Excalibur Food Dehydrator Reviews: Our Editorial Take

The short version

If you want the verdict before the detail, here's where the Excalibur lands after reading a few hundred owner comments. It's a beloved design with a genuinely earned reputation for lasting, and one honest worry about newer units you should go in knowing.

What's good:

• Legendary longevity; owners routinely run these ten, twenty, even forty years with no trouble.
• Big flat trays slide out and hold tall or awkward loads a round stacker can never fit.
• Rear fan pushes air horizontally across every shelf, so a full load dries evenly and hands-off.
• Deep accessory and replacement-parts catalog: trays, mesh liners, non-stick sheets, fuses, thermostats.

What's not:

• Current production is a gamble; recent buyers report cracked casings, bad batches, and uneven stainless trays.
• Out-of-warranty support and parts availability can turn a simple repair into a dead end.
• It is a big, boxy machine that eats counter or shelf space and runs with a steady hum.
• The digital timers are basic, and stainless trays run hot enough that you reach for them carefully.

Who it's for

The Excalibur rewards a specific owner and frustrates a different one. Sort yourself before you buy.

Buy it for:

• Drying in real volume: garden gluts, hundreds of pounds of jerky a year, big camping and backpacking batches.
• Wanting one machine you can keep alive for a decade-plus with cheap replacement parts.
• Loads that need flat, removable trays: fruit leather, thick slices, herbs, and tall pieces.

Skip it if:

• You have a small kitchen and dry in household batches; a compact Cosori Premium takes far less space and the trays fit a dishwasher.
• You want the cheapest way to make real jerky; a Nesco Snackmaster Pro reaches meat range for a fraction of the outlay.
• You want the newest glass-door finish with a view window and progress bar; the Excalibur Performance Series is the higher-tier version of this same box.

The specs that matter

Numbers only help if you know what they buy you. Here's what the Excalibur's spec sheet actually means at the counter:

Ten flat, removable trays, about 16 square feet of drying space: this is bulk capacity, the reason people choose Excalibur over a six-tray box. The trays pull all the way out and sit flat, so you can dry tall jars of herbs, thick fruit leather, or a big jerky run without the tower geometry a round stacker forces on you.

Adjustable thermostat with a meat-safe ceiling: low enough for delicate herbs and high enough to carry beef and poultry jerky through the range they need. The dial-style control is simple rather than clever, which is exactly what long-term owners say has kept these running when fancier machines died.

Rear-mounted fan and heating element: air moves horizontally across every tray at once instead of rising through a stack, which is the single reason owners of the classic units stopped rotating trays. It's also the feature a minority of newer stainless units fail to deliver on, so it's worth verifying on arrival.

How well it preserves

When the airflow works the way Excalibur designed it, drying performance is the machine's whole reason for being. The rear fan pushes air across all ten shelves at the same time, so a full load finishes together instead of leaving the top tray damp while the bottom over-dries, and the flat trays let you load thick or tall pieces a stacker can't. Owners of the current stainless models who got a good one describe it plainly:

Currently have mangos dehydrating in mine. Works great, I have those trays too. It comes with trays, and the ones you posted are silicone covers you put on the metal trays.

That's the design at its best, and across decades of owner reports it's remarkably consistent: even drying, batch after batch, on everything from fruit leather to hundreds of pounds of jerky a year. The big flat trays are a real edge for volume and for anything that won't sit neatly in a round stacker.

The honest asterisk is on recent production. A cluster of newer buyers report stainless units that dry slower and less evenly than the classic plastic machines, and Excalibur has acknowledged a fan behavior on current models that briefly pauses on a roughly twenty-second cycle, which some owners say drags out drying. One long-time owner who bought a new metal model laid the contrast out directly:

Yea. I use the hell out of my all plastic Excalibur 10+ years, for days at a time every week... It's a tank. I recently bought a new all metal Excalibur model with a glass door and steel trays. It feels 10x as premium as the old one, but it dries slower and unevenly. Constantly having to rotate trays and pull dried fruit a little at a time. The steel trays feel cheap, and are not nearly as rigid and flat as the plastic trays. I definitely prefer the all plastic old school design... It just works

So the performance ceiling here is genuinely high, and the format is still the one to beat for bulk. Just treat a new unit's first batch as a test: load it evenly, watch whether the trays finish together, and if a stainless one is drying unevenly, that's your signal to use the return window.

