NESCO Gardenmaster Pro Food Dehydrator, 8 Trays, White

I got this about 10 days ago and have been putting it through its paces. I have dried sweet corn, peas, peas and carrots mix, green beans (both cut and french style), mushrooms, strawberries, apples, bananas, pineapple, celery, and hash brown potatoes. Today I am going to try butternut squash (grated --- and blanched --- to make it dry faster, and I use it to make a pureed soup so I don't need chunks), mango, and kiwi, and don't expect any problems.I am so glad I got this model because it comes with things I didn't know I would need. I would have either had to buy the accessories, or I would have just not has as good an experience drying food. First if all, when I run it, I love that I have 8 trays so I can fill the thing up. The 8 mesh liner things are something I would not have thought of, but now I use them with every time. When drying corn or peas, the food shrinks down so small that it would fall through the tray slats if I didn't use the mesh liners. With fruit, the food doesn't stick as bad when using the mesh liners (tip: flip the fruit over after about an hour and that helps as well). Lastly, the mesh liners are so much easier to clean than the trays themselves, so I just use the liners over the tray and it saves clean-up effort.The machine itself is a great design. The design of the air flow means that you don't have to rotate trays --- unlike my old one. The heat is pretty true as well. I set it for 135, and stuck a temperature probe down the center hole and it was spot on. The machine is bigger than my old unheated one (that I gave away) and holds a lot. It dries really quickly, and the food shrinks down insanely small. I figure I could dry at least 50 of the 12 oz bags of frozen corn, peas, or pea/carrot dice blend and they would fit in a dozen wide mouth quart jars. (Beans and hash brown potatoes would not shrink down as small.) I have reconstituted every vegetable I have dried to see if it is worth it, and so far the only one that isn't a great success is celery (2 bunches shrunk down to about 1 cup!), but I figure I use that as the base with onions when I make soup, and I can just pulverize the dried stuff into powder so I still get the flavor. Just remember to blanch the things that need to be blanched (most vegetables) or save yourself some effort and buy frozen vegetables (which are already blanched).The only criticism I have is that the fan is rather noisy. Annoyingly so. I can't have it running in the kitchen because we have an open concept and it is too loud to be running while we are doing anything in the living room. I run it in the laundry room, and that is my work around. Some people don't like that it doesn't have a timer, but I have several plug in timers we use when we go in vacation so I just pulled one out to use when I want to let the machine run for awhile (but not all night) after I go to bed. Since I already have a timer, it wasn't worth the extra cost to buy a machine with one built in. The machine is certainly more expensive than Nesco's base model, but with the extra trays, mesh liners, and fruit leather trays, the price evens out and it is nice to just get it all in one shot. The plus in that is that everything fits in the box for storage, so I don't have extra trays that don't fit in the box. It's a big box though...it certainly isn't going to fit under any bed!

This machine is amazing!My goal was to find the best consumer dehydrator available, and that's exactly what I found. The design of this unit is excellent, the heat measured quite close to what the temperature was set to, the airflow is perfect even if you have it quite loaded down.The noise is a bit loud, but anything with heat and a fan like this will be the same. It offers the ability to expand the tray count and comes with extra inserts.You can load enough and you can add enough trays that you could probably start a business with this thing!

Works great. Easy to use. We bought an apple corer to speed up preparing, now we have mason jars full of dried apples. Make sure you have enough counter space - this runs for several hours to dry a load of fruit.

I feel like I need to use ear protection. But I do have to say it dries quicker and more evenly than any other dehydrator I've ever used. Minus one star only for the noise level. My computer has five cooling fans in it and I can't hear it from two feet away so I'm pretty sure a little clever engineering would have made this quieter. It does the job.

I just purchased this dehydrator a little over a week ago. So I can't say how long this will last. However, what I have seen from this machine so far has been amazing! I love it so much. I used it almost every day last week, and like 4 times this week. So far I have made dehydrated strawberry slices (cut to 1/4 in. Dehydrate until dry and plyable or crispy) i have made fruit leather- my fav was strawberry. (I filled up my blender with defrosted frozen strawberries, a splash of water to get it going, little squeeze of lemon juice so the color stays nice and red, and about 3tbsp of sugar, mix and pour on the fruit leather tray after you have sprayed it with a tiny bit of pam spray. Dehydrate until it feels dry to the touch. Delicious! I have dehydrated jellied cranberry sauce too! Sliced thin ofcourse! And my husband's favorite- jerky! To be honest, I had huge doubts that jerky in a dehydrator (vs. Smoker) was actually gonna make jerky how its supposed to taste. Oh boy I was wrong! This stuff is so flavorful and dehydrated perfectly. You can stop it any time to check on your food. For example, sometimes when I make the jerky, some slices are cut a little thinner than others, therefore they get done quicker, I just pull those off and continue cooking the thicker stuff. This thing does not get very hot, so if you have little ones, there's really no need to worry about their little hands getting burnt if the touch it on the counter. And gosh, the snacks you can make your kids with this thing are so yummy and so healthy. The noise level- best thing I can compare it to is the same noise your fan over your oven makes. If it was set to the low setting. On my first day of use, I walked into the kitchen a couple times thinking my fan was on over the stove. Lol. It's not loud at all. The video the guy posted with it being really loud- his was broken. For sure! Haha it is not that loud. I run mine and we can watch t.v. talk etc. I can even hear my kiddo talking to her friends in the other room still. Not bad. The trays are great quality- but huge. Lol this is a very large machine. (Bigger than my 8 qt. Instant pot) so I have been storing it away while not in use. However I have used it so much, I may just leave it out. As far as the fruit leather trays and the clean a screens goes- they are a must have!!! I bought this exact dehydrator because it comes with 8 of each. While the other dehydrators did not. I use the clean a screens for my berry slices so they won't stick to the trays, and they work great. Anyway, as far as how much stuff you can fit on it... I can easily fit 6- 1lb containers of strawberry slices. 6 pounds of strawberries!!! Lol. And as far as jerky goes- I just did about 8lbs of raw jerky meat on all 8 trays. (Shrinks down after cooked) then the fruit leather- I usually buy the 6 lb bags of frozen strawberries from Costco, probably 3/4 of the bag will fill up 8 trays. Give or take. Im going to make Cinnamon apple chips soon : ) this thing is great and seems to run strong. Doesn't use a bunch of power it seems like, and does not over heat or anything. Love it! So glad I finally bought it. Great purchase. Ps: I tried to take pics but I can't find the way to upload them anymore to Amazon. Sry!