Tribest Sedona Express Digital Food Dehydrator Review

The Tribest Sedona Express Dig­i­tal Food Dehy­dra­tor is a pre­mi­um dehy­dra­tor in two mod­els – the SDE-S6780‑B with stain­less steel trays and the SDE-P6280‑B with plas­tic trays.

The USA-based Tribest Cor­po­ra­tion man­u­fac­tures it with man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties in South Korea. The Tribest is a well-known man­u­fac­tur­er of small kitchen appli­ances that pro­duces var­i­ous food dehy­dra­tors, blenders, juice extrac­tors, and others.

This dehy­dra­tor mod­el has var­i­ous fea­tures that make it stand out from the rest. Read our com­pre­hen­sive review to find out about these features.

Do you con­sid­er an alter­na­tive Food Dehy­dra­tor? Check our arti­cle — 7 Best Food Dehy­dra­tors for Healthy Kitchens.

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

Horizontal Technology

The Tribest Sedona Express has a so-called hor­i­zon­tal air­flow dehy­dra­tor design where the fan mount­ed at the cen­ter of the unit’s rear side blows warm air from the back to the front side via the trays. The con­tin­u­ous stream­ing of hot air over the food on the trays elim­i­nates mois­ture from the food. In addi­tion, the open tray design allows air to flow even­ly through the unit, dry­ing food as even­ly on the top shelf as it is on the bot­tom, elim­i­nat­ing or reduc­ing the need to rotate trays to a minimum.

This type of device has a fixed num­ber of not expand­able trays. How­ev­er, this con­struc­tion allows a prop­er air cir­cu­la­tion process result­ing in more effi­cient food dehy­dra­tion than ver­ti­cal air­flow machines.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Tribest Sedona Express has a sin­gle large fan that is con­sid­er­ably larg­er than most of the oth­er hor­i­zon­tal air­flow machines fan at the back that pro­duces real­ly good air­flow for nice and effi­cient dehydrating.

Exterior Design

Exte­ri­or Design: The Tribest Sedona Express Dig­i­tal Food Dehy­dra­tor is com­pact and comes with a sleek design that allows users with a lim­it­ed kitchen coun­ter­top to go for it. Its exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or shell is made from non-flam­ma­ble, impact-resis­tant, and BPA-free plas­tic, which keeps the weight as min­i­mum as pos­si­ble, so the device is eas­i­er to move around. In addi­tion, there are hol­lows on the sides of the dehy­dra­tor, which can serve as han­dles for easy moving.

The device also has two pro­jec­tion han­dles locat­ed on the back of the unit to ensure a safe dis­tance between the back of the dehy­dra­tor and the walls.

Besides, all design ensures that the dehy­dra­tor does not release a lot of heat; the tem­per­a­ture around the device is not notice­ably high­er than the sur­round­ing environment.

Glass Door: The unit has a tem­pered glass-hinged door that visu­al­ly allows the user to check the dehy­dra­tion process. Its inter­nal LED light­ing makes visu­al super­vi­sion fur­ther eas­i­er, which illu­mi­nates the tray contents.

The door is equipped with a push-lock spring mech­a­nism and a self-clos­ing latch for easy open­ing. The dehy­dra­tor also has a smart and ener­gy-effi­cient sys­tem that auto­mat­i­cal­ly stops oper­at­ing when you open the door to check the readi­ness of ingre­di­ents and starts run­ning again when you close it.

Fil­ter: Besides, the Tribest Sedona Express is equipped with a wash­able and remov­able air fil­ter that pre­vents for­eign par­ti­cles from con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing your dry­ing food. Addi­tion­al­ly, the fil­ter pro­tects the fan and elec­tron­ics, extend­ing their lifes­pan and prop­er operation.

Power and Power Consumption

Although the Tribest Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor comes with only 470 watts motor, the low­est among the com­peti­tor dehy­dra­tor, it pro­vides suf­fi­cient ener­gy to dry food­stuff prop­er­ly, run its motor, and sup­ply enough pow­er to the heat­ing ele­ments and thermostat.

Since this appli­ance’s pow­er con­sump­tion is not very high, we can term it ener­gy effi­cient. There­fore, by con­sid­er­ing the rate of pow­er con­sump­tion, one can esti­mate the cost of run­ning this dehy­dra­tor model.