Built to last

This is the axis Excalibur is famous for, and the owner record is genuinely extraordinary. It is not hard to find people running the same machine well past a decade, and the truly old units keep showing up doing serious work:

Nice. My Excalibur has been running for over 40 years, it's a tank

I have two nine trays that are ~11 years old and look like that one. They are absolute workhorses - hundreds of pounds of jerky plus fruits, vegetables, fruit leathers and camping mixes every year, no problem.

These aren't one-off survivors. Owner after owner describes the same thing, a machine that just keeps going, often after replacing nothing but a tray set along the way:

I've been using my Excalibur for well over a decade. It's been a workhorse. I did replace the plastic trays with metal. I still use the plastic ones as well.

Another Excalibur owner here (multiple including one from I believe 1978). I have NEVER had ANY problems. I will forever recommend them. The trays/liners are awesome, and I have never had one warp. You can also get all kinds of accessories like silicone fruit leather liners, stainless trays (I don't recommend them because they hold the heat), etc., plus you can buy literally every single replacement part of something ever goes out. My machines get abused every year making my backpacking/camping meals, and they still rock

Part of why they last is that so much is serviceable. Excalibur sells the trays, mesh liners, non-stick sheets, fuses, and thermostats, so a dead unit is often a cheap part away from working again rather than landfill. The plastic classic trays draw their own loyalty for never warping, even against the newer stainless option:

My Excalibur 9 tray (all plastic) is over 20 yrs old, still going strong, and the plastic trays never warped. I did once purchase stainless steel trays, but honestly I wish I hadn't - they are HOT when you take them out, the plastic trays had a mesh liner that was great for fresh fruits - you could flex the mesh to get the fruit off if it was stuck.

The honest tail is current production. Recent buyers describe cracked casings out of the box, replacement units that arrived just as flawed, and quality that doesn't match the badge:

I don't know LEM but I had a terrible experience with Excalibur this past winter. I even got an injury handling the original unit with cracked casing that was broken first and then glued down thoroughly. The only saving grace is that none of the multiple replacement units worked properly so I eventually got my money back. But I will never buy another one again. I have a steel Magic Mill and it's working flawlessly.

Support and parts can compound it. When a newer unit fails outside the return window, owners describe out-of-stock parts and a customer-service process that stalls, so a fixable machine becomes a dead end. Even a loyal owner of an older model ran into the wall:

I have an Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator, model 3926T. We've used it intermittently over the years and it's been great. Recently the heating element stopped working, but the motor is still going strong. I did some research and the fuse seemed the most likely culprit, so I replaced it without first testing with a multimeter (didn't have one easily accessible)... unfortunately it did not fix the issue. I got a multimeter and tested, discovered the fuse was fine, and it seems the thermostat is the failure.

None of this erases the longevity record, which is real and enormous. But the spread between the legend and the current machine is wide enough that durability is a bet, not a guarantee. Buy from a seller with an easy return window, run it hard the first week, and if you get a lemon you'll usually know before you're stuck with it.

Living with it

Day to day is where the Excalibur asks the most of you, and it's the weakest of the three axes. Start with the footprint: this is a big, boxy machine that wants real counter or shelf space and hums steadily for the hours a load takes. The trade a lot of owners happily make is simplicity, and the plainest units are the ones people trust most, on the theory that fewer parts means fewer things to break:

I have an Excalibur 9 tray from the 70s thats a workhorse. Paid $50. Extra features and extra things to break.

