VP215 Chamber Vacuum Sealer

This vacuum sealer is big and heavy. Make sure you find a permanent home for this thing. Only problem I had was vac master supposedly enlarged the oil reservoir for the motor. So when I added all the oil I had, it still wasn't enough to come up half way in the fill window. I gave customer service a call, and they answered all my questions. Newer units take more oil then is stated in the directions. Make sure you don't run it with low oil! I got a free quart of oil for calling, so I could finish filling my unit. This thing works amazing. It's fast, simple, and quiet. Plenty of space for sealing servings for a family of 4. The double bag seal is excellent, just make sure the bag sits perfectly flat on the seal bar for a perfect seal. If you see crinkles on the edge after sealing, it will most likely leak. It's expensive, but is worth it. Now we plan on doing some sous vide cooking.

Best purchase ever. If your looking for a bag sealer this is so easy, never fails. Have never had a bag not seal properly or come unsealed.

Heavy... Big... Commercial Kitchen Appropriate... All True!!! But still, for our home we use it daily and it works AWESOME! Find a good accessible place for it and USE IT. Vacuum packed bags store excellent in fridge/freezer. Works super well with sous vide... Bags are very cheap at around .05 cents. Works great with liquids like soups, chili, marinades (just make sure liquids are cool before you press the button since they boil like crazy if warm and can make a mess). Not sure I'll ever use our traditional (external) vacuum packer again. One odd thing I noticed initially was a light vapor that came out of the exhaust of the unit. Did a little research and evidently that happens initially with the oil pump model (VP215) and not to worry about it. I would still go oil pump for sure... easy to fill and I understand the operation is quieter and the vacuum is stronger.

I am completely happy and satisfied with the performance of this vacuum chamber , I wish I would’ve done it a lot sooner. I am able to do wet brines and liquids with it. Machine is heavy, make sure you order a rolling card with it if you are not going to leave it in one spot. I process a lot of fish and it makes it so much easier even if the fish has some moisture, where my old food saver always have troubled the bag seal properly. The cost of the machine is high , but you will save a lot of money on the bags. I had a food saver for over 10 years, it worked great, but I was spending a lot of money on the rolls .

Edit 10/18/2025 - Still going strong. I changed the oil earlier this year, which was the first time since original setup. Nothing further of note. Edit 8/17/2022 - added video of bagging a 10lb brisket in a 16"x18" bag. Edit 5/14/2022 - I've been using it a lot lately, and it always does a nice job. I'm way over-due for an oil change, but no matter. I've taken to placing the cutting-board spacers on top of the bags in the machine in order to get a better vacuum. It prevents the bags from puffing up, forcing more of the air out. I regret not buying a bigger model. This VP215 does 99% of what I want, but once in a while the chamber is just too small- e.g. packer briskets, pork butts, hams, etc. I added 2 stars this time because my unit has been doing lots of good work. Edit: 8/31/2021 - My unit is still going strong. It gets light to medium use. I've had no malfunctions or breakdowns. I discovered you can seal extra-wide bags by folding the mouth of the bag to fit. The seal-bar has enough heat to seal through the fold, but the outside of the bag doesn't stick to itself so the sealed bag unfolds after. Useful trick for large chunks of meat that max-out the chamber volume. Original Review: Stars removed for the cheap-garbage vacuum pump, and the annoying controls. Details below. 1. The lid latch design is stupid, and a hazard. They should have used a toggle latch. The lid always wants to spring open and the latch doesn't hold the lid down all the way. So, if you accidentally bump the latch the heavy lid swings open unexpectedly. Its especially concerning when moving or carrying the appliance. Its not a deal breaker, but definitely disappointing considering the price. 2. The control interface is fiddly, and cycling through the options every time I want to make a change is tiresome. Separate buttons for each of the three settings (vac, seal, cool down) would have made adjustments so much easier. Fine if you're doing twenty of the same thing, but if you're doing a bunch of different things that require frequent changes, < groan>. 3. An hour meter on the back would have been a nice way to keep track of oil changes. 4. From the outside it looks and feels like a commercial grade appliance. However, the vacuum pump is the cheapest piece of garbage they could get to do the job. At least it should be easily replaceable aftermarket even if VacMaster goes out of business. 5. Definitely change out the first oil fill after about 10min of run-time to flush the pump of dirt. My first (second, and third) oil came out dark gray with a lot of fine magnetic particulate settling out of the oil. (Apparently other reviewers have experienced this too.) Typical of cheap Chinese made equipment is poor machine work finishing, like they didn't bother to clean the machined parts before assembling. (If you're especially mechanically inclined, pull the whole pump right away for tear-down and cleaning. It will probably last a lot longer.) I'll update if I notice anything else as I put some hours on the machine.

