Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsWorks perfectly for all my needs!
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2013
I was looking at FoodSaver reviews and chose this model because the more expensive ones seemed to have no benefit, and the automatic bag detection is supposedly a pain. I'm so glad I got this model. I also got the mason jar attachment and it works great. Here's a list of what I like about this unit, mostly influenced by my experience being completely different from some of the negative reviews I've read.
PROS:
- Incredibly easy to use. One touch to vacuum and seal, you can force a seal before vacuuming is complete (to protect fragile items), you can cancel the process before sealing in the rare case you don't get a good vacuum (although, see the Cons list about this), or you can just seal bags without vacuuming, if you just want to seal up a cereal bag or something.
- Accessories. I only have the mason jar accessory so far but it works so well, I now have my eye on some of the vacuum containers they offer. This unit comes with the accessory hose, so you only need to buy the accessories that it would plug into.
- Manual bag alignment. This is a pro to me because with practice you can waste less bag material with clever placement of the bag. I'd rather insert the bag myself and twist the handle to lock it in place than have an automatic sensor tell me when enough is in the unit. Also on that note, this handle is easy to twist, I don't know how anybody has problems with it.
- Seals most bags, and vacuums many bags. I was curious as to whether I could use this to vacuum seal cereal bags, tortilla chip bags, and other plastic bags. It does! I vacuum-sealed half our pantry just to see if i could do it. I haven't run across a bag yet I could not seal, but some, like potato chip bags, I could not vacuum. This is fine, since I didn't really expect the unit to successfully do this at all. It's more like a bonus to me.
CONS (minor):
- I have had great luck with vacuuming, I've only had two FoodSaver bags (out of at least 40) fail to vacuum first try. The first time I had it happen, I didn't realize it, so it sealed the bag without vacuuming. I had to cut it open and re-seal. The second time this happened, I was prepared and I cancelled the vacuum process, re-aligned the bag, and vacuumed fine. I don't really see a problem with an inability to vacuum, my only minor complaint is that if you don't pay attention, it will seal without actually creating a vacuum. Seems to me like it should be able to detect when this has happened, but it doesn't. But if you pay attention, you're fine. (I have been unable to vacuum a couple non-FoodSaver bags, but that was completely expected.)
- Bag waste. It's not as bad as I had been expecting. You can seal one end pretty close to the edge of the plastic. Vacuuming does require a good inch and a half, or more, of space. You can get to be pretty good at minimizing waste, but I feel like they could change the design slightly to handle this better. I really am not complaining, just pointing out this reality.
One last note: I have not once had an issue with overheating. The instructions say to wait 20 seconds between sealing, and you would have to have quite the assembly line going to actually seal 2 bags in 20 seconds over and over. At my best speed I was sealing every 30 - 45 seconds and after a dozen or so seals at that speed, I had no issues at all.
I recommend this FoodSaver for all uses. I have not seen one thing that I would want on a more expensive model, this one does it all, and was precisely what I needed.
