Avid Armor Chamber Vacuum Sealer Machine USV20 Ultra Series for Wet Foods, Meat Vacuum Packing Machine, Compact with 11.5-Inch Vaccum Sealer Bar

Just what I was looking for. I've used a suction vacuum sealer for many years, and moist items were always a potentially messy hassle (even with the moist setting). I'd thought about getting a chamber sealer, but the cost, and especially the weight were huge issues. This unit solves both of those issues. The cost is not trivial, but not prohibitive either. The weight and form factor are just right. Big enough to be highly useful, but small enough to store on a shelf, and light enough for easy portability. I must say I was on the fence about ordering it, but given the "free returns" I decided to take the leap. I half expected to be returning the unit. However, after the first use I'm completely sold. Quieter than I expected (and quieter than my foodsaver and its replacements), easy to use, and a fantastic vacuum and seal. Of course, I haven't owned this unit for years so I can't speak to long term durability, but the build quality and engineering look to be excellent. So, if you're like me and want something way better than the foodsaver style unit, but are not willing to commit to a 50 lb. behemoth of a chamber sealer, this is unit is an excellent choice. Works great, and it is very easy to move in and out of my pantry. Highly recommend!

I've long considered purchasing a chamber vacuum sealer, but couldn't justify spending almost $1,000. As a longtime FoodSaver user, we do our fair share of vacuum sealing, but the bag cost was a big turn-off. This could of offset, to some degree, by buying bulk rolls, but it still wasn't worth the hassle; using pre-sized bags was easier, but less cost effective. As a result, I just found myself not utilizing it as often as I would have, if the bags were cheaper. Another big downside of the FoodSaver is the inability to seal liquids without pre-freezing. Still, even with these downsides, I couldn't justify buying a different sealer altogether (or, so I thought)... My FoodSaver finally died... and when it did, replacing it with a chamber vaccum sealer became a more tenable solution. I was pleasantly surprised to find this sealer available at a reasonable price; after watching a few video reviews and reading some feedback on Amazon, I decided to give it a try - knowing full and well that my expectations are usually always never met when purchasing kitchen equipment. I usually always uncover some "fatal flaw" that has me regretting my purchase. I can honestly say that, so far, after 1 day of usage, my expectations have not only been met, but exceeded. I was pleasantly surprised by the compact size; I guess I was expecting this to be larger (and thus, more difficult to store), but in reality, it's the perfect size for my kitchen, and stores nicely in a small cabinet. The unit itself is very well built; sturdy, but not too heavy. The sealing quality is fantastic; I sealed around 2 dozen items on the first day, and everything sealed as expected. I was also anticipating a lot of noise; however, the unit is no louder than my original FoodSaver. The bags themselves appear to be fine as well; I used a few 11x10 bags, and several 8x10 bags... no problems with either set. And, the best part - no concerns about bag cost. At well under 10 cents per bag, it's not a concern to seal up anything, regardless of size or quantity. Avid Armor really hit the nail on the head with this device; at $400, it's not cheap, but it's a great value... and that brings me back to my original point, about not being able to justify the cost earlier on. Had I known how well this device performs; how much easier it is to use; and how much better of a vacuum is created, I would have purchased this a while ago. I really feel that it's money well spent. I'm hard to impress, and my expectations are rarely met, but Avid Armor has a clear winner with this product.