Trays 

On pur­chase, this device comes with 11 dehy­drat­ing trays, where the SDE-S6780‑B mod­el has stain­less steel trays, and the SDE-P6280‑B has plas­tic trays. The stain­less steel trays are well-con­struct­ed with no sharp edges, a cor­ru­gat­ed wire sur­face, and rather large holes. On the oth­er hand, the plas­tic trays have much small­er holes; thus, they are not as good and fast dry­ing as the device with the stain­less steel trays.

Both stain­less steel and plas­tic trays are rec­tan­gu­lar and 10″ x 12.88″ in size. There is also an approx­i­mate 1‑inch gap between the trays. How­ev­er, if you require to dry bulki­er and large food items, you can opt to elim­i­nate sev­er­al shelves to fit the larg­er item.

When the dehy­dra­tor mod­el is ful­ly loaded, its total approx­i­mate dry­ing sur­face space is 9.83 square feet. Since the Tribest Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor comes with rec­tan­gu­lar trays, it does not allow for rotat­ing that 90 ° only 180°.

Drip Trays: Besides, both dehy­dra­tor mod­els (SDE-S6780‑B and SDE-S6280‑B) come with one drip tray (the stain­less steel for SDE-S6780‑B and plas­tic SDE-S6280‑B mod­els) that is designed to accu­mu­late the drip­pings that fall through the trays dur­ing dry­ing. The drip allows mak­ing the clean­ing process easier.

How­ev­er, the dehy­dra­tor is designed only to hold the 11 trays, so you can use the drip shelf or use their stan­dard tray.

Note: A few cus­tomers com­plain that the stain­less trays slag slight­ly after first use. In fact, they are not sag­ging. This con­struc­tion is made on pur­pose; you just have to turn the tray anoth­er way around and place the sag­ging side on the top to sup­port the struc­ture for these trays.

Control Panel

The Tribest Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor mod­el has a smart all-dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el that is locat­ed at the front side for easy access to oper­a­tional func­tions. The con­trol pan­el features:

• ON/OFF switch, that acti­vates the dig­i­tal dis­play when it is ON,
• FAST/RAW/COMBO mode but­ton with two (2) light indi­ca­tors next to it,
• SET/LIGHT but­ton for select­ing tem­per­a­ture and time set­ting mode with four (4) small but­tons for set­ting up/down intervals,
• Dig­i­tal dis­play that shows set tem­per­a­ture (3 dig­its) and count­down time (2 digits),
• A but­ton that switch­es between F and C temperatures,
• START/PAUSE but­ton for start­ing, paus­ing, or restart­ing the operation.

The con­trol pan­el may look con­fus­ing at first sight; how­ev­er, it is not so com­pli­cat­ed once you read the user man­u­al and become famil­iar with it.

Temperature Settings

It has the largest tem­per­a­ture range of 77–167°F /25–75°C com­pared to any oth­er dehy­dra­tor on the mar­ket. In addi­tion, it has a unique three tem­per­a­ture modes of dehy­dra­tion that could be used inde­pen­dent­ly from each oth­er. These modes include:

Fast mode (up to 165F) is a stan­dard oper­a­tional mode for all oth­er dehy­dra­tors on the mar­ket; it fluc­tu­ates around the aver­age set tem­per­a­ture on the sinu­soid up and down;

Raw Mode (up to 118F) also oper­ates with fluc­tu­at­ing tem­per­a­tures; how­ev­er, it nev­er goes above the set one; this mode is designed for raw food­ists, and though it will dry a bit slow­er, it pre­serves food nutri­tion that could be destroyed when exposed to the high temperatures;

Com­bo Mode or two-stage mode/TST tech­nol­o­gy starts the dehy­dra­tion process from the “fast” mode (high tem­per­a­ture) for the set time, then auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch­es down to the “Raw” mode of 118 F for the rest of the dehy­dra­tion time. This mode aims to use less time to dehy­drate raw recipes than the RAW mode.

