This item arrived damage , called , and it was replased in 3 days .2nd one was fired up and we made beef jerky as chriatmas presents. Made app. 50 lb in 4 days . this product worked great.

The food will be dried at different speeds, not just because this is a tray tower and the heater is onj the bottom but it also manages to burn food on one side of the circle while the other side remains not dried. Also the towering of trays is odd, trays seem to fit but then you will realize they are not quite mounted.

We bought one in 2006 and it lasted thru about 4 years of use of about 40-60 hours of "on" time each year. Now it seems something has burned out in the motor (fan wasn't frozen, no fuse that I could find, heater elements looked fine, etc). So we must buy a new food dehydrator.
For a cheap dehydrator, it worked fine. The trays were average; we never had a problem with food on one side vs food on the other. Rotated the trays like the manual said and left the top open 25-50% and it worked great. With some attention the trays lock in place just fine; one just has to be aware of what one is doing, versus spacing out and thinking about other stuff.

It gets a 3 out of 5 because it works and comes with 5 trays but has minimal features and only lasted for about 200 hours of use. Final verdict: we will probably look at something else having now owned/used our first dehydrator.