Cosori Premium Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator Review

We purchased the Cosori Premium Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator so our reviewer could put it to the test. Keep reading for our full product review.

If you’re in the market for a dehydrator, electric options like the Cosori Premium Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator make the entire process practically foolproof. Electric dehydrators precisely control temperature, preventing bacteria and other potentially harmful microbes from growing on your food, and utilize fans and heating elements aimed at ensuring proper air circulation for evenly dehydrated results. All you have to do is carefully prep your food, put it in the machine, and wait. Of course, expectations don’t always match up with reality; that’s why I wanted to test the Cosori dehydrator for myself. I made dehydrated strawberries, homemade sweet potato dog treats, and beef jerky to see how easy the process was and how good the finished results were. Read on to see if it could take the heat.

Features: Just what you need, nothing more

The Cosori Premium Food Dehydrator isn’t an especially feature-rich appliance, but it has everything you need to successfully (and easily) dehydrate foods. There’s a digital control panel that’s intuitive and easy to operate, even if it’s your first time dehydrating foods. The buttons responded quickly to my touch and were self-explanatory, so there’s no big learning curve.

There are four functions—time/temperature, decrease, increase, and start/stop. The temperature ranges from 95 to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can set the time in 30-minute increments for up to 48 hours. One of the best features is the automatic shut-off. If you’re not around when the dehydrator is done, it will shut off automatically and start cooling down.

This came in handy for me when I ran the dehydrator overnight. I didn’t have to perfectly time it so that it wouldn’t be running all night while I was sleeping. I could estimate and wake up to food that was done and cooled enough to remove and put away.

The dehydrator also comes with a recipe book that has 50 recipes ranging from jalapeño lime jerky to spring onion garlic crisps.

Design: Sleek-looking, but large

The Cosori Premium Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator looks like your standard stainless steel kitchen appliance. It has black accents around the door and on the face where the display sits that create a nice contrast. While there’s nothing about the design that’s especially fancy or unique, it fits in nicely with all of my other appliances and overall kitchen decor so, overall, I was pleased with the look.

There’s a large glass door on the front, so you can watch your food as it’s dehydrating—something that I prefer over the stacked-style food dehydrators that you have to open to check on.

While the design looks sleek enough, it does take up a decent amount of counter space. At 13.4 x 17.8 x 12.4 inches, it’s longer than it is wide, so much of the space that you lose is behind the machine, but it still seems rather cumbersome and intrusive unless you have a lot of extra counter space.

I prefer to store whatever appliances I can in a cabinet or closet, but this one was too big for that. And while it does have two built-in handles on each side so I could move it around easily enough, it weighs 21 pounds, so it’s not the lightest machine out there. The extra weight and size made it really inconvenient to move back and forth between the counter and storage space, so it just stayed on the kitchen counter.

Setup Process: Plug in and go

Although the actual cooking process can get pretty lengthy, dehydrators are typically really easy to set up and use—and that was true of the Cosori. There was really nothing that I had to do to get it going, aside from taking the racks out of their plastic wrapping and setting them up in the dehydrator.

I do like to give any new appliances a quick wash, though, so I wiped down the racks and trays—there are six racks, one plastic mesh screen, and one plastic fruit roll tray—with soap and water, and then put them in the dehydrator, and I was ready to go.

Performance: Five stars

When it comes to performance, the Cosori gets five stars. I made dehydrated strawberries, dehydrated sweet potato dog treats, and the jalapeño lime jerky from Cosori’s recipe book. While I personally enjoyed the dehydrated fruits and vegetables over the jerky, they all came out evenly dehydrated in the specified amount of time. It didn’t matter if the food was positioned toward the top or bottom—all seemed to be exposed to equal amounts of heat, thanks to the rear-mounted fan and heating elements.

The dehydrator also did a really good job at dehydrating the foods to different textures. I like dehydrated strawberries a little chewy—they taste just like Fruit Roll-Ups—and when I set the dehydrator to about nine hours, it could pull this off perfectly. It also was able to handle turning the strawberries into more freeze-dried, crunchy fruit with a little extra time.

The machine stayed fairly cool to the touch. Although it was a little warm after running at 135 degrees Fahrenheit for close to nine hours, the outside of the machine didn’t get overly hot, so I was worried about getting burned if I accidentally brushed against it while I was doing other things in the kitchen. This is especially helpful if you have curious kids who like to poke around and touch things.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet it was, too. The decibel rating is 48dB, which Cosori says is the same amount of noise that is often recorded in a library. In other words, the dehydrator is whisper-quiet when it’s running. Unlike other appliances, like air fryers that can be a little intrusive when they’re on, I could barely hear the dehydrator—an important feature when you’re letting things dehydrate for 12 to 14 hours (or longer).

I typically like to load up the dehydrator at night after dinner and then let it run while I’m in bed, so whatever I am dehydrating is ready when I wake up or sometime in the morning. Since I could barely hear the Cosori while it was on, I could do this with no issues or nighttime disturbances.

Cleaning: Dishwasher safe

Because all of the racks come out of the dehydrator, cleaning was a cinch. I wiped them down quickly with a sponge and dish soap, and then let them dry in a drying rack. The trays are all dishwasher safe, so you can pile them in the dishwasher if you prefer not to wash things by hand. The plastic tray liners can be washed in the dishwasher on the top rack, but you have to remember to remove them before the drying cycle—something that I would never be able to do (I can barely remember to put clothes in the dryer)—so I preferred to wash them by hand, too.

There were a couple of times that I didn’t clean the racks right away, and it was a little difficult to get stuck-on bits off the racks since the rack grid is textured, but if you remember to remove the racks right away or soak them, it’s not a problem.

Price: It’s worth it

At a retail price of $160, the Cosori Premium Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator falls somewhere in the middle of the most popular options out there. It’s not as expensive as an Excalibur Dehydrator (view at Amazon)—one of the most well-known dehydrators—but you may have to save up a little for it. And while you may be able to get other dehydrators for less cash, this one’s streamlined design, stainless steel finish, and digital control panel are worth the extra cost.

Competition: Depends on your budget

Nesco FD-1010 Gardenmaster Pro Dehydrator: If you have more extensive dehydrating needs, the Nesco FD-1010 Gardenmaster Pro Dehydrator may be a better fit. It comes with eight trays, instead of six, but you can also purchase additional trays separately and expand the system up to 30 trays. And all the trays stack vertically, so it wouldn’t take up any additional counter space. The controls are manual, but there’s no glass window, so you have to open the dehydrator to check on your food’s progress. It retails for around $130.

Tribest Sedona Express Food Dehydrator with Stainless Steel Trays: If budget isn’t a major concern, the Tribest Sedona Express Food Dehydrator is another higher volume option that has a compact, counter-friendly design. This dehydrator has 11 trays, digital controls, and a central fan that allows for even heat distribution and rapid dehydration. It’s about 3.5 times the cost of the Cosori, retailing around $500, but it’s worth it if you dehydrate a large volume of foods often.