Customer Reviews

VacMaster Portable Chamber Vacuum Sealer w/ 12 Inch Seal Bar VP112 - Perfect for Sous Vide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have used many vacuum sealers over the years and this one is by far the best. Even with liquids present, you can safely go prep the next bag once you hit start rather than waiting to hit the seal button if liquid starts to ooze toward the seal region. Bought in bulk, the bags are very much cheaper. The plastic lid is nicely engineered with reinforcing ribs. As to the previous review complaining about bad seals, no heat sealer will tolerate liquid in the seal region as: 1) evaporation takes away the necessary heat to reach sealing temperature; and 2) the liquid almost certainly has "stuff" in it that will prevent the seal which is nothing but the two sides being melted into one. Buy some thin, flexible cutting boards that are slightly wider (say 20%) than the opening to your bags. Grab the two sides, squeeze and insert into your bag. The board will hold the bag open and with care you can add the food without contacting the area of the seal. If you seal lots at one time, it is nice to have a fresh board for each bag. I do not like folding the top of the bag over for protection during loading as this sometimes causes wrinkles that prevent good seals.

I bought this vacuum chamber machine about 3 months ago. I've been using it heavily ever since with my Sous Vide cooking. It is exactly as advertised. It is a lug-gable machine that you can use on counter tops that have a pantry cabinet overhead. The plastic arms that swings back the smoky grey plastic looks feeble, but I think it will last a long time. I don't regret this purchase.

The only thing that I wonder about is the heating mechanism that seals the plastic bag. Occasionally, the seal does not take and I have to either seal the bag a second time or re-bag the leaky bag inside another sealed bag. The reason that I would get leaky or questionable seals is only because I may get liquid or solids in the area being sealed while filling the bag -- these objects sometimes prevents a good seal.

I understand for an additional $200 more, I could have gotten the bigger brother to this model. It would be heavier and I probably couldn't use it on my counter top with a pantry cabinet overhead. But at least the double sealer that comes with the more expensive model would save me some aggravation. I just haven't decided that less aggravation is worth an additional $200.

Time will tell. Till then, I'm certain that this model will keep its value better then the clamp style vacuum machines -- if I decide to upgrade later, I'll be able to resell it and recover a good chunk of my original cost.

I've been using this machine for over six months. It has worked very well without a glitch. I like that the chamber is deeper than the VP210 or VP215 so you can bag larger amounts of liquids without issue. The controls let you control the length of time the vacuum is pulled and then how long the sealing bar heats. I fussed with the controls when I first got it but now just use about 35 seconds of vacuum pump followed by a 5 second seal and it works like a charm, with both 3 and 4 mil bags. You can also trigger the the machine to seal on your command (I use this when I'm sealing something like thick-crust pizza... I want to get the air out, but if you pull too hard a vacuum, you'll flatten the crust). The only real secret to using this machine is to make certain that the bag is lying totally flat against the sealing bar. Any small kink will result in a mis-sealed bag. This usually only happens if I try to overfill bags. This machine also comes with several plastic boards (they look like cutting boards) that you use to reduce the amount of air that the machine needs to pump out of the chamber. You can also use these boards to control how high the bags sit in relation to the sealing bar. I've found that the more level you have the bags with the sealing bar, the easier it is to get the bags to sit flat on the sealing bar. I've used this a lot prepping food for sous vide cooking. It really is wonderful for that purpose because it doesn't matter how wet the food is, it just seals like you want. One extra you might want to consider along with this purchase is a wide mouth funnel like the "RSVP Endurance Wide Mouth Canning Funnel". It's hard to fill the bags with only two hands but a funnel like this simplifies the task. The only problem with this unit, if you are using it for sous vide, is it becomes very hard to justify paying restaurant prices for steaks...

The chamber sealer is preferable because I can seal in foods that are wet. I just sous vide cooked several packages of BBQ ribs that had sauce slathered all over. Never would have sealed with the FoodSaver-type machines. Chamber-seal bags are less expensive. All in all I consider the cost of the machine low even though the price is not.

I am a huge fan of Amazon and a good customer but in this case they may not have the best price so shop carefully.

I have own several external vacuum type units. One was a Food Saver. These units were not cheap but yet they wear out after a few years and the bags are expensive. So when the last unit failed, I started looking at the chamber sealers. I wanted to be able to seal meats with liquid marinades as opposed to just dry rubs. I hesitated at the cost of the unit. Amazon ran a special and I pushed the button. I could not be happier. The bags are MUCH less expensive. I've only had one bag fail to seal properly. Every other bag has been perfect. I even discovered sous vide cooking and everything that comes out of that water oven, is at the very least, "Good" but many times, "OMG!" I seal the bags on the factory default settings for vacuum time and seal duration. When I vacuum seal fish or other items that should not have as strong a vacuum, I hit the done button early and the bag doesn't pull on the contents as much.

