Hi Damian,

You've probably bought a dehydrator by now but thought I would comment as I just bought a 6 tray model from ebay. I've only had it about a week but so far it's working well. I bought it as the cost of an excalibur was just too much and the $200-odd I saved not buying an excalibur covered the cost of a good food processor. I also wasn't sure how much use i'd get from it and wanted to avoid the round style dehydrator.

I've only seen an excalibur once but it's definately a more robust machine. Down side of the igloo is that it doesn't have a front door and the trays are quite flimsy - definately couldn't put plates etc on it. Not having a door is a bit of a nuisance. If you want to pull trays out for larger items it leaves a gap and is probably less energy efficient.

I guess it really depends on your budget and situation, you might be better to save for the excalibur? I'm new to raw and felt like I really needed to make dehydrated foods to get through winter. I bought the igloo with the view that I'll be happy to get a few years out of it and if it's still getting a lot of use I might consider upgrading to a 10 tray excalibur, but it will do the job for now.

Hope this helps. Cheers