This thing sucks... In a good way. I have owned several of the traditional foodsaver external type sealers and burned them up with use. They are just not designed for heavy household use. I had many worries about sealing too many bags in a session causing it to overheat, then bags would not seal, or the vacuum was just not good enough. Worst of all was having to worry about liquids getting out of the bag and into the sealer which would basically ruin it. With the Vacmaster VP215 I have none of these worries. I have used it quite a bit the last few days and did my first oil change just to be safe. An even bigger plus is that with the foodsaver I always had to worry about making sure all of the air came out of the bag when cooking Sous Vide. With moist ingredients you could not draw a hard vacuum for fear liquid would get out. Thus some air bubbles were left behind and the bags floated. With the chamber vac design the air is drawn out leaving nothing to really float the bag except the natural buoyancy of the material being sealed. I can fill up a dozen bags of food and then seal them one right after the other without any worries about overheating. With the foodsaver I would have to fill a bag, seal it, then wait for a few minutes for it to cool down. If not, it would get very hot to the touch after a few bags and then would not draw a vacuum or it would start having issues sealing until it cooled down again. A final plus I will list is that I like to share my cooking. Giving someone a vacuum bag with the grid lines it is hard to tell exactly what is inside due to the texture of the plastic. Some people might be a little leery of opening the bag let alone eat it. With the Vacmaster bags, you can see everything inside in full glory. It actually makes things look great to eat right out of the bag. Compress some watermelon and you will see what I mean. Pros: It works, great. It looks like a tank and built like one. Simple to operate, and clean. Cons: Size, and weight. Its not as simple as tossing this in a closet like some would do with a traditional sealer unit. Its also not exactly portable. I have a cart dedicated to rolling it around the kitchen and storage when needed.

I do not and will not recommend the VacMaster VP215 or any of the Ary Inc. products to anyone. When the machine works, it works well. I followed that operating manual and did everything properly to in accordance to Ary Inc to care for and extend the life of the product. After 6 months of light home use the motor decided to stop working. I placed repeated calls to Ary Inc which all but the last one lead to unfulfilled promises of a call back to deal with the issue. Finally I received a call back from the tech department after being told yet again that I should be receiving a call back and me firmly expressing that I was tired of the hollow gesture. Instead of replacing the machine, or taking full responsibility for their product that is still under the full 1 year warranty, they informed me that they won't pay for the shipping of the unit to the company to be fixed. After spending almost a thousand dollars on purchasing this item and paying for shipping the first time, I was told I would have to pay more to ship them a faulty unit for them to hopefully fix it properly. It's as if I'm being slighted twice: once for getting a unit that broke within 6 months, and again for having to pay more for them to fix their mistake. If it is as good as the first time, hopefully it will work for at least another 6 months before breaking again. On the phone I was told that they can't change the warranty policy and that I would have to eat the cost. Had I known that their "full warranty" was not truly a full warranty at the time of purchase, I would have reconsidered. I was very excited when the VacMaster first arrived and was happy with the way it was working. I was even optimistic once the machine broke that they would send me a box, I'd send the broken unit off, then they would send me fixed machine ready to start vacuuming again. Instead it is poor customer service and the hassle of finding a box that fits, buying bubble wrap and such so that it doesn't get beat up in transit. Hopefully nothing happens to it along the way, but if it does get superficially damaged in transit I can't imagine they would take the time to replace a dented panel. Then it is eating the cost of shipping an 84 pound item. On top of that, my only means of transportation is a motorcycle, which means I'll have to pay to take a car to the post office to send it off. Overall I am very upset with the way they have handled this situation. Had they just taken the full responsibility for their product and taken care of the cost of shipping for their faulty product this could have been a totally different review. Please reconsider buying this product if you are on the fence about it. They don't care about your satisfaction, they just want your money.

Let's be honest, this is an expensive investment. If you are looking at this, you need to understand how it is going to fit within how your family actually works. If it has a place, then you need to look at it just like you would look at any other real tool in your life. You pay more for tools that last and those that perform consistently. We have been using our Vacmaster for the past few months and it is starting to change the way that we cook and also the way we schedule our week. We do a lot of Sous Vide in our house because it is convenient, time tolerant, and you end up with a high quality product. We Sous Vide, freeze the product, and then reheat with the microwave during the week. We also make soups/steps on the stove and other more conventional products. To date, we have had no downsides on the Vacmaster. It does what it was intended to do. It will pull a vacuum strong enough to boil water at ambient temperature. So, you need to know what you want to do with it. Because it is heavy, we had to find a permanent place for it in our basement. Once we did that, using it has been a breeze and it is working more and more into our routine. This also means that we aren't fumbling around to use our 3rd Foodsaver which was beginning to fail. Chamber sealers are MORE expensive, but once you have one, you won't want to go back to clamp sealer except for specialty applications. Once you have a chamber sealer, you will find that it is just too convenient to use for a number of applications. Update July 21, 2009: We have had this unit for 3 1/2 years now and it has seen rather heavy use for a home use. We purchase meat in bulk and we vac pac each individual package for long term storage. We still do a fair amount of Sous Vide cooking and exclusively use the Vacmaster retherm bags. We have been very pleased with the unit. I've had to change the oil several times in the pump, but that is to be expected and is normal maintenence although I didn't do it for the first few years. Lately, we were having problems with the unit pulling a vacuum and so I just replaced the gasket seal on the lid and was surprised how easy this was to do. That seemed to fix the problem. Again normal maintenance for a high end tool. Honestly, I wish I purchased this years ago instead of all of the non-chamber sealers that I went through.