NESCO FD-1018A Gardenmaster Pro Food Dehydrator, 8-Tray White

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!

Kinda new to dehydrating so this is what happened. Reading reviews and trying to get into this reasonably cheap, not knowing if the kids (twin B/G 16 & 13 year old daughter) would even eat it. Snackmaster seemed to be the best choice. I also bought 6 more trays along with the mesh liners. After doing several batches testing how long it took, how much yield, how many minutes it took the kids (and myself) to devour the 11 trays of banana chips, one dehydrator was not going to cut it. Ordered the Gardenmaster within a week along with 6 more trays and screens. The inch or so larger trays do make a difference, along with being able to stack 30 trays??? Has anyone done that? Love it, I use both now. The Gardenmaster is a lot noisier, but with the 8 trays it comes with, is a lot shorter drying time. It's loud like you don't want to be on the phone next to it. It is more convenient loading, no motor to pick up. Counter space, yeah, a little more. The snackmaster is very quiet and still does the job, just takes longer. 600w vs 1000 w gardenmaster. The Gardenmaster is one the left with just 7 of the trays on it, the Snackmaster on right with 11 trays. Wish I'd started with the gardenmaster now, I have yet to get any stockpile of fruits or jerky, it's gone by nightfall it seems. Update 9/23/20 Been using 20 trays for fruits and jerky the past year. Still going strong, no problems. Still no headway on stockpile. I do not find the noise an issue, will order another ten trays for fruits. I don't think I'd try jerky with 30 trays, don't feel its hot enough. Love the unit. Update: still using after 3 years. One thing I do, with jerky is rotate the trays through, each one has 30 minutes or so near the highest heat at the bottom I’ve taken the temperature at the top of 10 trays and it was only 140*. 3/4/22 Ordered more trays, apparently they changed them, the “new” trays are a bit concave vs a slight cone on the originals. The new ones have a “castle” center ring. You cannot use these as the first tray, they do not fit the gardenmaster. 3/8/22 Nesco had this to say; New trays do need to be heated so the plastic relaxes and the crowns would point up just as when you open a new dehydrator we recommend heating the unit for an hour to relax the plastic same applies to new trays. Stack 4 and let the new trays heat. Please try this as this usually fixes the problem. “Usually” mine must not be usual. Nesco lost a customer, sad, I loved the unit, just wanted more “useable” trays.

I have an old American Harvest food dehydrator from the 1990s and this Nesco food dryer is the new model. Nesco, in case you don't know, bought out American Harvest in 1995, so if you liked the old American Harvest or have heard great things about the old American Harvest dryers, this is the same...but better! My old American Harvest was 13.5 inches in diameter but this new Nesco is 15.5 inches in diameter! Woohoo! More space for food. I purchased one of these for my son and he loved it so much that I purchased another for my daughter. My son uses it mostly for garden produce and gleaned food from abandoned orchards. My daughter swears it's the only one that she will use to dry her wild mushrooms. The temperature is fully adjustable so you can dry really wet things on a higher setting at first, then adjust the temp down for a 'crisping'. The motor is very quiet, not silent but certainly tolerable. We tend to place the dryer in a basement, porch or laundry room when running so we actually don't notice the sound at all. Whatever room you do place it will warm up from the heat so keep that in mind. The trays are lightweight and easy to move on and off the base. We bought additional trays to make fruit leather but pay close attention to the size you order to make sure they fit. I actually inadvertently purchased 10.5" trays and had to return them. All in all, this dehydrator works better than any other, especially for the price. Clean-up is easy too. We hand wash all our components, but I suppose they are dishwasher safe. Good design, user friendly, no funky plastic smells. Love it!

