this is john kohler with discountjuicers.com.today’s a very exciting day for me. i have the all new sedona food dehydrator. it justarrived here, so now i’m going to un-box it and show you guys what’s included withthe sedona food dehydrator, go over some of the different features it has, and also we’regoing to just do a rough comparison with the excalibur nine-tray dehydrator. so, this sedonadehydrator is a nine-tray dehydrator, and it’s made by tribest, and that’s the samecompany that makes the green star juicer, the green power juicer, and also the greenstar elite juicer, plus a host of other, basically, kitchen appliances that allow you to livea healthier lifestyle. so the sedona dehydrator fits in their mix perfectly, and i’m soglad there’s finally an alternative to the
excalibur, which has basically ruled the worldin the world of raw and living foods. this one has some really cool features, and, well,without further ado, let’s go ahead and open the box, and check it out.we’re going to go ahead and open this box. now, this is a pretty huge box, you know,dehydrator’s actually pretty big. we’re also going to measure the dehydrator and showyou the sizes too. so, okay, so with the dehydrator you get the little booklet and instructionmanual. the instruction manual has all the operating instructions, including a warrantycard. this machine does come with a full five-year warranty through tribest. they’ve actuallycustomer service. and there’s also, basically, some raw food recipes in here by jenny ross,owner and executive chef of 118 degrees down
in costa mesa, california. that’s an excellentplace. i’ve actually been there and eaten there before. and also by elysa markowitz,so probably about a dozen recipes. sprouted grain tortillas, garden crackers, flax crackers,marinated vegetables, easy fudge brownies, sedona- sweet sedona cookies, fruit chips,dehydrated spices, also kale chips, and even a pecan mousse with currant sauce. that soundsdelicious actually. anyways, comes with the instruction booklet,and let’s see here you get these, basically, these mesh inserts. so, basically, these arethe mesh inserts that you put inside the dehydrator to dehydrate everything on, that way you canjust take these out for easy cleaning. now the mesh inserts and all the trays in thesedona dehydrator are bpa-free. so they’re
a nice, you know, clear plastic, no blackdyes or anything to contend with. and then also you get this- the solid tray. so, thesolid tray’s not necessarily meant for dehydrating anything on, although you could do that, it’snot going to work too well. this is basically used for the separator tray. so, this machinehas two fans inside of it. you can use either the top fan or the bottom fan, and if you’reonly going to use half the dehydrator, you’re going to put this solid tray in there to basicallyonly let all the air flow stay in one half of the dehydrator, so you can run it withfive trays or with four trays or both fans for all nine trays. so, that’s really smart.it’s going to save you electricity if you- if you’re not running the dehydrator full.so that’s that. here’s all the nine mesh
sheets you get with the dehydrator. we’regoing to put that aside here. next we’re going to pull this baby out.wow, this thing is huge. all right. and, the one thing i like about the sedona dehydratoris that this dehydrator is basically the same size and shape of most microwave ovens, sostandard microwave oven. so, they designed it this way so that you could pull out thatmicrowave oven that’s sitting on top of your, you know, stove, in the little cut-outspace. take that out. get rid of it. microwaving, in my opinion, is absolutely the worst wayto be cooking any kind of food, and dehydration’s actually probably the best.also, what’s really nice about the sedona dehydrator, you get a standard iec cable,so the- those computer geeks out there, they
know what this is. this is the standard cable,or the standard power cable that’s used with your pc that you’re probably watchingthis video on right now. um, so that’s really nice. it’s, it comes loose, so a lot ofdehydrators actually have that built in. so, this, you could actually separate out, andif it should go bad, they’re really easy to replace.let’s go ahead and get rid of the box now. and, let’s check out this dehydrator. first,let’s check out the back, see what it’s up. so, the back here basically has a littleport for the power cord, plug it in. and then also in the back, it also looks like a fuseis built in, to this fuse, so should the fuse blow, you could just easily get in there andreplace that. and, also this machine is ul
