Thank you. Your information was extremely helpful. I am getting the E 5.

Wow! This was an amazing review and comparison! I've been trying to decide what electric composter to get and this was pretty helpful. I was engaged throughout the entire video, which I usually have trouble with. Really informational and a high-quality video. Thank you for the review!

I just recently bought a secondhand FC-50 off of Facebook Market Place and was thinking that a Ninja-branded blade inside would really help shred this up into smaller particles and a week later your video appeared on my YT home page and I see Vitmaix came up with the Eco 5 and it has the extra blades inside. Someone was listening to my thoughts. To funny.

i wonder if you could use the newer unit to dry your garden herbs.

Thanks for the video, it’s very helpful. Questions: How long does it take to complete a cycle? And how often do you replace the charcoal? Thank you.

Comments like, I could put my weekly rotten vegetation soup, in the oven that I use to cook my meals in, and then grind the output in the blender, I make my morning smoothies in are well, just silly. As well as for many that have the environment, area, and time or inclination to play with the slop mess, these composters also may be silly to them. But there is a great audience for them and it is north America that is way behind the ball on this one. I do find the FC50 to small for our house of four. We do use the outside composter for the heavy lifting but the FC50 is extra convenient and gets 90% of the household food waste. DO NOT throw in the potato peels from 4lbs of potatoes(in one batch) as it will turn to concrete and you will not be happy. As others mention, it dehydrates your food waste and try's to grind it up. It does not create compost in any way. IMO never throw the dehydrated output on your plants or gardens anywhere, especially in the house!!!!. It is dehydrated powdered food waste~! Think MRE, lol... Just add water and it is almost the same food waste all over again only in smaller pieces(mush). If you leave it in a plastic opened container in a humid area it will grow mold. I was just throwing the dehydrated output out on our back grass or garden because it smelt great and looked so great(very bad idea). First it burned the heck out of most plants in the flower and vegetable gardens and then started seeing the re hydrated food after watering or the rain. I set the sensitivity on my security cameras up and at night time it was exactly what you would expect. Think the bad parts of Noah's ark..... Just do not do it, period. It is not fair to your neighbours and in your house you will end up with nat infestations. I now throw the dehydrated output into the backyard composter. It is safe and secure from the critters and is ready for the garden or the lawn in a couple weeks as opposed to getting thrown in the garden to be rototilled once a year. I am in the Toronto area. I could not justify the Eco 5's cost and bought a FC-50 for $150 off of Kijiji. Rural communities have been subsidizing the cost and some have been able to buy the FC50 for around $50 and the Eco 5 for around $150 from their towns. As for the cost to run, it is about 8 - 16 cents per cycle depending on how wet your stuff is(during off peak hours). I use a Son-off outlet and set it to turn the fc50 on after 11pm it is always done by morning and the Sonoff keeps a power usage history and graphs :). So running 2x a week would cost about 3.5 cents/day over the year. Although still silly and disgusting, doing it in oven and your blender would cost much more. And who would even consider it and baby sit it? The target for these is not everyone, IE maybe not the serious DIY'rs or fortunate Homesteaders with the time, space and environment, but some city or cottage people that don't want to deal with the stinky, sloppy mess this works and saves your community a ton of money and a huge amount of green house gasses. For the cottager it is Fantastic and great for the area landfill with 0 methane produced or buried at the dump. Your weekend garbage load is simple and now often one less stop at the landfill. Oh, ya, I save $20-30/yr in compost baggies and get a few big bags of good clean compost for free(after treatment)and the house is fresher! So really I run it for free except for the initial cost($150 life of 3 yrs so about $4/month). @thecompostculture can you give us an update on how the eco5 is doing IE jamming etc compared to the fc50. I tended to over fill mine and it was prone to jam up. I would also add more as the current batch started to get the current batch dehydrated.

Do you think it would be ok to add the dried material to a worm bin?

Why wouldn't you add them to garden bed? just wondering what the reasoning is.... I think vitamix recommends to mix it with soil and leave for a week or two for it to "cure" (which is probably promoting microbe growth) and then add it as compost....

Have you noticed an improvement with jams? My FC-50 jams quite often.

Yes you had to throw away the charcoal plastic filters with the Eco 5 and it's nice that the FC 50 has the charcoal in a bag, except the bag is plastic. So you end up still throwing away plastic. They should have used biodegradable plastic or paper bags. I'm glad a company with a good record finally made countertop composers. But I though composting meat was always a bad idea because it can harbor harmful bacteria. And I'm curious how much water is wasted to clean these units. And it's disappointing that the compost doesn't turn out like dirt, as most advertise. Because it seems all these units do is chop and dry the scraps, not sure it's worth the cost, plus cost of electricity and water, when an outside bin works just a well and holds way more.

Not enough food waste in buckets