I’ve had this dehydrator since 2019 and I’ve dehydrated a wide variety of things with it. Cow lung, heart, liver, chicken feet, milk, eggs, fruit, fruit leather, veggies and more. I’ve used it on hundreds of pounds of food and use it a minimum of 20 times a year. It still works. It’s still easy to clean the trays with a bottle brush so it still looks relatively new. Most of the trays have some damage where spots have broke but all are still usable. Only a few of the fruit leather liners have completely died and snapped into pieces. It works and does what it’s supposed to but it’s not energy efficient, it’s loud and it heats up a very large space around it. I generally have to use it outside because it causes condensation on my walls and it’s too loud to use indoors. If outside is not an option then I use my laundry room so I can close the door and use the exhaust fan.

I have not used my dehydrator very much as of yet, but the few times that I have it has worked perfectly. I just need to learn how dry is dry enough so that I do not over dry things. I have made fruit roll ups/fruit leather with it and the strawberry ones turned out best-very good. The mango ones were very hard to get dry enough and on attempting to get them dry enough for food safety they ended up too dry. My apple slices also ended up too dry, my fault, I let them dry too long. I tried making ground turkey jerky with it, it was terrible-way too dry, probably my fault and the cure mix I used was way too salty, but I broke it up into bite size pieces and used it for dog treats-perfect. Kept-ed a small amount in the frig and froze the rest and ended up with a few months of dog treats. Probably best to make your own jerky cure mix and also to use a good quality ground beef and better yet a good quality beef cut sliced thinly. I dehydrated almost a whole large bag of oranges, this took a very long time and I do not believe it was worth the effort. I ended up losing them because I did not have my vacuum seal bags yet and even so I really could not think of much to use them for any way. I would dehydrate the peels for chopping or grinding up for use in cooking and in smoothies or hot teas, etc. Great savings over buying dried orange peels. As for the dehydrator itself, you cannot beat the price for this package deal. I am glad I went ahead and purchased this one with the extra 8 clean screens and the extra 8 fruit roll up trays. I am going to be growing some of my own food in a garden and over time I am sure this dehydrator will be a great savings for storing some of my fresh produce. If you do not have a deep and wide sink to wash the trays and the inserts in, you might consider buying a large tube for ease in cleaning up the dehydrator after use. You could soak them out of the way in hot soapy water for easy clean up later. My sink is too small so it is a real chore trying to clean the trays and inserts, I will be looking into getting a large tub for this. A good cleaning brush is also a good idea for gentle scrubbing. I also purchased a surge protector/power strip to plug my dehydrator into while using it to protect against unsuspected power surges-probably a good idea these days.

I originally had this exact model - the 1018A, and it worked great. I loved experimenting with it, and drying all sorts of things. But then I heard all kinds of great things about the Excalibur, so I gave my old-faithful Nesco to my niece, mortgaged the house (just kidding...), and got the Excalibur. I used it a lot, too - and loved it. This is just subjective, but I didn't really think the Excalibur worked any better than the Nesco. (I hope all my fellow raw foodists don't hate me for saying that!) I will say this for the Excalibur - it looked better in my kitchen. It was quieter, too - so it was more of an "indoor" dehydrator. The Nesco is a "garage" dehydrator. (At least that's what my wife says.) But in my opinion, they both work the same. When I moved, I gave the Excalibur to my Mom, and she loves it. I didn't want to ask for it back again (kind-hearted son that I am), so I just went out now, and re-purchased the 1018 - just like the one I had before. What I like about this: 1) It's expandable - up to 30 trays. (That's something that the Excalibur - as great as it is - couldn't do.) It would be a ton of work to fill 30 trays, so for now I'll just stick with the 8. To have trays that I'm not using would cause me to lay awake at nights - with overwhelming guilt and anxiety. 2) This "package deal" is really a great savings. I priced what it would cost if I did all the accessories (screens, roll-up trays) individually, and this is much cheaper. I ALWAYS use the screens, even for things that don't need them, because they help keep the trays a little cleaner. Screens are easier to wash than trays. (BTW, I found it easiest to wash the trays in the bathtub. They are too big for the kitchen sink and for the dishwasher.) I know that this model has been around for years - so I anticipate that I'll have no trouble whatsoever with this. If there were any bugs in the design, they would have been worked out a long time ago. Any questions? Just holler, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Garbage material. Feels cheap and I was sorely disappointed by the feel of the trays. They have plastic "overspray" on the tray screens. Its just so poorly manufactured. I got this cause I read Nesco was made in America, well this product specifically says made in China and it all made sense now. The heat adjusting knob feels literally like a $.01 cent part. It feels free spinning only with an ever so extremely slight "stop" at each temp. Its beyond easy to land between two temperatures so it literally could be either one. I have their cheapest one (around $30 when I bought it) and the trays are warped and broken from use so I wanted to upgrade and buy American, again, from what I read. This is no upgrade due to the build quality and its certainly not American made. The manual that came with it IS NOT even specific to this model. It looks generic and probably given with every model they sell. Now the manual specifically says "Printed in America". Thats just hilarious. The trays on the $30 one seemed more flexilble while these feel rigid and too easy to break in the screen part. What a disappointment. Now Im deciding on wether to return this junk cause it just doesnt feel like it would last as long as the $30 model.