listed, ul approved, ul listed for householduse only. and the other thing in the back that’s nice is this panel has all the electronics.you can see that in the back there. this is computer controlled, so unlike the excalibur,which is not computer controlled, this is computer controlled, and this is a smart dehydrator,and that’s how all the functions of the dehydrator work. i mean, there’s a microprocessorthat really constantly checks the temperature of the dehydrator to make sure it’s, youknow, the temperature inside is what you’re setting it for. really smart.the other thing about this dehydrator that’s really cool is basically there’s these littlenubby things on the back of this dehydrator. i’ll pull it up, so you can see it. thesenubby things stick out, and i was like, “why
did they put that?†well, it’s reallyeasy why they put that. they don’t want you shoving this against the wall, because,you know, for a dehydrator to work optimally it does need some air circulation or air space,so this prevents you from putting it, you know, that close to the wall, so there’ssome air circulation, so things just don’t get too hot, and the, you know, electronicsdon’t get too hot, and the air can flow evenly.i guess, with that, let’s go ahead and take a look at the front of the machine. and theone thing i like about the sedona dehydrator is this feature right here. it has a lid ona hinge. that’s so nice, because we’re going to compare this to the excalibur ina second, and the, you know, the lid or the
cover is not on a hinge. let’s see, theygive you a warranty thing, “please discard tray holders on both sides of the machineprior to operation. failure to do so may result in a fire or electrical damage.†so, alwaysimportant to read the manufacturer’s directions. what they’re talking about here are theseguys right here, they want this to be nice and presentable, so when they ship it to youthey basically put this little insert in here. and, kind of hard to get out actually. yougot to basically just pull these two insert things out here which basically keep the traysin place for shipping, so, you know, they’re not damaged or anything like that. and, thisis a little bit interesting to get out of here. takes a little bit of playing. ah! gotit, finally. man, this does keep the trays
in place. one of the common problems in theexcalibur when they ship that is all the trays get wonky inside the machine. that’ll neverhappen with the tribest sedona dehydrator. you know, tribest has thought a lot aboutthe engineering of this dehydrator. they thought about from the size of the dehydrator to,like, fitting in a standard microwave spot to, you know, even holding the trays in placeso they don’t get damaged or roughed up in shipping. that’s really smart.so, okay, we got these two guys out. going to go ahead and throw those in the box, sosave them in case you ever need to ship the dehydrator back for service. definitely goodto save all the packing materials. uh, next thing we’re going to talk aboutare the trays. so, here are the trays, once
again. these are the, basically, the trayswithout the mesh, so not necessarily supposed to be dehydrating on this. you’re supposedto go ahead and- and put a mesh on there. so, then you’re just basically going toput a mesh sheet on there, and then that just goes into the machine. and one of the nicethings i like about this machine is that there are about an inch spacing between the differentshelves. so, between shelf and shelf there’s about an inch. on the excalibur there’sthree quarters of an inch, and we’ll go over that in a minute.i guess besides the insides, you know, nothing too fancy. we’re going to go ahead and takeout the trays, and i want to show you guys the, uh, the two [unintelligible] fans andthe heating element. so, there’s basically
two independent fan and heating element systemsin this machine all controlled by this control panel up here. let’s take a look at theback there. oop, got one more tray in there. so, right in the back here you can see onthe bottom half there’s a- a fan and a heating element, and on the top half there’s anotherfan and a heating element. these are both dc brushless fans rated for many, many hoursof continual use, plus the heating element, plus there’s a steel mesh here, nice- nicehigh-quality mesh, that protects you from sticking anything into, you know, the fansor into the heating elements. so, definitely really good, i know inside here looks allreally nice, we’re just going to go ahead, and i guess close this up. that’s the othernice feature about this machine, real glass.
