Electric Food Dehydrators are available in all forms of shapes and sizes ranging widely both in quality and price.

A small, cheap food dehydrator that costs between $30 and $40 will probably have the heating source situated at the bottom of the appliance and it could take up to 3 days in order to dry certain kinds of foods.

This may be all right for the occasional use and will be ideal for keeping your kids busy for a few hours.

If however you are trying to find a more substantive and reliable system to preserve food either for snacks, camping out, backpacking or survival situations then you must count on paying more for a better model.

My husband has a saying - "Buy the Best for the Least"

What you will be searching for is a food dehydrator that provides fast, even and nutritious drying of food.

Here is a list of the features and benefits that the higher priced, top of the range, electric food dehydrators offer you.

Top mounted fan so that liquids do not drip down on to the heater chamber.

1000 watts of electric power giving you a faster drying time for large quantities of food.

Air flow system that forces heated air down the outside pressurized chamber, then horizontally over each individual rack for fast, even and nutritious drying.

Absolutely no flavor blending.

Variable thermostat since different food items require particular temperature settings.

Opaque exterior which obstructs light to help retain more of the foods nutrients and vitamins throughout the drying process.

Expanding to satisfy your needs. You may to begin with buy a four tray system and then find that you could make use of more drying space. With an expandable system it is easy to add more trays, say 20 trays giving you 20 square feet of drying space.

The question that you need to think about is, which of those features can I manage without whilst still providing fast, even and nutritious food.

My short list of essentials for an electric food dehydrator would be as follows: top mounted fan, opaque exterior, horizontal air-flow, expandable tray system, variable drying pressures and also I would opt for a reasonably speedy drying system.