Purpose: Drying characteristics of sawdust was studied under batch mode using lab scale microwave dryer. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of material load and microwave output power on drying characteristics of sawdust. Methods: Material load and microwave output power were varied from 23 to 186 g and 530 to 370 W respectively. Different kinetic models were tested to fit the drying rates of sawdust. Similarly, the activation energy was calculated by employing the Arrhenius equation. Results: The drying efficiency increased considerably, whereas the specific energy consumption significantly decreased with increase in material load and microwave output power. The cumulative energy efficiency increased by 9%, and the specific energy consumption decreased by 8% when the material load was increased from 23 to 186 g. The effective diffusivity increased with decrease in material load and increase in microwave output power. The previously published model gave the best fit for data points with $R^2$ and RMSE values of 0.999 and 0.01, respectively. Conclusions: The data obtained from this study could be used as a basis for modeling of large scale industrial microwave dryers for the pellet production.