hey everybody welcome back it's brian with live life simple and i am always trying to
up my food saving game or my food storage game and today i think we have something that can
uh really help us with that because yesterday i received the avid armor usv 32 chamber vac sealer
i've been meaning to buy one of these for a long long time i've heard a lot of info and
a lot of chat about these so today we're going to unbox this thing i'm going to give a review of it
we're going to go through a couple of test samples i'm going to compare it real briefly to
some of the competition and i'll show you uh the specs of this the price of this
and i will of course give you my opinion and my thoughts of the avid armor and i think
today we're going to be able to take our food preservation up a notch so stay tuned
so let's get this thing unboxed first and then i'll kind of go over what the difference
is between a chamber vac sealer and just your regular impulse sealer or your regular vacuum
sealer like a food saver type device so we have a quick start guide just my invoice and then a small
user manual most stuff doesn't even come with much of a manual at all anymore and then we have
this heater asm that's your heat sealing bar which actually seals your mylar i'll show you that here
in a second we have a replacement lid gasket that is most likely a part that is that fails the most
often that's probably why they give you a backup there's a squishy avocado thing so it looks like
the avocado is just a test that shows that your sealer works your sealer sucks and then we have
our chamber vac sealer and the power cord and you can see obviously this is
much bigger than your food sealer bar type vacuum sealer
and to give you an idea of how much bigger this is this is about 14 inches wide
and 15 inches deep and 9 inches tall so obviously this is not for your average everyday
vacuum ceiling this is for someone who is doing a lot of food storage or doing big quantities of
food storage if you've watched this channel before you know that we do primarily freeze drying so as
far as i'm concerned this is going to go hand in hand with freeze drying because you always have
large quantities of food but even if you don't freeze dry if you're a dehydrator or you can
or you're you're a homesteader or something like that this is something that you can definitely
work into your process and the reason this is not just an everyday kitchen gadget
is one the amount of real estate that this takes up on the counter
it's a it's it's pretty big if you have a big processing area where you're doing food storage
you know that's not really that big a deal the second reason being the price tag this one right
now is about 600 obviously that price fluctuates plus or minus uh depending on time and where you
get it from but if you're not using this as uh as it's intended to be used for that's a big price
tag to be paying but the big difference between this and your everyday vacuum sealer like a food
saver type is that this has a chamber inside of it where you actually put your ingredients
inside of here it will vacuum seal in the chamber similar to a freeze dryer and seal with this heat
bar at the same time and the finished product of this is going to be a lot nicer and it's going to
be a lot more consistent especially if you're doing bag after bag so you saw that i pulled a
couple more things out of here this is a filler plate this actually would just sit in here it
occupies a little bit more space so it reduces the time that it takes to actually do the whole
process if you if you didn't need that whole space and then it comes with some sample packs
of vacuum pouches i am not going to be using this in freeze drying we use a mylar type bag like this
so that will be the true test today whether or not this can seal a five mil and a seven mil mylar bag
while doing the vacuum seal as well so my first impressions for quality it seems like it's pretty
good quality it has a nice thick glass top on it i do like that you can see through here so you can
see what's going on inside i'm not sure if both brands do that and i do want to point out too that
avid armor has two different sizes this is the larger version because i wanted to make sure that
it would do the larger size mylar bag i wanted to make sure that that heat bar was big enough
right here this is a 10 by 14 bag this is the largest bag that i use there's a there's
stainless steel used on the outside the glass case is real nice and thick this is stainless
on the inside too it does have some heft to it the control panel seems like it's well built
will this compare to the vac master which is kind of considered more of a commercial version of this
i don't know how this will hold up in comparison to that one but for my needs and i would imagine
most freeze dryers were not really at that commercial level yet so you're still kind of like
at that home use level just on the very high end of that i wouldn't consider myself commercial so
if this does the trick i would say just for the price it's probably worth buying this one
you can buy almost two of these because the vac master is about another 30 or 40 percent more
than the cost of the avid armor so earlier you saw me pull out these two boxes from the top
that was an extra heating element and an extra replacement lid gasket which i think is pretty
generous of the company and those would be this seal right here that goes all the way around
that holds air in and then this would be your heat bar i think that's pretty nice of the company
a lot of companies would not do that they'd wait for those to fail and you would just have
