Avid Armor USV32 Chamber Vacuum Sealer Machine – 11.5" Sealing Bar, Glass Lid, Seal Meats, Soups, Sauces & Liquids, Marinate in Minutes, Sous Vide Ready, Accessory Hose Included, Stainless Steel

Does the job very easy to use

I have waited a while to write this review, wanting to test the machine thoroughly. Having done so, I come down to assigning a five star rating. I have used this machine for packing for the freezer, for pouching liquid, and for sealing up dry goods. It has performed well in all applications. It presents two very important advantages, its weight and its price point. It would be false to say this unit is lightweight. At the same time, it is not so heavy that it can’t be called portable. Even my wife can pick it up and move it around, and that’s an important qualification. The lowest VacMaster model, for example, weighs more than three times as much and is only portable in the sense it can be put on a cart and moved in that way. Other capable and reliable chamber machinescost about a thousand dollars, at the bottom of the scale. At six hundred dollars, this machine gets quite adequate performance per dollar. Is it perhaps not best suited to the home butcher who is bringing home five deer every hunting season and is perhaps packing his buddies’ kills as well, and may be packing feral hogs, too. For such users, a thousand dollars is a worthwhile investment in a heavier, sturdier machine. For someone like me, who is merely buying his ground beef in bulk from Sam’s, vacuum packing homemade chorizo from an occasional pork shoulder, and cooking sous vide every month or so, this machine works, works well, and is much more economical. There’s no need to buy a trip hammer to crack a walnut. A very handy feature of this machine is the marinade cycle, which enables you to get an hour’s worth of marinating done in two minutes. I have one caution to offer, which applies to all chamber vacuum machines, without exception. Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, try to vacuum seal a liquid that is not right out of the refrigerator. Even very cold liquids will “boil” as the pressure is reduced. This will stay within reasonable bounds if the liquid is cold. If it’s not, you will have a nasty mess on your hands. The one reservation I have is with the owner’s manual, which says that when the seal button is pressed to abort the vacuum and seal the pouch, the vacuuming will stop “immediately.” In fact, it doesn’t stop for 13-15 seconds. As the manufacturer explains in answer to a question asked on this site, the sealing bar depends on a certain drop in pressure to raise it into position to seal. Not wanting to run the vacuum cycle merely to seal a pouch, I decided to invest forty bucks in a sealing bar which seals quickly, easily, and securely. I think it’s the better way, particularly if you use, instead of pre-made pouches, rolls of pouch material. If you do a lot of sealng, that’s how to make the price per pouch descend to the point of being dirt cheap. However, if you are doing that much, this may not be the machine to do it with. It’s a great appliance, but not for a high rate of production. The owner’s manual also says to hold the cover down until the vacuum takes hold. I’ve never found that necessary. It pulls a vacuum perfectly every time. Highly recommended.

Esperé algunos meses para poder hacer una reseña basada en el uso y ahora puedo decir con toda claridad que es el mejor electrodoméstico en el que he invertido. Tener una cámara de vacío tan práctica cómo está me ha permitido ahorrar mucho dinero y tiempo ya que puedo cocinar, empacar porciones más pequeñas y conservar en refrigerador o congelador e irlo usando con base en mis requerimiento. El envío y atención al cliente de esta empresa es de primera.

I absolutely love this machine. Works as expected for everything I have used it for. I do like the effect on marinating that it does. Wish I had bought it years ago. A lot faster than using my other machine which required to be held shut the entire time. Start the machine and go fill the next bag. 😍

For freezing and storing food, to prepping for my sous vide, to marinating meats, I use this machine multiple times every day. Absolute gamechanger! Airtight seals every time! The ability to do liquids is also awesome. Way more efficient than my old vacuum sealer. Night and day difference between what was in my freezer with the old sealer compared to what is going in now. If I buy a large bag of fruit or veggies, I repackage them into usable size portions and they aren't turning into blocks of ice or a freezer burnt mess. Our food is too expensive to waste so its important to me to store it the best way possible.

For all those who can afford the price of entry, you should get this vacuum sealer. At 5 to 10 cents per bag for bags for any chamber vacuum sealer, compared to 50 to 75 cents per bag for your ribbed-bag sealer such as a Food Saver, you will more than make up for the price in very short order. One maker of a sealer that uses ribbed bags suggests you can save $2700 per year using their sealer. My own experience was that I saved far, far, less because, more often than not, the value of the thing I might seal was approaching or even more than the value of the bag. For example, I buy 1/4 pound hotdogs from a local big-box club store for $3 per pound but they come in 3 pound packages, or 12 hotdogs at 75 cents per hotdog. We eat two for a meal so when we open them, it's eat hotdogs every day for a week or package some to go in the freezer. So if I take two hotdogs at 75 cents and put them in a bag that costs 50 cents, that adds a dollar per pound to the cost of those hotdogs. If I seal them in bags that cost 7 cents, that's 14 cents additional cost. Or what if I have leftover broccoli from dinner that's worth about a dollar. If I have to spend 50 cents to vacuum seal them, I'm more likely to just toss them. But if I can save them for lunch next week at a cost of 5 cents for a 6x8 bag, it's a great deal for a quick vegetable to go with lunch. With the price of chamber pouches, I never consider whether the item I might freeze is worth the price of the bag; the only question is whether I would eat it after I freeze it. So, if a ribbed-bag vacuum sealer saves you 2700 per year (it sure didn't save me that much), consider how much more a chamber vacuum will save you. When I bought my Avid Armor sealer, I started a spreadsheet to track my real savings - savings on food I was able to buy in bulk and divide, or food I would have otherwise tossed but kept - and inside of the first month (it's not been quite a month yet) I have saved $127.03. Will you save that much every month? Probably not, but it's certainly possible. But when it costs 5 cents instead of 50 cents to take advantage of vacuum sealing, you're much more likely to do it and the cost of a chamber vacuum will return beyond what any ribbed-bag sealer could ever dream of saving you. So hopefully I've made a good case for the chamber vacuum sealer. The next question is why Avid Armor? Well, it's all about quality and cost. There are other companies, companies that used to have good sealers in the price range of the Avid Armor, but all of those other companies, in my opinion and experience, are companies that have been around for very short periods or who put their brand on sealers made cheaply overseas and don't really have anything to do with the design, yet they charge far higher prices than does Avid Armor. The Avid Armor sealer provides a quality vacuum and seal at a price that let's far more cooks afford a chamber vacuum sealer. The USV32 has some great features like very easy and clear settings for vacuum time and seal time. It's not perfect, though; some things for Avid Armor to consider in their next design would be a larger chamber for up to 12 inch wide bags. It would also be better if it had a wider seal but I haven't had any issues with the sealer as it is. One good thing is that with standard 18 inch height between base and upper cabinets in most kitchens, the USV32 fits perfectly when you open the lid; using all available space without being so big you have to pull it out. My coffee maker is 20 inches high with the water compartment lid open so I know the frustration that would be. Avid Armor did it right. The bag retention set up, that bit of the mechanism that holds the bag in place for the heat seal bar, leaves something to be desired. It doesn't hold as easily as my last chamber sealer from another company. It holds ok but it's trickier to get it right. Over all, though, I'm very happy with the Avid Armor UVS32 sealer and I'm glad that, when I needed to replace an older model from another supplier, a model no longer made and nothing in the sub $1000 space from that supplier, I'm glad I chose the Avid Armor.