I feel that the unit is VERY well made. I expect between the cheapness of the bags and the longevity of the machine, it will more than pay for itself. Plus, with beef prices projected to rise over the next three years, buying beef on sale and then putting it in the freezer is economical. Beef ages in the freezer and actually improves with time. There is a limit of 2 years however for this effect.

FYI, the internal chamber that you see on this unit is the same size at the larger more expensive units. There is no difference.

This machine is pretty cool once you get the hang of it. The other reviews here on amazon are quite helpful and provide several useful tips. I'll summarize them for you here in one concise review to help you get the most of your machine, as I had a bit of trouble at first.

- the reviewer who suggested you buy some cheapo plastic cutting boards to help fill the bags was spot on. what a great suggestion to keep the seal area clean! This did the trick: MIU France Flexible Cutting Boards, Set of 8. Much better than rolling the bag down over itself and introducing creases.

- the unit comes with 40 bags in 4 sizes; i suggest playing around with the included sizes before making the investment in cases of 500 or 1000 bags. I bought 6x12 and 12x14 bags sight unseen. the 6" bags aren't quite wide enough for most things, and for many of the things they do work for, they are so small that they are difficult to load. I would get something 8" wide next time.

- I had problems with the unit not sealing properly at first. This turned out to be user error; i was leaving so much bag in front of the seal bar that it ended up wrapping around at 90 degrees from the seal surface. This turn made it harder for air to escape the bag, which made the bags puff up during the vacuum process. When the seal bar clamped, the bag was not straight and there would be kinks in the seal. The solution was to just slide the food + bag back all the way so only 1/2" of bag came out in front of the seal bar.

Bottom line - if you want a chamber vacuum system that fits inside a cabinet in your kitchen, this unit does not disappoint. Just hold off on buying the bags until you get the machine and decide what sizes work best for you. It's also much quieter than any of the small consumer systems like foodsaver.

I have been doing sous vide cooking for a while now. I had been using a "Food Saver" for vacuum sealing. In many cases this was adequate, but with that type of sealer, you can't seal anything that contains liquids. This is quite limiting. This unit will fit on a standard two-foot-deep countertop. The unit is usable even with a normal overhead cabinet in place. My countertops have a decorative "ogee" edge that reduces the effective width of my counters by over an inch, so this unit barely fits for me. The power cord comes out of the back, so a little clearance is required there. A slightly better design would have been to route the power cord out the side. The fact that it fits on a standard countertop is important, because it is too heavy (about 50 pounds) to move around a lot.

This unit has worked very well for me. As long as I am careful to keep the area of the seal clean, the recommended starting point settings (35 seconds vacuum, a setting of 5 for sealing) work flawlessly. Often I "roll down" the top inch or so of the bag, so it will stay clean when I am loading the food and roll it back up after filling. If there is food around the seal area after filling, I just wipe it carefully with a paper towel.

The chamber is surprisingly large. I have no trouble sealing large roasts, for example. The unit comes with 3 "filler" plates that you can leave in place to reduce the time required to draw a vacuum when you are sealing smaller packages.

Having this on the counter and readily available as well as its ability to package foods containing liquid means that I use it a lot more than I used my Food Saver -- not just for sous vide but also for storing leftovers.

The VP112 is easy to use. Set the vacuum time and seal duration and press "start." A nice improvement would be to allow setting a desired vacuum level and having the machine automatically seal when that level is reached. That having been said, in those rare situations where I want less vacuum applied, I can keep an eye on the gauge and press "stop" at any point during the cycle to cause immediate sealing.

I have owned a number of 'foodsaver' products and finally decided to upgrade to a real vacuum machine. Can't believe I waited so long and this machine is great. An added advantage to its superior operation is that it fits on my counter.

I purchased one of these units in the beginning of January from another retailer [...]. It worked flawlessly for the first couple of weeks. I cook sous vide extensively at home so in those first couple of weeks I probably sealed thirty bags. Quality of vacuum was excellent, seal was excellent and I was an extremely happy camper. Unfortunately, last night I tried to seal my dinner and the unit bricked. It will evacuate air from the chamber and seal the pouch, but it won't devac (ie: allow air back in) to the chamber. The net result is that the chamber door can't be opened. I've contacted customer service and they have instructed me to return the unit for service. I would have given this unit five stars if it were it not for the reliability concerns. Given the purchaser pays shipping on returns/service and the unit weighs in excess of 50 lbs, each round-trip through the service center represents 10-20% of the purchase price in shipping alone.

P.s. I don't know if the manual has been re-written since some of the other reviews were written, but I had no problem setting up the unit. I followed the suggested vacuum and seal intervals in the manual and it worked like a charm.

Update: Manufacturer confirmed the unit I had was an infant mortality (ie: died within 30 days). Customer service was competent and reasonable.