I hemmed and hawed for months not wanting to shell out a bunch more money on another vac sealer after having my foodsaver and a previous brand both break down on me. This brand is certainly not the cheapest but, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR AND THEN SOME. This thing could not be easier to use, right out of the box it’s ready to go and you don’t even need instructions. No more pre cutting bags, no more failed seals bc there’s a spec of water on your food, no more subpar vacuum seals that still leave some air in the bag no matter how many times you run the machine. This thing works PERFECTLY the first time and every time I have used It so far. I can’t even explain how not comparable this thing is to the other cheaper brands, not only is It easier to use and less fussy, but the actual vac seal It puts around your food is professional grade, there is not a molecule of air in the pouch. Your food will now lay completely flat in the freezer of fridge which is a total game changer in terms of space utilization, and you don’t need to worry for one second about freezer burn (which still happened to some of my food with the cheaper vac seal brands). This product is definitely quite a bit heavier and bigger than other brands but to me that’s only bc it’s infinitely better built and more sturdy, thing is a tank. For me I just store It in a closet near my kitchen and bring It out when necessary, it’s heavy but definitely not to the level that anyone would have difficulty carrying It once in a while. If you have the counter space for It I think it’s a pretty sleek looking machine tho. Another thing I was worried about was how long It took to achieve the vac and seal. Ideally I would not have to wait over a minute every time I wanted to seal an item. Fingers crossed, to this point I have never had to change the setting past the minimum time of 20 seconds for vac and 4 for seal, that has gotten the job done every time for me. It’s just as quick as other machines in my experience and does a way better job. All and all if you enjoy vacuum sealing your food and are on the fence about shelling out the cash or going with a cheaper brand, I would take this product 10/10 times. Using this product is a thoroughly superior experience to any other brand I have tried and I could not imagine ever going back. Once you use this thing you will not regret spending a few hundred extra bucks.

I have had a Weston edge sealer for years, which has been and still is a great sealer. When my wife and I had an appetizer at a local steakhouse of compressed watermelon and tuna tartare, I was amazed at the taste and texture of the watermelon. The server helpfully told me that they prepared the watermelon with a vacuum sealer, and I tried to make it the next day. Those of you who have tried making compressed watermelon with an edge sealer know that... you just can't. Fast forward through several weeks of research and I am now the proud owner of an Avid Armor USV20 CHAMBER vacuum sealer. We have made compressed watermelon and pineapple. We've infused bourbon with a vanilla bean using a mason jar and their canister set. We've put up fresh peas, sealed giant pork chops for my sous vide setup, and we haven't even had it a week yet! Likes: You can use this to seal liquids. Marinades, moist proteins, compressed fruit, heck, you can vacuum seal a bag of water if you feel like it. This creates an EXCELLENT vacuum seal with no air bubbles as you get with even the best edge sealer. It also has a two-wire sealing strip, so you get not one, but two seals on your vacuum bags for extra security. This guy doesn't need to take a break between sealing jobs the way my Weston does - you can load one bag after another. That will come in super handy when we come home with bulk proteins from the warehouse store. At about 18 pounds it is easy to move, especially with the built in handles on the side - what a smart idea! The accessory port makes it easy to use their canisters for sealing mason jars and even works with our food saver wine bottle stoppers. The chamber is easy to clean if any particles happen to escape during the sealing process. And boy, is it fun to watch. I'm a bartender by training, not a physicist, so I can't explain why the reintroduction of atmospheric pressure makes the bag vacuum down, but who cares? Seeing the bag shrink up is prime time entertainment for the whole family! $369 isn't cheap, but is is a heck of a bargain when you price other chamber vacuum sealers. If you're considering jumping into a chamber sealer, don't hesitate to buy this one.

My husband I are hunters and most of our diet consists of wild game and fish, which we process ourselves. I was looking for a sealer which worked on moist food so I bought this. I have used it on 3 deer, 40 ducks, fish plus pheasants and snipe. The fish and bird meat were soaked first and not exactly bone dry when packaged. I've tried the marinade function once. I have been using left-over vacuum sealer bags in it, as well as the chamber ones that came with it and some small-size ones I purchased. I've just ordered the next two sizes. The properly-sized chamber bags are the best - cheaper and easier to handle. Overall I'm very pleased with how the packaging went but the proof with be in a year's time when we see how well the food has survived. I anticipate I will come back with a 5-star review at that point. Here are some specifics: I like the overall operation.Set it going and leave it till it's done. Easy to use, feels solid and reliable. IT SEALS WET FOOD! The double seal is excellent. Things I'm getting used to: I'm playing with the vacuum time. There is a tiny bit of air left in the moist food seals. Not sure if this is significant (time will tell). A longer vacuum time does not seem to help (tried 26 secs, as opposed to 20 secs). Removing the creases in the bag before closing the lid really does help. I have not been able to seal leg roasts yet but purchasing the gallon bags should make that possible. Also I will be able to make large packages of burger meat. I guess I should have waited to write this review till I got the big bags but I really do think this is great for hunters. MY ADVICE: If you're looking for a new sealer, I'd highly recommend this, even though it seems a bit fiddly to start with. Purchase the correct bags and save your old vacuum sealer ones till you've got the hang of this one, instead of struggling to make them fit.

