Nesco FD-1018A Gardenmaster Pro Food Dehydrator, for Beef Jerky, Fruit, Herbs, and Snacks, 8 Trays, White

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 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!

I dehydrate meals for food storage and backpacking a couple times a week and decided that purées and meals like soups were too much of a hassle to dehydrate in my Excalibur flat tray system. Love the Excalibur and have no issues other than items with more liquid tend to be messy and run off the flat trays. Looked at all of the Nesco options and decided to buy the FD-1018 eight tray kit because of the 1000 wattage and inclusion of the screens and fruit trays. The ability to easily expand the system was another major plus. I ordered four additional trays, fruit liners and screens to give me 12 square ft of dehydrater capacity. I was very impressed when I first assembled Nesco, this is a very well made dehydrater with a nice metal base section. Loaded up the Nesco with five trays of beef and bean burrito filling, no mess and no worry of liquid running off the trays. Again very impressed with the Nesco concept. The Nesco FD-1018 is loud but not any worse than the Excalibur 9 tray system that I have. Had no issues dehydrating five trays of beef bean burrito filling and three trays of pasta in the same amount of time that the Excalibur would have taken. I bought the Nesco FD-1018 to fulfill a specific task and it preformed perfectly and actually looks much nicer than the Excalibur. As far as cost the Nesco FD-1018 with an additional four complete tray sets is more reasonably priced for the same amount of dehydration space. The ability to expand up to 30 trays gives the Nesco a big edge in that the Excalibur will always be 9 trays. The Nesco FD-1018 is a nice alternative or addition to the Excalibur.

This was an upgrade for me from a oooold school 1992 Ronco (no fan or on/off switch or temp control) that I found at a garage sale for $5. The Nesco is awesome as far as evenly dehydrating the food - I DO NOT have to rotate the trays like I had to do (exhaustively) with the Ronco. This is a great package with a good number of trays for me (8), and the full two sets of liners (1 mesh and 1 solid for each tray) are fabulous. I mainly dehydrate fruit (bananas, strawberries, blueberries, apples, and the occasional citrus), but I did a batch of jerky, and it came out very well. I will be doing that again. I like the on/off switch and temp control. The range of temps look like they will cover anything I get inspired to dehydrate. Also, in general but especially compared to the Ronco, this Nesco is FAST. What took the Ronco 8 hours and sometimes overnight takes the Nesco 4-5 hours. Depending on the shape of the food, some of it may take a bit longer, but it’s a huge improvement over the Ronco. The cons (but not dealbreakers for me) are 1) It’s LOUD. I‘m not sure what to compare it to - not quite as loud as a blender, but at least as loud as the stove vent fan. I’m pretty good at tuning out white noise, but it’s something to keep in mind if you have sensitive hearing - you may need to find a way to get some distance from it while it’s running. I don’t have that option with this floor plan, but it doesn’t bother me. 2) The trays are too big to fit flat in my 40 year old sink. This is due to the design relating to the air flow that makes me not have to rotate the trays (and my outdated sink), but it is a wet-messy project to wash them in my kitchen, even with a high faucet. To make it easier I ALWAYS use the mesh liners. They fit much better in my tiny sink, and I can let them soak if needed. Since the trays are so big, the unit does take up a LOT of real estate on my counter, and unfortunately, I need my big-enough-to-fit-this-monster cabinets for food storage because I do not have a pantry (how is that even possible?). In that 5-ish by 2.5-ish foot chunk of counter, I have a blender, the Nesco, an Instant Pot (8-qt.), and a KitchenAid stand mixer, and this is also the stretch of counter where I do meal prep. It works for me. With those two concerns, I wasn’t comfortable giving it 5 stars, but I would totally give it 4.75 if I had the option. I have no regrets with this purchase.

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!

The Nesco Garden Pro Master Dehydrator with 8 trays works great ,a lot of room drying time is fast and easy comes with 8 fruit leather trays and have been using it quite a lot lately ,is not very loud ,set it in mud room or spare room and you can’t even hear it and if sitting in same room the noise is very minimal can still listen to radio or watch TV with no problem.

I am extremely disappointed. I purchased this product a couple of years ago. I unpacked it, looked it over, pulled the user manual out to read, and placed the product in my large pantry (in the original box, wrapped in plastic just as I had received it). Fast forward to today. I sliced a bunch of sweet potato (for dog treats), carefully placed the slices on the eight trays, plugged the dehydrator in, turned it on, and nothing happened. The red light on the rocker on/off switch did illuminate but there was no fan or any other noise. I left it on for a bit to see if the unit heated up. No heat. While I recognize where I should have tested the unit upon arrival I also expect when stored appropriately and cared for, the item should work. I called the manufacturer to find out IF I should be hearing a noise or be able to feel heat (I'm new to dehydrating). Indeed I should hear the fan and should be able to tell it is heating. Of course the manufacturer's warranty is one year from purchase date and I'm well past that. I get it. But I strongly feel the appliance should work. The manufacturer representative was very polite and did indicate I can send the base to them at my expense, pay a $9.99 diagnosis fee, and pay for repair IF it can be repaired, and pay for them to ship it back to me. This will likely make my $120 dehydrator a $200+ dehydrator. I'm just not sure I want to go that route. I'm disappointed. I researched carefully before purchasing this one and was impressed by the reviews. Now my quandary is do I purchase the same dehydrator because the reviews are still quite good or do I go a different direction.

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.