kWh (kilo­watt per hour) of ener­gy if you run it at the 140ᵒ Fahren­heit set­ting. Hence most users per­ceive the Excal­ibur 3926TB dehy­dra­tor as ener­gy efficient.

Trays and Trays Capacity

Excal­ibur 3926TB comes with nine (9) large 15″ by 15″ trays frames that are made from almost unbreak­able Food Grade, BPA-free, and FDA-approved Polypropy­lene. Besides, each tray frame is pro­vid­ed with flex­i­ble BPA-free poly screen tray inserts that are made as mesh sheets.

All Excal­ibur trays have a 14″ by 14″ dry­ing space, which is a sub­stan­tial dehy­drat­ing space to allow the user to pre­serve a fair amount of food­stuff, espe­cial­ly for domes­tic con­sump­tion. Fur­ther­more, the square tray’s shape is very con­ve­nient and allows the user to rotate them if nec­es­sary, not only by the 180-degree angle but also by the 90 degrees, even food drying.

Control Panel

Remark­ably, this mod­el has an intu­itive con­trol pan­el that allows most peo­ple to oper­ate it with ease.

Ther­mo­stat: It has an adjustable dial-in ther­mo­stat with a wide tem­per­a­ture range between 105ᵒ Fahren­heit — 165ᵒ Fahrenheit/ 41ºC — 74ºC. The low­er tem­per­a­ture range enables the user to dry herbs, veg­eta­bles, and fruits with­out inter­fer­ing with their aro­ma, nutri­ents, and col­or. On the oth­er hand, the high­er tem­per­a­ture is most­ly use­ful when dehy­drat­ing beef jerky to ensure that all harm­ful micro-organ­isms that might be in the meat are killed. Here, you only need to adjust the ther­mo­stat and dry the food of your choice.

Timer: Addi­tion­al­ly, if you need to expe­ri­ence a stress-free dehy­drat­ing night with no wor­ries about your favorite jerky, this machine will aid you. This is due to the pres­ence of a 26-hours count­down timer, which is fit­ted to the con­trol pan­el of this mod­el. It enables the unit to go off after a set time auto­mat­i­cal­ly. You need to select the cor­rect time tak­en for spe­cif­ic food ingre­di­ents to dry. After the set­ting, you need not be present to switch it off. How­ev­er, this timer can­not allow the user to set time regard­ing min­utes. This is because the min­i­mum time that one can set the timer is two hours.

Food Preparation and Functionality

With this dehy­dra­tor mod­el, you can quick­ly dry herbs, apples, bananas, berries, apri­cots, cher­ries, figs, plums, veg­eta­bles, nuts, jerky, and fish in your com­fort.  When dehy­drat­ing any food, a user must under­stand how to pre­pare food ingre­di­ents before dehy­dra­tion. Pre-treat­ment of food ingre­di­ents will make them main­tain their over­all tex­ture, col­or, and nutri­ents. For instance, blanch­ing is very nec­es­sary when dehy­drat­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles. Also, dip­ping can be done to most food ingre­di­ents to ensure your food is not at risk of oxi­da­tion. Every user should even know the tem­per­a­ture and time tak­en to dry a par­tic­u­lar type of food. For exam­ple, banana chips dry at 105ᵒ F and can take about 16 hours, while dry­ing pas­ta takes 2–4 hours at 135ᵒ F.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use this dehy­dra­tor mod­el for rais­ing bread dough if you are a bak­ing enthu­si­ast. How­ev­er, when rais­ing the bread dough, you should be care­ful not to end up with a dry one due to the cir­cu­lat­ing hot air.

Addi­tion­al­ly, if you require to dry crafts and flow­ers or make pot­pour­ri, the Excal­ibur 3926TB dehy­dra­tor will assist you in doing it with ease. How­ev­er, when doing all these, you might not be able to inspect this process visu­al­ly. This is because the dehy­dra­tor mod­el comes with an opaque black door. If you require a trans­par­ent one, you can opt to pur­chase one at an extra cost.

Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is rel­a­tive­ly easy, and the user needs no spe­cial skills to enable him/her dry almost every type of food. There is also a user’s man­u­al, which pro­vides cru­cial infor­ma­tion on the oper­a­tion of the dehy­dra­tor. Basi­cal­ly, the effi­cien­cy of dry­ing dif­fer­ent types of food is enhanced by the Par­allex Hor­i­zon­tal air­flow sys­tem and the Hyper­wave Fluc­tu­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Cold air goes over all the heat­ing ele­ments where the fan enables it to cir­cu­late through­out the unit, elim­i­nat­ing the need for tray rota­tion. Fur­ther­more, once you have set the timer, you need not check the dry­ing food frequently.

It is quite vital to check on the dehy­drat­ing man­u­al, which has a good num­ber of dehy­drat­ing recipes that can assist one in know­ing the num­ber of hours to set when dry­ing var­i­ous food ingre­di­ents. It is worth not­ing that the tem­per­a­ture shown on the dial screen might dif­fer from the food tem­per­a­ture. This aspect should not wor­ry you since this dehy­dra­tor is not made in a man­ner to main­tain the exact air tem­per­a­ture. Instead, its design intends to reg­u­late the cor­rect food tem­per­a­ture range.

