STX-DEH-800W-XLS Dehydra 800-watt 10-Tray Food and Jerky Dehydrator

Bought one of these for putting produce from my gardens up this summer and for making jerky (got to have jerky!). As far as my choices went, it was a dead heat between the STX and the Excalibur. I went with the STX due to the customer reviews and the price. It has all the bells and whistles the Excalibur top model has for half the price.Wow! The STX is ginormous, holds a ton of food and dries everything I've used it for very well. First day I had it the kids and I dried a bunch of apple and banana chips for an upcoming road trip. This thing works better than the Excalibur my ma has had for eons, the convection makes drying so much easier and faster. Very pleased with it.So far I've done apples, bananas, 3 different jerkies, and raised bread dough. It hasn't let me down yet.Raising bread dough, well, slightly embarrassing story there. Before I bought this model STX I had been looking at their other dehydrator, which comes with the 4 tray blank door for doing larger items. I ordered this model STX, received it, and realized it hadn't come with the door blank. I sent an eMail off to The Mercantile Station through Amazon, in under five minutes I was getting a phone call. After a pleasant conversation, he explained where I had made my error (and, yes, it was MY error) and then informed me that he'd have one of his fabricators *make* me a custom door blank for my model STX, I received it in what had to be record time (about a week). Color me amazed, impressed, and grateful.If you're like I was, sitting on the fence trying to decide which dehydrator to buy, I can't recommend this dehydrator or seller enough.Great product, very nice and prompt people who will bend over backwards to make you happy, who else would you want to deal with?

Frankly, the only reasons I bought this unit over one of the Excalibur models, since the prices are now comparable on Amazon, is that in the Customer Question and Answer area of the Amazon product page, one of the customers stated that the unit came with a blank front piece so one could place taller bread or yogurt crocks in the unit and still seal the front(I plan to use the dehydrator for proofing bread dough and making yogurt). Well, that information is incorrect for the STX DEHYDRA 800W-XLS as of this writing, 06/25/2013. There was no blank front piece in the shipping box. The unit also does not come with a drip tray insert for the bottom tray, which I consider a necessity for marinated jerky, to keep beef blood out of the bottom of the unit. While I can probably make one easily enough, for the $240.00 price, one would expect the manufacturer to include one. Also, the instruction manual makes no mention of raising bread dough or making yogurt, nor does it have recommendations on drying herbs. At least the operator panel has the temperature recommendations for them. The unit gets a two star deduction for not including the drip tray, the sparse instruction manual, and lack of a blank front panel. While the incorrect information in Q&A is not the sellers fault, the lack of the useful part is, especially since they are marketing their product to perform those functions.

I have used this product twice since receiving it and it works very well. It accommodates even more than I expected, the unit holds a lot!

I gave it 5 stars because I don't have any thing to say negative. Have only dried about 5 pounds of two kinds of apples and two pineapples. Both were successful. Both dried in less time than the booklet estimated.After thoroughly drying (which was very even across all the trays) I vacuum packed the fruit. I purchased this one, a larger model because my primary use was intended to dry produce from our garden and felt there would be alot to do once things started ripening. It is too large to store on the kitchen counter.I placed the dehydrator on my clothes dryer (solid, flat, warm and near an electrical outlet) but store it in the basement. If you are buying one just to make occasional snaks or a special favorite treat, a smaller one would probably be fine.One negative comment in another review mentioned the fan giving a little start and then going dead when first turning it on; mine did that too, but the instruction booklet said that was normal and after follwing the directions to set the time and temperature and pressing the start button, it fired right up and ran as expected with no interruptions.After I have tried more items, and some recipes on the prepper sites on the internet, I'll see if there is any additional information that would be helpful.UPDATE: Have dried chicken breasts. Boneless, skinless breasts were on sale for $1.68 per pound, seemed like a reasonable price to experiment. First cooked them in a pressure cooker (then made soup from the broth), sliced them with a SHARP knife into thin slices, then laid them out on the drying rack. Followed manufacturers directions for meat and vacuum packed the chicken when dry.It worked really well but the chicken crumbled some when slicing, that and the shrinking pieces as they dried resulted in pieces falling through the holes in the drying rack to the bottom. I fixed this by going to a craft shop and bought sheets of plastic square holed material, the type used for cross stitching. They come in a couple sizes of holes and work great for things that shrink smaller than the holes of the drying racks provided.As far as vacuum packing the dried chicken, it has rather jagged edges and the regular Foodsaver bags couldn't hold a vacuum. ZipLock vacuum bags are heavier and cheaper too. They're all I use now.