The Fast or High­er tem­per­a­ture mode is usu­al­ly designed to use for the first few hours of dehy­dra­tion for most of the food­stuff with high mois­ture con­tent since the tem­per­ate does not increase inside most food to the degree of the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, when most of the mois­ture is dri­ven out of the dehy­drat­ed ingre­di­ents, the inside and out­side tem­per­a­tures become more invari­ant, so the dehy­dra­tor auto­mat­i­cal­ly changes its mode to the raw one to keep all nutri­tion preserved.

 Note: This dehy­dra­tor cham­ber tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­ates in the range of 10F-20F, and it does not exceed the ceil­ing lev­el when it oper­ates on the raw mode. This fluc­tu­a­tion is nor­mal for any dehy­dra­tor due to the humid­i­ty con­tent of the inflow­ing air.

Timer Settings

Besides, the Tribest Sedona SDE-S6780‑B food dehy­dra­tor has an inbuilt 99 hours pro­gram­ma­ble mode timer allow­ing the user to set the spe­cif­ic dehy­drat­ing dura­tion time after which the dry­er will shut itself off. It also has a con­tin­u­ous mode that allows up to 120 hours of operation.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this dehy­dra­tor is designed for set­ting the timer in a 1‑hour incre­ment only; you can­not set the timer in minute intervals.

Food Preparation and Functionality

You can dry a wide vari­ety of food, from meat to herbs, almost in any dehy­dra­tor, depend­ing on the avail­abil­i­ty of tem­per­a­ture settings.

How­ev­er, the Tribest Sedona express unit offers the widest heat range start­ing from 77 degrees Fahren­heit to 167 degrees Fahren­heit. The max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture (167ᵒ Fahren­heit) con­forms to the USDA beef jerky prep rec­om­men­da­tions. More­over, the low­er tem­per­a­ture range enhances the prepa­ra­tion of some heat-sen­si­tive food­stuffs like herbs.

For the best dehy­drat­ing expe­ri­ence, ensure the food­stuff items are cut into even sizes to encour­age uni­form dehy­dra­tion of all food ingre­di­ents. Avoid over­load­ing the unit as it will lead to mois­ture accu­mu­la­tion in the unit or incom­plete dehy­dra­tion. Cor­rect­ly set both the timer and the ther­mo­stat depend­ing on the food type to be dried.

Using and Cleaning

Using: Since the con­trol pan­el and oth­er fea­tures are intu­itive to oper­ate, car­ry­ing out the dehy­dra­tion is sim­i­lar­ly easy.

Although this dry­er mod­el can offer you an effi­cient food dehy­dra­tion expe­ri­ence, you may require to rotate trays for some food ingre­di­ents. The front of the tray dehy­drates most of the food as quick­ly as the back. How­ev­er, the mid­dle sec­tion of the tray may be dried a bit slower.

So, it requires rear­rang­ing the food from the mid­dle of the tray to the back of the tray. The top and bot­tom trays are also not dry­ing as fast as the mid­dle trays. So may need to rotate the trays, above or below trays, and place them on the mid­dle and mid­dle trays to the top and bottom.

 Clean­ing: The stain­less steel trays are dish­wash­er safe or could be cleaned man­u­al­ly using clean, warm water and mild deter­gent. The plas­tic trays are not dish­wash­er safe and must be cleaned only man­u­al­ly. After clean­ing the parts of this machine, make sure they are thor­ough­ly dry before plac­ing them back into the device.

Dimensions

The Tribest, Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor, has a com­pact foot­print of 12.25″ W x 19.6″ D, and with a pro­file of only 14.5″, it will eas­i­ly fit under any kitchen cab­i­net. Stor­ing and mov­ing around this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is not too dif­fi­cult since it weighs 22 lbs/10 kg and comes with con­ve­nient hol­lows on the side for easy handling.

Optional Accessories and Replacement Parts

Tribest Sedona offers not only ala range of replace­ment parts but also a vari­ety of extra accessories:

• Sedona Express BPA/PTFE-Free Sil­i­cone Non-Stick Dry­ing Sheets for dry­ing liq­uid food;
• Sedona Express BPA-Free, Tri­flex PTFE Non-Stick Dry­ing Sheets are also designed for liq­uid food dehydration;
• Sedona Dry­ing Tem­plates for dehy­drat­ing uni­form tor­tillas, wraps, crêpes, pan­cakes, crack­ers, cook­ies, or any oth­er cir­cu­lar shape items.