After 20 years and I can even tell you how many pounds of jerky and other dehydrated items my original Gardenmaster stopped working. It was very upsetting and I didn't know if they still made the same model. I was able to use the trays from my original Gardenmaster on this new unit and now I have doubled my dehydrating capacity. If you want a dehydrator that is expandable to many trays, this is the one to buy - you can stack up to 30 trays and dehydrate fruits, vegetables, and meats at the same time! This purchase came with 8 trays, 8 fruit roll-up sheets, and 8 trays and even a sample jerky pack with cure - everything that you need to get yourself started in dehydrating (except the jerky gun!). The one drawback to this is the cleanup - it does take a bit of time and time and effort to clean the trays, sheets and screens. Other than that I have not had any issues with using this dehydrator. The packs of seasoning and cure sold by Nesco are also top notch and yield very tasty jerky - I would recommend giving them a try also, check the website for the available flavors. I am not sure about the speed of other dehydrators, but with this model Gardenmaster I have been able to do eight trays in four hours by rotating stacking tray order and turning the meat. Some people swear by other brand dehydrators, but I am sticking with the Gardenmaster.

Excelente producto

I was hesitant to buy this Nesco dehydrator after reading many reviews about the trays not fitting the base properly and that the machine was very loud. I placed the 8 trays on the base and let the dehydrator run for 1 hour. Everything was perfect. The noise is a little more than my Hamilton Beach. Comes 8 fruit leather trays and 8 fine mesh. So overall, this is a great value, great machine at a great price. No regrets at all. Works very well, dehydrates fast and no need to rotate the trays. If you are still hesitating, don't!

After reading many reviews for this unit and others we bought the Gardenmaster so that we could make our own homemade pet treats (dried chicken breasts). The unit is bit loud (like having an oven fan on), but unless you are staying by the unit continuously it isn't all that noticeable. The unit did a fabulous job of drying the chicken, and the cats and dog devoured them without any hesitation. It will pay for itself in no time.

Está máquina viene de mala calidad ya los discos no traen el mismo grosor y resistencia que las anteriores que he comprado ya están igual de frágiles como la de marca mexicana que es pésima en durabilidad

We're very picky ppl and have been lookign for one for year, this genuiely fit the bill. Price is a bit higher, but you get 8ish tray plus covers to make your own fruit roll-ups, has been great for dryingout fruit slices, herbs, vegtables. It does the job in a good amount of time, cant be too quick as then the drying process isnt proper and this machine does it right. A suggestion to those who liek to dry their herb though- if you wish to keep the colour of your herbs dry them regularyl and not in this- the colour fades. In end- product worth it, have been using it for a while and can say that you if you are looking ofr a long term good quality drier- this is it.