Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First of all, I want to disclose that I did not buy this chamber sealer from Amazon. I bought it from another site because the price was $100 less. I have been using a FoodSaver vacuum sealer for over 15 years. We buy organic veggies from local farmers every year and often grow our own, but late summer and into the fall, I spend a lot of time blanching and packaging vegetables so we have enough to last the winter. We buy only grassfed and finished meats and wild-caught fish to maintain a healthy diet, and most often I cook enough for more than one meal so that we have leftovers to freeze for future meals. Needless to say, I do a lot of packaging and freezing. In the years that I used the FoodSaver, it cost a few hundred for rolls to make bags, and dealt with the idiosyncrasies of this type of food sealer - trying to stop the vacuuming before liquids were drawn into the machine even for meat leftovers, sealing 5 bags at a time before the machine had to be allowed a cooling time, seals that didn't hold for sous vide cooking, etc. I finally decided to look into the chamber sealers and researched the pros and cons of the various models for a couple of months. At first, I eliminated the ones that required oil and oil changes. I guess I felt a bit intimidated with the extra work in monitoring this. After doing more research, I found that the sealers using oil lasted longer and were a lot quieter. Since an oil change would be required only once or twice a year, depending on use, I didn't feel quite so intimidated by this chore. Considering all of the pros and cons of the various models, not to mention the price, I finally decided to get this VacMaster VP215 Chamber Vacuum Sealer. If you are considering this vacuum sealer, It would be a good idea to consider buying a cart for it. It weighs over 80 pounds and is not something that you would want to lift. I bought a cart that is 36"; x 24"; so that there is room on the cart to put a serving board to stack product as I seal it and to move it to the freezer. This cart also has a shelf for storing the bags that I use for the sealer. (Pics 1 & 2) When you get this sealer, it comes with a number of parts, some are explained in the documentation and some are not. You get 25 each of 6" x 12" 3 mil bags that are good for individual or small portions, 8" x 12" bags that are good for larger portions or 2 smaller portions, and 12" x 13" that are good for roasts and larger portions. You also get 2 spacer trays for raising products to be sealed, 2 fuses, 2 22" seal bar wires (not sure what these are for yet), 1 roll Double-Sided Tape for the seal (according to the tech you will probably never need it, but it's included in case you do.), 1 11"; Brown Teflon Tape which is the seal bar tape, a 5mm Hex Wrench to remove the hex nut to add oil. (Pic #3 & #4) So now we get into the initial use of this sealer. If you follow the instructions, you take off the back panel, put in the oil until is is 1/2 to 3/4 up the view window, set the vacuum time to 40 seconds, the seal time to 1.2 seconds, and the cooling time to 2 seconds. The only other thing that puzzled me at first was that the sealing bar was not set as it should be when I got the unit. It has to be set so that the teflon strip is up and fits on two pegs. OK, so far, everything was self explanatory, but why have adjustments for vacuum time, sealing time, and cooling time if they don't need to be adjusted? The sealing time and cooling time is easy enough to figure out as thicker plastic would need a longer sealing time, and the cooling time should always be twice the sealing time. (Pic #5 and #6) I just had to know why I would want to adjust the vacuum time. My research showed that 25-35 seconds was the best choice for some jobs, so why does the user manual suggest selecting 40 seconds? For answers, i had to call VacMaster tech support, and got some interesting and useful answers, From what I was told, the vacuum time does not have to be set up to more than 30-35 seconds in most cases, and generally should be less. Depending on the food you are vacuuming, the gauge on the front should be watched. This takes some trial and error depending on the food your are sealing. You can stop the vacuum process at any point by pressing stop and the package will be sealed. Another question that I asked of the tech was that many reviews of the product mentioned that foods should be cooled before using this sealer. The explanation that I got was that the sealer did not heat the food, but sped up the molecular motion. He called it a "cool boil". To me this made sense since heating foods increases the molecular movement. Increasing the molecular movement could create the impression of boiling without increasing heat. I am still learning about the various setting on this machine, and can safely say that it wouldn't be the best for all sealing applications such as soft products like bread and rolls, but it is most certainly a good option for anything that has any kind of liquid in it, It also doesn't overheat and quit after 5 bags, and the bags are so much less expensive than the FoodSaver bags. Although this may not be the total food sealing solution, it does certainly address many of the frustrations presented by other sealers. Yes, it is expensive, but what is your time and frustration worth? I will update this review as I learn more about this vacuum sealer, but at this point, i would highly recommend it! Update: 5/24/18 Having done a lot of research on how to effectively use this chamber sealer, I have found many YouTube videos that said nothing but how to do the initial setup. i found nothing on how to actually "use" this vacuum sealer. For this reason, I have added a video that demonstrates how to use this vacuum sealer based on what I learned from the tech support person I talked to and my own experimentation. If you find this review helpful, please click helpful so that it is rated higher and can be found by other prospective buyers or users. UPDATE 6/21/18: After 5 weeks of light use, my VP215 suddenly quit in the middle of a sealing. Naturally, I was upset about it, but called VacMaster tech support and was able to get through to an agent quickly. After answering a few question, the agent determined that I needed a new circuit board. The replacement circuit board was sent out the same day and I received