this is a real glass, basically, cover here,and you can look inside the machine to check to see if you- if you’re- the things you’redehydrating are finished or not. so, you don’t even have to open the machine to check. withthe excalibur, we’ll- we’ll see that in a minute. you know, you got to open it upand check. i guess the other coolest part of this machineis that it is computer-controlled, and this control panel here. basically, you have acouple of switches, we’re going to go over one at a time. you have a power switch, onand off. it’s a real simple, real easy power switch, is on the front. turn it on, turnit off. next, you have a fahrenheit and celsius button. so, here in america we use fahrenheit,but maybe if you’re from europe, or you
know, they also actually sell this machinein europe, you can change it to celsius if that’s what you’re accustomed to. next,we have a temperature, so this actually constantly monitors the temperature, and will displaythe temperature on there, the temperature inside the machine. next, we have a timer,and this is the countdown timer, so this, basically, you could set your countdown timerto twelve hours, it’ll countdown to zero then shut itself off automatically. so, it’sa really smart machine. you won’t have to waste any extra electricity running the dehydratorwhen whatever you’re dehydrating is finished. also this display will actually, besides displayingthe temperature that it is currently inside the machine, this will allow you to set thetemperature to the desired temperature that
you want to maintain inside the machine. next,over here, that’s what you do with this little button here. this is the “setâ€button. so this “set†button allows you to set the temperature and also the timerinside the machine. so, the next button on here is the “trayâ€button, and what this “tray†button allows you to do is it allows you to run either thebottom half of the machine or the top half, so it’ll run the dehydrator on the bottomtrays or the top trays, and, once again, we have this solid piece here. this solid piecebasically goes right in the middle here to cordon off the different fans, so if you’rerunning only the top fan, you don’t want all the air going to the bottom, because that’sgoing to basically just make it take longer
to dehydrate.so, the “mode†button is an interesting button on this dehydrator. what the “modeâ€button allows you to do is, basically, allows you run the dehydrator at a lower fan speedsetting. so, one of the common complaints on the excalibur is that, you know, there’sonly one fan setting, and actually, it’s a fairly loud setting. the “mode†buttonlets you basically take the fan level down to, like, low speed. it’s still running,it’s not going to dehydrate as fast, but say you have company over, or you want tosleep at night, and it’s too loud, you can run- run it at slower speed, it’s goingto be much quieter. and, once again, it’s going to take longer to dehydrate whateveryou’re dehydrating if you’re doing it
at low speed. i always recommend using highspeed whenever possible, unless you have company over or something for that matter.the last button over here, really easy to use, is the “start and pause†button.so, once you get all your temperature locked in that you want it start at, and the timerset up, you just hit the “start†button once, the guider comes up and will run thepre-programmed program, much like your washing machine. once you set it for the whatever,you hit the start button, it goes. one of the nice features about this dehydratorso that it saves electricity is that once it’s running, and you open the door at anytime, the machine will stop running, because, you know, there’s no use in blowing hotair in your face, or actually, wasting electricity
while the door is open. and this door, youknow, it doesn’t- it makes a pretty good sealing unlike the excalibur. and, there aresome air vents on the side, because what needs to happen when the food is dehydrating, thefan is running from the back, blowing the heat source to the front, and as the heatsource blows off the front, the, basically, the water comes off, or the moisture comesoff the food, and then some of it needs to escape. so, there’s basically these portson the side that lets the moisture in the food that you’re dehydrating escape. so,that’s definitely really smart, and that’s pretty much it to the sedona food dehydrator.so, next, we’re going to go ahead and pull out the excalibur dehydrator, and we’regoing to compare the excalibur to the sedona.