Cleanup depends on how you load it. The mesh screens rinse in the sink, and owners who line the trays with non-stick sheets keep the job to a quick wipe, which is worth setting up for fruit leather and small pieces:

I have an Excalibur 5 tray and I like it. I line the trays with some super non-stick material so my cleanup is minimal. the sheets I use just take a quick wipe and rinse and they are good to go. Personally if I was using it for meat I would want metal grates so I could steam clean them but that's just a personal preference.

A few ergonomics are worth naming. The classic trays are not dishwasher friendly, so the dishwasher convenience buyers now expect is a step Excalibur is late to; even a two-decade owner treated it as a novelty:

Ooohh a consideration i had never had before. my excalibur is almost 20 years old now. but... Dishwasher!! I must be gettin lazy in mt old age

The stainless trays that ship on the newer units run hot, so you'll want a towel when you pull a finished batch. And the digital timers are basic: they get the job done, but owners looking for finesse or a very long unattended run bump into the limits:

I have an Excalibur 4500. 5 trays. I love it. It is the only dehydrator I've tried. The only complaint I have, is that I would want it to have an "unlimited time" setting instead of max 26 hours .

One more habit worth adopting: a lot of owners give up on the built-in timer entirely and run the unit on a smart plug, which sidesteps the timer's quirks and gives you the long, hands-off cycles bulk drying wants.

How it compares

The Excalibur doesn't exist in a vacuum, and three units come up most often when people cross-shop it. Here's how it stacks up against each.

Versus the Excalibur Performance Series 10-Tray: same ten-tray box and rear-fan airflow, but the Performance is the finish-and-features upgrade, adding a glass door with a view window and an LED progress bar over the Select. If you want the newest version of this exact machine and don't mind spending more, it's the step up. Same capacity, nicer front panel.

Versus the Cosori Premium 6-Tray Stainless: the compact cross-shop. Six stainless dishwasher-safe trays and simple digital controls in a footprint that lives on a counter, where the ten-tray Excalibur wants a shelf. You give up bulk capacity and the flat-tray flexibility, but you gain space, quiet, and trays that actually fit a dishwasher.

Versus the Nesco Snackmaster Pro FD-75A: the budget floor. A stackable round with an adjustable thermostat that still reaches meat range, so it makes real jerky for a fraction of the outlay. You trade even drying and flat trays for tray-rotation and plastic, but it's cheap to replace if it quits, which given the current-production worry is a fair thing to weigh.

Using it well

Get the most out of an Excalibur with a few habits. Load trays in a single layer with space between pieces so air can move, and don't pack the trays nearest the back wall so tight that they block the fan path. For jerky, set the thermostat to meat range and check for doneness rather than trusting time alone, since humidity and thickness change everything. Grab a set of non-stick sheets for fruit leather, sauces, and small pieces so nothing drops through, and if the built-in timer annoys you, run the unit on a smart plug for long, hands-off cycles.

If you're buying it mainly for meat, it's worth reading how the format choices play out across brands first. Our guide to the best dehydrator for jerky walks through fan placement, temperature, and cleanup in more depth, with the Excalibur in context against the alternatives.

The bottom line

The Excalibur is the machine to buy when you dry in volume and want something you can keep alive for years. The rear-fan box format dries evenly and swallows bulk loads that a six-tray unit can't touch, the flat trays handle anything you throw at them, and the longevity record is not marketing, it's the single most consistent thing owners say. For a serious preserver with the counter space, this is still the format that set the standard.

What keeps it from a straight rave is current production, and it's a real caveat, not a nitpick. Enough recent buyers have gotten cracked casings, uneven stainless units, or a fan that pauses, then hit a slow support wall, that you should treat the first week as a trial and buy where returns are easy. Do that, and you're very likely to end up with the tank Excalibur is known for. Go in expecting a superb bulk dehydrator with a modern-production gamble on top, and it earns its place.