it a couple of day later. Since I have experience with computer repair, it wasn't difficult for me to install the new circuit board. Unfortunately, the sealer still wouldn't turn on, and the lid was still stuck shut as it had a partial vacuum in it. Again, I called tech support and was connected to an agent quickly. He had me take off a hose that released the pressure in the chamber and open the lid. He told me to push down on a cable assembly unit, and the sealer then worked, but he is sending me a new cable assembly in case there is a bad wire in the one I have. At this point, I couldn't be happier with VacMaster customer/tech support. They have been very easy to reach and have been extremely responsive. As far as I am concerned, any mechanical or digital product can have problems - even when they are new. The quality of a product is greatly determined by the quality of customer service offered by the manufacturer. In my experience, VacMaster is one of the best!! UPDATE 7/31/18: With the replacement parts that VacMaster sent to me, my sealer is again up and running perfectly. I did change the oil and didn't realize how dirty it can get. Dirty oil can cause problems in sealing, but it's fine now. At this time of year, I am blanching, packaging and freezing a lot of vegetables to last us for the winter. Knowing how to adjust the vacuum time has been very helpful in this process. I have found that a vacuum time of 10-15 seconds works best for leafy vegetables, and 20 to 25 seconds works better with more solid veggies, meats, and frozen products you repackage. I very much like that I don't have to worry about water content in the veggies for sealing. When I was using the FoodSaver, I had to freeze the packages before I sealed them so the liquid in them wasn't sucked up by the sealer. I also found out that the VP215 will vacuum and seal the textured FoodSaver-type bags. Although this sealer is limited to 10"; bags, it will seal 11"; FoodSaver type bags since each end of the 11" bags and rolls include a 1/2 " seal on each side. This also means that you can make custom sized bags using the textured rolls. When making bags, set the seal time down to the lowest setting which is 6 seconds to seal one open end. The seal time and cooling time can be left the same. I usually cut the bags rolls for the estimated amount of bags I will need and seal the ends all at once. Making your own bags can come in handy when the standard bags are either too small or too large. UPDATE 8/12/18: Since we are nearing the end of summer and approaching fall, my husband has been buying a lot of veggies from the local farmer that i have to clean, blanch and freeze. Although the cleaning and blanching requires the same time that it always has, this vacuum sealer has made that process so much easier and faster. There is no required cooling time between sealing of the bags, and I love the double sealing. I have not once had to worry about moisture in the bags or manually double sealing bags. I love this sealer. It saves me so much time when doing the annual vegetable processing, and is handy on a daily basis for sealing leftovers. Granted it cost a lot more than a FoodSaver or similar product, but it has saved me a lot of time and grey hairs. I wouldn't want to be without it!! For those that have had problems with this vacuum sealer, I can only say that VacMaster was super helpful with the problems that I had. Even if I have problem in the future that happens after the warranty period, I am certain they would help and advise what parts I need to repair the machine. Although I may have to pay for the parts at that time, which would be expected, having had excellent correspondence with their tech support, I am confident they would help to diagnose and fix any problems. If my future experience with this company changes, I will definitely update this review. Have I mentioned that I am extremely happy with this vacuum sealer and would highly recommend it?? UPDATE 12/30/19: At this point, I have had this vacuum sealer for over 18 months, use it almost daily, and absolutely love it. I have added the video in this review and a follow-up video on YouTube to demonstrate many ways to use this sealer, but I will try to summarize the advantages of this sealer here. One advantage that I totally appreciate over the FoodSaver sealers is that there is no required cool-off time. I often need to seal 20 or more bags of food for freezing. With the FoodSaver sealers, I could seal only 5 at a time before it would quit because of being overheated. With this vacuum sealer, there is no waiting for it to cool off. I can do 20 or more packages non-stop. This sealer provides a double seal that doesn't leak over time. All too often, when sealing with a FoodSaver, I would find air had leaked into the package after I sealed it. This caused freezer burn on foods that just shouldn't happen when they are vacuum sealed. I can still use FoodSaver bag rolls to make bags if I need larger or customized bags. The 11" wide FoodSaver bag rolls can be used in this sealer as the sealed sides of these rolls fit outside of the sealing strip on this vacuum sealer. Using the bag rolls, I can customize the length of the bags I need. The 8" bag rolls are also handy as you can make bags 8" wide of any length. Foods with a lot of liquid stored in either bags or containers can be easily sealed without sucking up the liquid as the FoodSaver machines do. This is possible with this vacuum sealer because it doesn't suck the air out of the package to be sealed. The air is sucked out of the area outside of the package, and then the vacuum created equalizes to pull the air out of the package. The important thing here to remember is to make sure foods with a lot of liquid are completely cool before sealing them. I have also save a few microwaveable containers from foods we have purchased in stores. These are useful for sealing whole meals like pot roast with veggies and casseroles. Simply fill them with a meal, fit them in a seal-able bag, and vacuum them. For these, I generally use 15-20 power for the vacuuming setting. For veggies in bags, I use 15 for the vacuuming setting, and for meats, usually 20-25. Since I use the same types of bags all the time, the other two setting remain the same. If you seal heavier bags or Mylar, you may have to adjust the seal time and cool time. I hope this review was helpful for you.