Special Features

Volt­age: The Tribest Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor that is avail­able for sale in the USA and Cana­da comes with a 110 volts sys­tem. How­ev­er, this device is avail­able at 220 volts from local retail­ers in coun­tries with an appro­pri­ate volt­age sys­tem; the 220 volts in fat are sold even at slight­ly low­er prices than 110 volts. You can use the 110 volts machine via volt­age con­vert­er; how­ev­er, it is not advised as it will void the man­u­fac­tur­er’s warranty.

Col­ors: It is avail­able in black col­or but comes in two mod­els with stain­less steel and plas­tic trays.

Noise

It is the qui­etest dehy­dra­tor avail­able on the mar­ket. No loud sound is pro­duced when run­ning this device. There­fore, you can opt to pur­chase this dry­er mod­el if you are to run it in noise-sen­si­tive sur­round­ings. The sound it releas­es may be com­pared with the air con­di­tion­er noise.

Warranty

The Tribest Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor comes with the longest in the indus­try 10-year war­ran­ty that con­firms the man­u­fac­tur­er’s con­fi­dence qual­i­ty of this device. You can reg­is­ter the war­ran­ty by return­ing the war­ran­ty card that comes with the unit or apply­ing online.

Besides, Tribest is a rep­utable com­pa­ny and great to work with; they have a pro­fes­sion­al cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment; they are usu­al­ly good at tak­ing care of war­ran­ty issues.

Pro and Cons

Pros:

• All dig­i­tal con­trol pan­els are locat­ed con­ve­nient­ly in front;
• Three (3) tem­per­a­ture dehy­drat­ing modes, includ­ing the RAW mode that serves all needs of raw food enthusiasts;
• It comes with 99 hours timer;
• Equipped with a wash­able fil­ter that ensures hygien­ic dehydration;
• Has a mod­er­ate footprint;
• Is the qui­etest dehy­dra­tor on the market;
• It comes with a glass door for easy obser­va­tion of the dehy­drat­ing process;
• Equipped with the longest in the indus­try 10 years warranty;

Cons:

• Has the shape of a rec­tan­gu­lar tray that does not allow for rotat­ing them 90 degrees;
• Equipped with com­pli­cat­ed con­trol pan­el settings;
• Has the timer with hour inter­vals set­tings only; you can­not set the timer in minute intervals.

Set Includes

• Food dehy­dra­tor main body with 470 Watts motor and sin­gle fan;
• Eleven (11) stain­less steel (SDE-S6780‑B mod­el) or eleven plas­tic (SDE-S6280‑B mod­el) trays;
• Stain­less Steel Closed Tray;
• Debris Mat;
• Reusable Air Fil­ter (+ 1 replace­ment filter);
• Detach­able 5 ft. long pow­er cord.

Price

The Tribest Sedona Express dehy­dra­tor is a pre­mi­um unit and is avail­able at a pre­mi­um price. The SDE-P6280‑B mod­els with plas­tic trays cost about 70–100$ less than the SDE-P6780‑B mod­el with stain­less steel trays.

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Summary  

Tribest Sedona Express Dig­i­tal Food Dehy­dra­tor is undoubt­ed­ly one of the best dehy­dra­tors on the mar­ket, and it com­petes for first place with the Excal­ibur mod­els. This machine also comes with a range of inno­v­a­tive fea­tures that no oth­er dehy­dra­tors have. First, it is equipped with the three dehy­dra­tion modes that serve the needs of a wide range of cus­tomers and sat­is­fy all the needs of raw food­ists. Sec­ond, its two-stage timer enhances the dehy­dra­tion of var­i­ous food items to allow you to dehy­drate dif­fer­ent food ingre­di­ents at their cor­rect tem­per­a­ture. It also pro­vides a wide heat range (25ᵒC to 75ᵒC) and is safe for dehy­drat­ing meat items.

In con­clu­sion, the Tribest Sedona SDE-S6780‑B food dehy­dra­tor has a very appeal­ing design that will fit into any mod­ern kitchen. This machine will cer­tain­ly be a great addi­tion to your kitchen if you can stretch your bud­get to buy this pre­mi­um dehydrator.

Do you con­sid­er an alter­na­tive option? Check our arti­cle — 7 Best Food Dehy­dra­tors for Healthy Kitchens.