Ebay Vacuum Sealers Any Good?

[noelvac]

Hi Guys, I bought mine from www.thepackagingcentre.com.au a few months ago, works awesome and the bags are about 1/2 the price of the Sunbeam. Has a nozzle thing which lets it use most bags. I think they sell cheap sunbeam type bags too, have a look, might save you a few $!

 

[Fents]

cheap one on Zazz today only. Not sure if its any good tho sorry.

http://www.zazz.com.au/

 

[BusinessTime]

Hi All,

Since the hop bulk buy that recently went through has filled my cupboard I have been looking at getting a vacuum sealer too, I assume with another bulk buy in the works there will be a few members looking into how best to store their hops.

As per others posts it looks like there are 2 main versions of vacuum sealer you can get.

1. Channel bag based sealers (little bumps allow air to escape the bag and are then heated to form a seal once the vacuum has been created)
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Vacuum-Food-Saver-P...#ht_4345wt_1165

2. Nozzle based systems that use a little nozzle that sits in the bag and sucks the air out, the bag is then sealed at a lower point by a heating element in the same way as the Channel bags
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/FOOD-SAVER-VACUUM-H...=item3a555733ad


Does anyone recommend one over the other ?

From what I can see there are lots of type 1 around and not many of type 2 on ebay. I also couldnt find a supplier of the non-channel bags other than the stores that sell the machines, I thought they were meant to be cheaper but seem relatively similar in cost so i'm not sure what the advantage is.

My final question would be can you use the channel bags with the nozzle based systems as if you can then you may as well get the nozzle version if it is of similar price.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[benno1973]

From what I can see there are lots of type 1 around and not many of type 2 on ebay. I also couldnt find a supplier of the non-channel bags other than the stores that sell the machines, I thought they were meant to be cheaper but seem relatively similar in cost so i'm not sure what the advantage is.

My final question would be can you use the channel bags with the nozzle based systems as if you can then you may as well get the nozzle version if it is of similar price.

This link seems to indicate that the nozzle machines can use channel bags, as it says "works with all bags available from The Packaging Centre", and they sell channel bags.

As far as the cost of bags goes, they sell channel bags (150x200mm) for $24 per 100. They also sell non-channel bags for $13.00 per 100, so nearly half the cost.