This vacuum sealer is the best thing I never knew I always needed. I find myself using it all the time for more than I imagined. It’s great to portion out leftovers, or divide bulk buys for freezing. Sometimes I find myself looking for things to vac seal just because it’s fun. I had been looking hard at the bigger chamber models, but they were really overkill for my needs. I’m very glad I found and went with this smaller model. It fits under the counter in my kitchen, and is light weight to tote around if I want to batch process in another location. This mobile aspect is a feature I really appreciate and use fairly often. I do some batch processing at times, and I did wonder if this unit would hold up. So far I’ve used it in two longer sessions of over an hour non-stop each, and it seems to have fared just fine. I like that the settings are easy to adjust. And that it does not make annoying beeps every time you seal something. It has a double seal line, and that’s nice. So far I haven’t had any trouble with bags not sealing well. I have used 2 different off-brands of vacuum bags with it and both have worked fine, so it doesn’t seem too finicky about the brand of bags you use. In terms of size, I mainly use an 8x10 bag or smaller and find this is a nice size for most things I do. The unit will take up to an 11x10 bag max so it wouldn’t seal a whole roasting chicken or a big beef roast. Cut up the chicken or cut a big roast in half though and you could seal it all easily. I find the vacuum suction power to be very good. Most leftovers I use 20-30 seconds of vacuum time and find that’s plenty. I sealed some bean seed to save for next season and went a full 60 seconds on it, which is the maximum time this unit will do. I was very impressed at the result - those beans were packed tight! I haven’t used the hose port to speak to how well it works, but I do like that it has one as an option. Most chamber models do not. I do find that I need to put light pressure on the lid to make sure it grabs and starts pulling vacuum. The timer runs as soon as the motor starts, whether you are pulling vacuum on the chamber or not. So if the lid doesn’t seal til half way through the cycle, it still stops and seals at the end of the time (effectively giving you a 15 second time of vacuum pull rather than 30, for example). This has caught me once or twice, and I had to cut open a bag and reseal it. (Note that there is a cancel button if you realize and think quickly enough.) I read a review from someone who found this really annoying, but I don’t find it a big deal. I just stay in the habit of pressing gently down on the lid with one hand while hitting the start button with the other. The one complaint I have with the unit is that I find the control buttons touchy. Sometimes I hit the button and nothing happens. Most of the time it starts on the second try, it’s never been worse than 3 tries. It’s a smooth control panel, so you can’t feel a button depress. I’m old school enough to miss that, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. Most of the time one press and it starts fine. Perhaps there’s just an element of me needing to learn just how / where to press. So definitely overall I recommend this as a great unit for household needs, including those who do a lot of garden or meat preserving. UPDATE 7-20-22 Just wanted to come back and say I still love this little vacuum sealer. I’ve had no issues with it and love it just as much as when I first wrote the review.

