That $50 vacuum sealer I bought for wholesale cuts was a complete dud

Picked up a cheap vacuum sealer from a bargain site last month to pack up my subprimals for customers. It worked fine for about 10 bags then the seal bar just stopped heating. Lost $50 and had to rewrap everything in butcher paper anyway. Anyone else have luck with a specific budget model that actually holds up to heavy use?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancy52421d ago

Grab a Weston pro model if you can find one on sale. That cheap stuff just doesn't have the guts for repeated use, the heating element burns out fast. I went through two of those little units before I learned my lesson. The extra upfront cost pays for itself when you're not rewrapping meat every month.

ellis.hayden21d ago

My buddy Mike bought one of those cheap Harbor Freight vacuum sealers and it worked GREAT for about three months. Then he tried to seal a big batch of venison from his hunting trip and the machine just stopped halfway through. The heating element literally melted the plastic to the seal bar and he had to chisel it off with a screwdriver. Meanwhile I'm still using the same FoodSaver I got at a garage sale for five bucks back in 2018. It's beat up and the lid doesn't close all the way but it keeps working because those older units were built different.

kevin_dixon21d ago

That line about the heating element melting the plastic to the seal bar really got my attention. I've seen that exact same thing happen with those cheap units when you try to push them past about a dozen bags. What I'm curious about is whether the problem is just weak heating elements or if it's more about the pressure the lid puts down. I had a little LEM unit that had a strong enough heat strip but the lid wouldn't clamp tight enough after a few months to actually seal anything. So the plastic just sat on top of the hot bar and melted into a mess. Did you ever figure out if it was the heat or the pressure that failed first on yours?