Quote:
Originally Posted by BengalMan
On another note, I need a vacuum sealer in a bad way. Can any of you recommend a good one that isn't too expensive?
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I had a foodsaver, after a year of use and about 100' to 150' feet worth of bags, it died.
I just picked up a Vacmaster 130 from Costco's website (web only, not in stores), about $140 delivered. For a home use machine, it's pretty heavily built. A few things really attracted me to their design over some of the other companies:
1) Heavy duty pump that does not require cool down between runs.
2) The seal strip (what melts the bag together) is two to three times wider than most other brands. I see this as greatly reducing the chance of seal failure and allowing for a good seal even in the event of slight debris or oil in the seal area on the bag.
3) Besides automatic mode with a manual seal button, it also has a timer mode, where I can punch in how long I want the unit to evacuate the bag for. I ran into problems in the past (on the foodsaver) with certain foods trapping air bubbles between the food and wall of the bag and with the machine having no mode other than automatic sensor, me not having enough time to push the air bubble out to the side where it could be evacuated before the pressure switch tripped and sealed the bag.
4) I find bags to be more convenient than rolls and with pre-made bags I only have one seal that is at risk for failure, rather than two when cutting from a roll and making my own. After working out the costs on bags versus rolls for the Vacmaster and Wilson bags/rolls, I found that, for the items I'm sealing, the price of a bag was actually less than rolls when I purchase 100 bags at a time from Amazon for $21 to $39 depending on the size*. Versus other brands, bags/film for the Vacmaster is about 1/2 to 1/4 the cost of the foodsaver brand bags and film.
I've only had the machine about a week, so I can't give you any comments on long term use, but so far, it's done fine sealing up whatever I've thrown at it.
*: I have an Amazon prime account, so shipping is covered. For rolls, the better price was actually on costco's website, where shipping is included. So I'm calling the cost of membership at both vendors a wash. If you have to pay shipping at Amazon, your pricing per bag might be different.