so, now the moment you’ve all been waitingfor. we’re going to compare the excalibur over here with the sedona over here. wow,look at that. you hit this, you can hear it shake around. you hear this, it’s a solid.anyways, i guess the first thing we’re going to talk about is we’re going to talk aboutthe shape and size difference. as you can see, this excalibur here is a lot shorter,or a little bit shorter anyways, than the sedona. and, let’s see here, it’s approximatelytwelve inches high, maybe twelve and a quarter inches high. and, the sedona, once again,is about fourteen and a half inches tall. then, on the excalibur, the width of the excalibur,that’s about sixteen and a half inches wide, and the sedona is about seventeen inches wide,so about one inch wider. next, we’re going
to measure the depth, so the depth of thesedona, the physical depth is about seven and three quarters deep, but then you gotthose little spacers, you know, so you can’t be right next to the wall, and that bringsit out to probably about nineteen and a half inches deep. the excalibur, with the dooron there, that’s about nineteen inches deep, plus, you know, you should be giving it someclearance against the back. you don’t want to just cram it against wherever-whereverit is. let’s see, the next thing is the electricalrequirements. the sedona dehydrator, once again, uses that iec cord that’s removable.the excalibur has one that’s, basically, comes out of the machine. the other thingi want to make you aware of is that the sedona
dehydrator is c-ul, so that means that it’sul approved and also canadian ul approved. and, the excalibur is, basically has a cemark, so it’s not, actually, ul approved, which is interesting. now, let’s this, thesedona has a built-in fuse. it’s a time-delay fuse rated 6.3 amps, and the excalibur actuallyhas a built-in fusible circuit, and that if it blows, then you, that’s like, prettymuch not really a useable, repairable part. whereas, the sedona, you know, if the fuseblows, you just want to get the other, another fuse, the right type, put it in there, you’reprobably going to be up and running again. so, next, let’s go ahead and talk aboutthe controls on the different machines. the controls on the sedona, once again, are digitalcontrols on the front, very easy to program
with the little buttons. of course, it can’tbe any easier on the excalibur. you basically have a rotating dial, much like your t.v.sets of the, what, ‘70s or ‘80s, you know, and the volume control. you turn it to off,then you can just set it to the temperature you want. one of the negatives about thisis that, you know, i don’t like it that it’s on the back of the dehydrator. manypeople put these on their countertops, and when you push it all the way back, you know,this control is actually underneath, you know, where your cabinets come out, so it’s kindof a pain. next, let’s go ahead and take off the doors,so, or, actually, or open the doors. on the sedona here, it’s kind of nice, the dooractually just swings open, it’s on a hinge,
and it’s glass, so you can see in and seewhat’s going on. this machine, if we let it drop, this thing will just drop off. bothmachines are actually about a black, camera black is what they call it, and the excaliburdehydrator door just comes off. we’re going to go ahead and set that inside there.and, this is the dehydrator, the excalibur has a tray that’s about this size. thisis about a fifteen-inch by fifteen-inch tray. the useable space is about fourteen by fourteen.so, go ahead and measure that just to make sure for you guys. yep, well, it’s aboutfifteen and about a quarter inch or so and by fifteen and a quarter, and the useabletray size is about fourteen by fourteen. on the sedona here, overall tray size, once again,is about fifteen and a quarter also, and then,
also, we have about thirteen inches. so, alittle bit smaller than the excalibur. for fun, let’s go ahead and line these up andsee how they look. so, there it is, you can see the excalibur basically has, maybe like,i don’t know, an inch or two more of actual physical drying space, because it is actuallya deeper unit. the sedona comes with these style mesh sheetshere, and the excalibur comes with these style mesh sheets, so both machines look like themesh sheets are fairly similar in the, in the spacing. actually, the excalibur lookslike the hole spacing is a little larger. and this, this feels like a more durable,you know, piece. so, next let’s go ahead and measure thetray spacing on the tray spacing between the
excalibur trays. that’s about three quartersof an inch, so that’s, you know, that gives you about that much space. if you’re dehydratingsomething that’s tall, it’s always nice on these kinds of dehydrators, you can actuallyjust take out the trays and run them every other tray, so you can have a-a taller loafif you’re dehydrating breads, or sometimes i’m dehydrating collard chips, and the collardchips have funny waves in them, and then it’s kind of nice to, you know, have a little bitmore clearance. so, in the sedona dehydrator here, the trays are actually at a recess,so they go down a little bit, and, the basically, spacing in between the trays are approximatelyone inch, so that gives you a quarter inch of basically more playing room, and that iskind of nice.