to buy the parts from them so right off the bat there's a couple things that i really like about
this this is a small business it's based in the midwest the second thing is they actually give
you a two-year warranty which is almost unheard of now almost everything is a one year or less
all you have to do is just show that you gave them a review they'll extend your warranty to two years
i think the next thing that we need to do is get this thing set up we're gonna put it through
its paces i'm gonna try and steal some five mil and seven mil mylar for our freeze drying friends
that's a very common type bag that we're gonna be using in this and then i want to take those sealed
bags and just let them sit for a while and make sure that that seal is good so first let's check
out this control panel this is just your gauge it shows how much pressure is inside this chamber
you can adjust the vacuum time and the seal time the seal time will be important because if you're
sealing a thicker bag that's five or seven mil then you're definitely going to want a longer seal
time the vacuum time will come into play because if you're a freeze dryer if you have something
sharp like noodles or something like that you don't want to want them to penetrate your bag
because if that happens then you lose your whole seal so that can be adjusted as well
and then there's also just a seal button if you did not want to vacuum and then a marinade button
as well which you can use for marinating steaks marinating different things all right so let's
get this thing started i actually have some turkey and noodles that i freeze dried this
already has an oxygen absorber in it so i'm actually going to open this back up
i'm going to expose it back to oxygen again and then it says to put this in between
this little plastic tab on the middle here close the lid put pressure on it and click
my auto vac and seal so it's counting down i actually took my seal level up to nine because
we're obviously going to need the maximum amount this is a 7 mil bag that i'm using
well there's no doubt about it if this is as sealed as the bag looks then this is uh this is
definitely a crazy seal and there you go that's a better view right there of how sealed this is
so i went ahead and double sealed this i always like to
do that with all my freeze-dried stuff but i'm going to let this actually hang out for
a couple days and then i'll check back in with it let's try a 10 by 14 5 mil bag and for kind
of a dramatic effect i'm going to put some seed potatoes in here and that way we can really see
how good the seal and the vacuum is so one thing that i want to note is that this is a 10 by 14 bag
it you're not going to be able with 100 certainty you're not going to be able
to get any bigger of a bag in here because this is really pushing it so let's try this with the 5 mil
it's the larger bag the 10 by 14 and one thing that i i'm not sure if you caught on the first
video the whole process is automatic which is cool i wasn't really expecting that i thought i
was going to have to introduce the air back into the chamber but it does all of that for you so
it's real simple you just you push down on the glass you hit the auto back seal
it vacuums for whatever vacuum time you set it for and then it's gonna seal
for whatever time you set it for and then you can let your hand off interesting too is it you
think that it's not vacuuming because it's not pulling it out but then watch
bam
all right well i would call that super sealed and this one i'm just gonna keep it sealed one time i
always like to double seal stuff because it gives you that extra layer of protection but we'll let
these sit for a few days and we'll come back and we'll see if uh if this worked on the mylar if
you really wanted to uh ensure that the mylar was completely sealed no questions asked you
could actually double down and use your mylar bag sealer as well once all of the air is sucked out
of here okay well here we are it's been a week and these look exactly the same as they did a week ago
and one thing that i've noticed that i like about vacuum sealing is that there's really no room for
error because once it looks like this if there is any kind of leakage or something's not sealed
right you're going to be able to tell right away the folks at avid armor were kind enough to pass
on a coupon code that i can give to all of you viewers and freeze dryers if you just go to check
out and use live life simple they'll give you 10 off your purchase which is that's 60 bucks
i'll put the link to that site avid armor down in the description and i'll also put that coupon
code down in there as well all right well let me give you my final thoughts and my opinion on this
sealer i think that 600 is a significant investment but compared to the vac master
unless the vac master is does something that's way above and beyond what this one is doing
i really like this one because it seems like it does everything very well
the thing that i was concerned about when i first ordered this was whether or not it would
seal the the five and the seven mil mylar bags and it did so it to me it looks like
this is well worth the money if you're serious into food preservation which if you're a freeze
dryer you've already taken that step so most likely you are if you're a homesteader if you
butcher your own meat if you have chickens or like a big time gardener or you do a lot of canning
or just food preservation in general i think this is probably going to suit all of your needs in
the meantime this is retired at 40 remember to live life simple and we'll catch you next week