Clean­ing: Clean­ing this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is easy because the heater and the motor are found at the back of the unit. Unlike the ver­ti­cal flow dehy­dra­tor, this mod­el has no issues with drips in the motor. Dur­ing clean­ing, you can wipe the unit with a damp cloth. Use warm, clean, soapy water to clean the trays. Since there can be sticky bits stuck on the sur­face of the mesh screen, you can scrub them off using a veg­etable brush. Avoid soak­ing the non-stick sheets in hot soapy water for a long time since this might dam­age them. Fur­ther­more, you can opt to use a dish­wash­er to clean plas­tic trays, but the man­u­fac­tur­er rec­om­mends hand wash­ing for the mesh screen inserts.

Dimensions

Gen­er­al­ly, the dehy­dra­tor has a dimen­sion of approx­i­mate­ly 17″ wide by 19″ deep by 12.5″ high and weighs 22 lbs.

Set Includes

• Dehy­dra­tor cab­i­net with 600 Watts fan and remov­able door;
• Nine (9) flex­i­ble trays with meshed inserts;
• Pre­serve It Nat­u­ral­ly dehy­drat­ing guide and recipe book;
• User man­u­al.

 Optional Accessories

Besides, the man­u­fac­tur­er offers some extra acces­sories com­pat­i­ble with all hor­i­zon­tal Excal­ibur dehy­dra­tors, which are sold separately.

The stain­less steel trays are a bit more cost­ly than the plas­tic ones but worth considering.

The non-stick dehy­dra­tor sheets will allow the user to pre­pare fruit leather or process sauces, pureed veg­eta­bles, fruits, or any semi-sol­id food ingre­di­ent. These sol­id non-stick sheets come in three dif­fer­ent types and include:

• The ParaFlexx Dis­pos­able Dry­ing sheets,
• The Paraflexx Ultra Sil­i­cone Dry­ing Sheet,
• The ParaFlexx Pre­mi­um Dry­ing Sheet.

If you opt to pur­chase these sol­id non-stick dry­ing sheets, it is always wise to check their size because the 14″ by 14″ dry­ing sheet is the cor­rect size that fits the Excal­ibur 3926TB dehydrator.

Special Features

Col­or: You will find this dehy­dra­tor brand either in white or black.

Oper­a­tion out­side of USA/Canada: All Excal­ibur dehy­dra­tors are avail­able with 110–120 Volts and 220–240 Volts sys­tems, depend­ing on their dis­tri­b­u­tion. The con­sumers are advised to pur­chase the mod­el com­pat­i­ble with their coun­try’s volt­age since using a dehy­dra­tor via the volt­age trans­former does not guar­an­tee the smooth and effi­cient oper­a­tion of the device. The USA and Cana­da retail­ers usu­al­ly offer ONLY 110–120 volt­age dehydrators.

Noise

In gen­er­al, dehy­dra­tors are not noisy devices. Yet, they oper­at­ed with a fan that runs con­tin­u­ous­ly for a few hours and releas­es some sound. This mod­el noise emis­sion ranges between 60 dB to 65 dB and is com­pa­ra­ble with the con­di­tion­er noise.

Warranty

Excal­ibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Elec­tric Food Dehy­dra­tor comes with a 10-year fac­to­ry Lim­it­ed war­ran­ty.

Pro and Cons

Pros:

• Even dis­tri­b­u­tion of air and thor­ough drying;
• Adjustable 105 — 165 degrees thermostat;
• Up to 26 hours count­down timer with auto­mat­ic shut off;
• Square trays allow 90-degree rotation;
• FDA approved cab­i­net and trays;
• Long war­ran­ty from the USA manufacturer;

Cons:

• The sol­id plas­tic door you can­not see-through;
• Loud­est dehy­dra­tor on the market;
• Old school and sim­ple exte­ri­or design.

Price

Excal­ibur 3926TB 9‑Tray Elec­tric Food Dehy­dra­tor is a mid-range fam­i­ly-size mod­el and is avail­able at a rea­son­able price. How­ev­er, if you find it too expen­sive, you can always con­sid­er the cheap­er Excal­ibur mod­els with five (5) trays.

BUY NOW

Summary

Over­all, this mod­el has many fea­tures that assist any user in dehy­drat­ing to achieve domes­tic food preser­va­tion. For instance, the pres­ence of a timer will enhance overnight food dehy­dra­tion. In addi­tion, the Hyper­wave Fluc­tu­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy and the Par­allex hor­i­zon­tal flow of air will always sim­pli­fy and guar­an­tee effi­cient dehy­dra­tion. Fur­ther­more, one can per­form oth­er tasks like dry­ing crafts and rais­ing bread dough with this device. Besides, the user can car­ry out oth­er domes­tic duties as dehy­dra­tion con­tin­ues since tray rota­tion is unnecessary.

The oper­a­tion of this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is com­fort­able, while clean­ing can be done by fol­low­ing the giv­en instruc­tion. Such fea­tures demon­strate that Excal­ibur 6926TB dehy­dra­tor is an essen­tial kitchen appli­ance. Its extend­ed war­ran­ty also makes many cus­tomers pre­fer it.

Will you con­sid­er an alter­na­tive food dehy­dra­tor? Check out the arti­cle — 7 Best Food Dehy­dra­tors for Healthy Kitchen.