so, next, we’re going to go ahead and takeout all the trays out of the machine, so you can actually see inside the box or insidethe dehydrator and check out the fan assembly. and, we’re going to go ahead and talk moreabout that. so i have all the trays out of the two dehydrators, and i’m going to goahead and do a close-up shot, so you guys can see the quality inside the machines, andjust see the working parts of the dehydrator. that’s very important, you know, the qualityof the dehydrator, because, you know, your dehydrator, unlike a juicer that you run forfive minutes and turn off or ten minutes and then turn it off, the dehydrator will be runningconstantly, you know, for 24, 48 hours, depending on what you’re dehydrating and how longyou need to dehydrate it. and, dehydration
times can vary a lot depending on how muchmoisture is in the food you’re dehydrating, plus how much moisture is in the air whereyou live. so, obviously, in las vegas things are going to take a little bit less time todehydrate than in, you know, honolulu, hawaii where there’s a lot more humidity in theair. so, be sure to check the dehydration times, you know, i have a webpage that explainthe dehydration times. so, you also want to check on my website for the dehydrator comparisonchart, which is a chart that basically has everything spelled out with all the differentspecifications all in one place, so you can see it a lot easier.i guess, without further ado, let’s go ahead and do the close-ups on the motors and theheating elements inside both these dehydrators.
so, first, we’re going to go ahead and lookat the sedona dehydrator, the inside of the machine. so, once again, in the back here,it’s just a plastic backing, and then you have a nice, basically, heavy-duty grid. and,then you see the two fans. there’s one fan down here, one fan up here. these are dc brushlessfans, and then you have the little heating coils. so, once again, you can turn on eitherone fan or the other fan to dehydrate either the top half or the bottom half or turn onboth for the, basically, the dual heating. so, that’s definitely going to work prettygood for you. also, once again, this is computer controlled on the temperature display, soit’s constantly monitoring the temperature to make sure it’s going to stay at the temperatureyou set it. over here next door is the excalibur
dehydrator, and inside here it has, you know,one larger fan, and on this you just basically have this wire mesh stuff that’s kind offolded over to, you know, cover the fan to protect you. and, if you press your traysin too much, check this out. i don’t know if you can see that, but this mesh stuff flexes,and i’ve had had it when i push the trays in a little bit too much, it actually rubsa little bit. but anyways, the heating element in this machine are actually behind the fan,and then in the tribest, actually it’s it the heating elements is in front of the fan.so, whether it pulls the hot air or pushes the hot air, i don’t know. i don’t knowif any way is either better than the other. let’s see, this little part here, i don’tknow if you can see that. there’s a little,
like, diode-looking thing, and that’s actuallythe fusible link there, that actually if it blows out, if it gets too hot, that wouldneed to be replaced if your dehydrator doesn’t work, and that is actually a warranty issueprobably. up here is the brains of the excalibur. it’s basically a kind of rheostat thingor potentiometer that controls the heating of the fan. so, once again, this is the faninside the excalibur, and on the back of the excalibur, basically just has some sheet metal.and, overall, you know, i can definitely say that cases, this is me tapping on the caseof the excalibur, and here’s tapping on the case of the sedona, you know. the sedonaseems to be, like, a much better built unit, you know me, and i hope it would be, becauseit-it costs a little bit more than the excalibur.
