Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I agree with the 5 star reviews. A freeze dryer is useful to have. However, you need to understand that a freeze dryer isn't a turnkey device. You have to maintain the vacuum pump (which means filtering the oil after every batch and then benching the vacuum pump, disassemble and clean it after 20 batches). That's not hard, but it's not turnkey either. Also, it generates a lot of heat, even the small freeze dryer. I have a standard 2 car garage and it keeps it toasty in the winter. Dealing with the vacuum pump is messy. You probably don't want to do that over carpet. A freeze dryer is loud. I understand that some folks keep theirs in their house, I just can't imagine that working out well. Ours is in the garage. In the summer, I have a fan that runs continually to keep the garage cool. In the winter, I enjoy the toasty garage when working on projects. I have two freeze dryers. A small I bought new in August and an older unit I bought on Craigslist. Between the two, I end up calling Harvest Right tech support at least once a month. My new freeze dryer had the vacuum pump bind up. I was able to bench it and fix it, but the vacuum pump is the Achilles heel of the HR freeze dryer. They tend to fail. The bottom line is there is a learning curve. You need to join a facebook HR group to get past the first several loads. This is because the videos don't really go through the step-by-step of using a freeze dryer and you will assume that it works differently than it actually does. This results in probably a month or so of learning about how to prep food for the freeze dryer and how to setup of the freeze dryer for different types of food. It turns out high sugar fruits (like pineapple or apples) are the hardest to get right. Which was also the first thing we tried and were understandably disappointed with the results because of our ignorance about using the appliance. Having said all of that, we really like our freeze dryers. I've lost 20+ lbs because of snacking on freeze dried fruit rather than chips or other high calorie snacks. My wife who has several food allergies has been using it to make travel food so she can eat something when traveling. That has eased her travel anxiety because of food issues. The bottom line is know what you are getting into before you buy one. Start by following a Facebook group to get an idea of what you are in for.