Oypla Electrical Food Dehydrator Machine with Thermostat Control

Could not be easier to use, great temperature range & very quiet. On first use I only used 4 trays & dried 2 kg’s of beef biltong in 24 hours. This is the first food dryer I’ve bought & used & really wish I’d invested in this one sooner. Price & Functionality 10/10.

Was pretty skeptical about this due to cheap price and reviews but i personally think this product was great for what i use it for. It’s very tricky to clean but that’s due to the holes needed to dehydrate so i don’t feel that makes the product itself any less good. Trays haven’t cracked or anything and is still working great.

This product consists of a base unit, five stackable trays and a top. You load pieces of whatever you want to dry on to the trays, assemble them into a stack, place the stack (which does not have to have all five trays in it) on top of the base unit, put the lid on and turn the unit on with the correct temperature set. The base unit blows out warm air which passes up the stack, over the food and out through the holes in the lid. The product works well. I would like to say more of a positive nature because I really like this dehydrating thing and want to emphasise the positive before I point out the few drawbacks the product has. Anyway, sometimes 'it does what it says on the tin' (as another reviewer has said) is enough. Ok, lets have a look at the drawbacks. The first drawback is that the machine wafts out the scent of whatever you are drying and it may turn out that you don't like that scent all over the place. This may seem obvious for things like onions and garlic but it transpired (for me) that the drying scent of strawberries was overly sweet and sickly, borderline nauseating in fact. I would never have guessed this in advance because I love strawberries. Something else which is non-obvious is that one can not get a huge amount of throughput from the device. In order to dry efficiently you want to slice things thin. Once you do that, it turns out the machine will only hold around 3 Bramley apples or a couple of pounds of plums sliced up. It might take 24 hours to dry and its easy to consume a tray's worth of output in a single snack. I did not explicitly think about this before buying but the fruit filled marketing photo might lead you to subconsciously overestimate the product's throughput. Also potentially non-obvious: it would be difficult to dry grated food using this product without some kind of adaptation because of the size of the holes in the base of each tray. Likewise the product will not dry something like a fruit leather without adaptation. The product comes with an instruction booklet that gives brief instructions for the drying of a variety of fruits, vegetables, meat and fish though it does not indicate suitable drying temperatures. This same instruction booklet suggests the dehydrator should not be left unattended. Bearing in mind that some of the drying instructions suggest drying over 30+ hours that instruction not to leave it unattended seems either uncomfortable or impractical depending on whether you ignore or follow it. Lastly and I think most significantly, there is cleaning which is ever the bain of kitchen gadgets. Specifically, this product does not appear to be dishwasher safe. The base contains the electrics and so of course was never going to go in the dishwasher. Thankfully it is reasonably smooth and easy to clean. The pattern of holes of the tray bases smeared with some often sticky residue from whatever is being dried are awkward to clean. The instructions in reference to cleaning specify 'only soft sponges and mild detergent' with no comment on dishwashers. The first time I tried using the dishwasher, the outer ring of one of the trays developed two cracks. I fixed these with solvent weld and hoped I had been unlucky. The second time I tried the dishwasher one of the tray bases developed a small crack. Oh dear, I really think this product is not dishwasher safe. If somebody has some insight by all means please comment/ correct. So in summary: this product works well but is difficult to clean.

This is a brilliant bit of kit. My first time using a dehydrator but I have so much garlic from the garden this year I decided to give it a go and I'm glad I did. I was a bit concerned by some of the reviews but decided that as it was so cheap I'd give it a go. You definitely couldn't kick the trays down the street but they're not nearly as fragile as i expected!. I wash them in the sink with warm soapy water and a sponge and I have a tiny bottle brush which is ideal for getting into the vents if needed. With normal, careful handling the trays WON'T break. The machine works quietly and the garlic dried quicker than the recommended time, maybe because I blitzed it first? Chopped chillies took a bit longer. For some reason I failed to take into account how stinky the garlic would be 😅 Overall this item is great and I would highly recommend

Great product. I didn't have room in my freezer for many of the apples from my tree, so it seemed a good time to try dehydrating. I'm really pleased with the results, it's very easy to do, just plug and play. It's surprising how quickly fruit dries out, maybe 12 to 24 hours for apple slices, depending on how thick you slice them. I also dried wild mushrooms because I found an abundance of porcini and parasol this year. I think I paid £28 for this machine, worth every penny in my estimation. Just be careful with the plastic shelves, they feel delicate though I haven't broken one yet.

I first tested the temperature control, and it was good. I set it to 50 degrees and left a thermometer inside - the temperature was reached and kept steady. I reduced it 40 degrees and again it did what it was told. The model I received had 5 removable 1 piece trays. I left one untouched for the top most tray. One, for the bottom, I cut out just the inner most ring to remove the rim (presumably there to stop any food falling down the centre hole). This enabled the reel to sit nicely. Each of the other three I cut out an approximately 8 inch ring, these were for the middle three trays. A bit of a slog to do all the cutting, it took me about an hour with some decent side cutters, but now it's finished and it's working well. I'm very happy with it's performance, it gives out just a gentle hum from the fan. With the one untouched tray I suppose I could actually use it as Food Dehydrator as well :-)

I'd consider this an entry level dehydrator based on the price - definitely was the main selling point for me buying my first one. I've had it for approximately 5 months and use it for dog treats, perhaps 10-15 times over the months. Unfortunately, I've found the trays are made from quite a brittle plastic and have cracked easily. Many of the little spokes have broken off or cracked. I've been careful using the product, not throwing the trays around(!) but they have still broken. I suspect it's the thinness of the material under prolonged heat, as well as being quite footery to clean. I have now had to recycle 3 of the 5 trays and will unfortunately be looking to buy another set of trays or another dehydrator - not ideal when I was using the product to reduce my packaging/plastic consumption.