I’m very pleased with my Avid Armor USV20 chamber vacuum sealer. The build quality seems very good and so far it’s performed perfectly. It’s a substantial upgrade from the FoodSaver Professional II sealer that I used for about 10 years. Although the FoodSaver sealer lasted a long time, I was never perfectly happy with it. Most of my review here will be a comparison between the FoodSaver-style vacuum sealer and the Avid Armor chamber vacuum sealer. 1. Bags. FoodSaver-style vacuum sealers require special bags with channels in the film that allow air and moisture to escape as you seal the bag. These channeled bags are a lot more expensive than vacuum bags without channels. For quart-sized, 8”x10” bags (as of 5/30/24): • $24.99 for 44 FoodSaver channeled bags (56.8¢/bag) • $24.00 for 250 Avid Armor chamber-style 3-mil bags (9.6¢/bag) • $29.00 for 250 Avid Armor chamber-style 4-mil bags (11.6¢/bag) I find the 4-mil AA bags to be substantially sturdier than the FS bags. With the FS bags, I’d lose the vacuum seal in the freezer on about 10% of my bags; with the AA bags, I have yet to lose the seal on any bag. Because I do a lot of vacuum sealing, it’s much less costly in the long run to purchase the more expensive Avid Armor chamber sealer at $350 (using much less expensive, but sturdier bags) than the FoodSaver sealers at $100-$250 (with the very expensive bags). 2. Food type. Most of the time, I vacuum seal food that has a lot of moisture in it. With the FoodSaver sealer, I had to seal each bag about 3 times because the liquid flowing through the channels would interfere with the sealing process. You can eventually get a good seal, but it takes effort. With the Avid Armor sealer, I only have to seal once. 3. Clean up. The Avid Armor sealer is much easier to clean up. Because no liquid is sucked out of the bag into the chamber, I don’t have to mop up after I’m done sealing a batch of food. With the FoodSaver, I had to clean a substantial amount of food liquid out of vacuum chamber after I finished. 4. Parts. My FoodSaver Professional II lasted a long time, but when it finally failed, it was the heat seal bar that broke. FoodSaver does not make any replacement heat seal bars, and I couldn’t find any after-market parts. At that point, I had to replace the whole unit. One of the really nice features of the Avid Armor chamber sealer is that the heat seal bar is a $19, user-replaceable part sold on their website. 5. Settings. On the AA USV20, both the vacuum time and heat seal time are easily adjustable, with a wide range of possible settings. A lot of vacuum sealers have only one or two settings, not really allowing you any adjustments based on the kind of food you’re sealing. Buy the Avid Armor USV20. It’s worth the investment.

This sealer from AvidArmor is excellent. It is so easy to use!! We have always used standard freezer bags to store our food. Didn’t know any better and just considered the freezer burn as part of the whole experience of food storage. Recently in October, we were prompted to purchase a new freezer. Didn’t know why at the moment, but followed the prompting. Found out when we were discussing the purchase with the store owner that the freezer had arrived in their store the day before and taken 5 months to arrive after ordering. This is profound to us being able to buy the freezer on the same day that we received the prompt. Now back to the sealer: early December we decided to purchase a quantity of meats to store in the new freezer. During the purchase my wife found a Suction sealer and we decided to give it a try. Excited to freeze meat with no more opportunity for freezer burn, we were pretty optimistic. Got it home and proceeded to seal up the chicken quarters we purchased. We tried and tried to get the sealer to work the way it was advertised. No success! I asked my wife to look online for help and she found a video comparing the suction type sealer to the vacuum chamber sealer. It was obvious that we chose the inferior design. We immediately started looking for a suitable choice and found the AvidArmor USV20. It looked like the best value and size for our needs. It came to us quickly even though it had to travel through some rough snowstorms. I especially like that it’s produced in Kansas and customer service is a phone call to the folks there. How nice to be able to talk to someone who speaks “American”. 😊 I have attached a video and photos of ham slices that is part of our meat purchase. This sealer is so easy to use!! Even a dummy like me can have success on the first try. I am so thankful that we found this product and a great USA based company to help us in our quest to be more self reliant and have enough to share with those who need our help. If you are considering a vacuum sealer and want quality then this is for you. It’s not too large and doesn’t weigh too much. The build quality is top notch. It’s easy to clean. Simple to understand and worth every penny. You can even seal soups and other liquid based foods. Watch the video that AvidArmor has published to see the many ways to use the sealer. The USV20 is a great choice for household size, but they also make a larger version USV32 to accommodate additional needs. You can’t go wrong with AvidArmor. Yes we were able to return the suction sealer for a full refund. 👍