now, let’s sum up the two different dehydrators.basically, we have the sedona dehydrator nine-tray, and the excalibur nine-tray. and, basically,they’re both dehydrators, they both dehydrate things, take, basically, the water out ofthem to preserve more of the nutrition than standard cooking would. that being said, iencourage you to always eat as much of your diet, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables thathave high water content, because, after all, we are seventy to seventy-five percent water.and, if we’re not eating foods with that high water content, it’s going to dehydrateus whether they’re raw or not. that being said, you know, dehydrating foods is definitelyfun, it’s the way of cooking and get things that are crunchy in a raw foods diet, so itcan be very helpful when you’re first beginning
or even if you’re a gardener like myself,and have so many tomatoes in tomato season you can’t possibly eat them all. i liketo dehydrate them and save them for the winter. so, another excellent use of the sedona orexcalibur dehydrator. so, next, let’s go ahead and talk aboutthe non-stick sheets for both these dehydrators. the non-stick sheets are basically this, insteadof using a mesh sheet, you would use one of these non-stick sheets, which is a solid sheet.now, i always encourage you to use the mesh sheets whenever possible, that’s going toreduce your dehydration time. when you have a solid sheet, the air flow can’t flow tounderneath, so that part usually stays more moist, and you’ll usually have to eitherflip over whatever you’re dehydrating that
is on a non-stick sheet. but, the non-sticksheets can be really useful for making things that are too runny or watery or things likecrackers and breads in the dehydrators. so, that being said, uh, this is the fourteen-inchby fourteen-inch size called the, primaflex sheets, made for the excalibur brand dehydrator.and then, over on the tribest, they don’t yet have the non-stick sheets, so what i wouldrecommend is you could get the primaflex sheets for the excalibur, and, basically, you trimoff one edge. let me go ahead and show that to you. basically, what would happen is thisis going to fit pretty much one direction pretty well, and then you’re just goingto trim off this edge, and then you’re going to, basically, have a sheet that’s goingto fit the sedona. so, you know, one scissor
cut, really easy to trim it off, and you’rebasically all set to, you know, go with the non-stick sheets in the sedona. we will beoffering a package with the non-stick sheets with the sedona really soon for these sheets,and, once again, you just got to trim them, and you’ll be all set, ready to go and dehydrate.so, to sum it up, i know the question’s going to come up, “john, john, what’sthe better dehydrator, the sedona or the excalibur?†well, that’s a good question, and i don’treally know, ‘cause this is the first unboxing of the sedona. i haven’t actually used ityet, so i just want to compare the features side-by-side, compare these units side-by-side,so you can see the difference in the size and the shape, the difference in the buildquality, and just how they work. the next
step is i’m going to start using this, andonce i have a good many hours under my belt dehydrating in this, then i’m going to comeback, and i’ll be able to tell you more about the dehydrator and how it works. itwouldn’t be really fair of me to say, “oh, this one’s better or that one’s better,â€because i don’t really know. i’ve been using the excalibur for many, many, many,many years now, and i know how it runs, but i haven’t actually used the sedona dehydratoryet. so, i’m really looking forward to probably making some collard chips in the sedona dehydrator,‘cause that’s, i have lots of collard greens, and you can make your own green powdersin your dehydrator. you just literally take, pick leaves, plain, put them in there, dehydratethem, then you put them in the blender or
food processor and powder them up. instantlyyou have your own green powder, so they’re great to take on trips and other things likethat. other than that, you know, the sedona costsa bit more than the excalibur, and the excalibur, once again, has two different grades, the2900 and the 3900. be sure to check my other video to see the comparison of the 2900 andthe 3900. i would recommend, actually, the 3900 is the upgraded model with better components.but, that being said, you know, if you got the money, the sedona so far builds quality.all the, all the, you know, smart features such as the glass on the front door, realglass, and also that you can control the temperature, the timers, it’s going to save you money.it’s just smart. i mean, you could run half
the dehydrator. it’s going to save you moremoney, and it’s quieter. i know that for a fact already. it’s quieter than the excalibur.so, hopefully you’ve enjoyed this comparison of the brand new tribest sedona dehydratorand the excalibur nine-tray dehydrator. and, once again, this is john kohler with discountjuicers.com.be sure to visit discountjuicers.com/youtube for special promotional offers for our youtubevisitors.