Dried longan, Thai economic product with an export revenue of 4,026.3 million bahts in 2013, is traditionally produced by a hot air drying (HA), which takes more drying times and deteriorates qualities of the dried product. To improve the qualities of dried longan, alternative drying technique, i.e. microwave under vacuum pressure (MVD) was proposed in this study. Longans (Dor variety) were dried from the initial moisture content of 360-400%d.b. to the intermediate moisture content of 70%d.b. with MVD, and then further dried by only hot air to the final moisture content of 20%d.b. Temperature of hot air with velocity of 0.3 m/s and recycled air of 80% was set at 65oC and vacuum pressure was set at 10 kPa. The effect of microwave power at 125 and 150 W on longan drying kinetics and qualities of dried longan in terms of color, texture, microstructure and shrinkage were studied. It was found that the MVD reduced drying time as compared to hot air drying. In terms of qualities of dried longan, the MVD can decrease redness and yellowness but increase lightness. Moreover, this technique can also reduce shrinkage, hardness, and toughness of dried longan because of large pore size resulted from microwave power.