Objective: To improve the dry product quality and drying efficiency of kiwifruit slices (KS), the effects of microwave-vacuum drying conditions with controlling temperature on the drying characteristics of KS were studied and the drying kinetics model was established to predict the moisture change in the drying process. Methods: Using KS as raw materials, the effects were studied, including in different setting temperature, vacuum degree and microwave power density on the drying characteristics of KS and its effective moisture diffusion coefficient (EMDC) of water, and the activation energy was also calculated. With the R2, R_MSE and χ2 as the evaluation indexes, the six common dry models were screened with fitting the experimental data by SPSS 19.0 software, the relationships between the model parameters and drying conditions was established. Results: Microwave-vacuum drying process of KS occurred in the falling-rate period, and there was no constant drying rate period. Under the experiment conditions, setting temperature and microwave power density had a certain influence on the microwave-vacuum drying characteristics of KS. With the increase of setting temperature and vacuum degree, the drying rate increased. However, the effect of microwave power density was not significant. The water effective diffusion coefficient of the KS during drying process could be calculated by Fick’s second law, and it increased with the increase of setting temperature and vacuum degree. The maximum EMDC was 6.814 97×10^-6 m2/s. Arrhenius was used to calculate the activation energy of KS in drying process and the value of Ea was 70.77 kJ/mol. Among the six models, the Two-term exponential model had the highest coefficient of determination R2 (0.999 9), the lowest chi-square χ2 (0.000 30) and R_MSE (0.002 02), and it is the optimum model of the KS in microwave-vacuum drying with setting temperature. Conclusion: The setting temperature and vacuum degree had influence on the drying curves, the drying rate curve and EMDC, and the effect of microwave power density was not significant. Two-term exponential model could properly describe the microwave-vacuum drying behavior of KS, and could be used to predict the moisture change of the KS in microwave-vacuum drying process based on the temperature controlling under the test conditions.