VacMaster Chamber Vacuum Sealer Reviews: Our Editorial Verdict

The short version

An excellent machine with a price and a footprint that rule it out for a lot of kitchens. A couple hundred owner comments also turn up a service story worth knowing before you spend.

What's good:

• Seals liquids and wet foods cleanly, so soups, brines, and marinades that defeat an edge sealer are trivial.
• Pulls a near-total vacuum around the whole bag, tight enough to boil water at room temperature and compress fruit.
• Runs cheap flat chamber pouches that cost a fraction of textured edge-sealer bags, so heavy users claw back the price over time.
• Commercial build and pump: a decade or more of daily use is routine, some units pushing two.

What's not:

• Expensive up front, and overkill unless you seal liquids or work in real volume.
• Heavy and big; the larger models top 80 pounds and claim permanent counter space you cannot reclaim.
• Oil-pump models need the oil drained and refilled on a schedule, especially in a damp climate.
• When an older unit fails, replacement boards can be out of stock and support draws mixed accounts.

Who it's for

A chamber sealer is a specialist tool. Whether you seal liquids is the line between a great buy and wasted money.

Buy it for:

• Sous vide, charcuterie, and meal prep where you seal marinades, brines, sauces, and portioned wet meat regularly.
• High volume: bagging garden hauls, bulk meat, or a side business where cheap flat pouches and a pump built for duty pay off.
• Molecular-gastronomy tricks like compressing fruit and rapid infusions that a standard sealer simply cannot do.

Skip it if:

• You mostly seal dry food like jerky and freezer portions; an external Weston Pro-2300 pulls a strong vacuum for far less money and weight.
• You want to seal liquids but cannot stomach the outlay; a VEVOR chamber sealer gets you wet-food vacuuming at a fraction of the price.
• You seal in real volume and want more chamber and a wider seal bar; the pro-shop VacMaster VP230 is the step up, not a rival brand.

The specs that matter

Three things separate this from the sealer you already own.

Chamber sealing instead of edge sealing: the bag sits fully inside the box, so the machine pulls air from the bag and the chamber together. That is why it seals liquids without pulling soup into the pump, and why it reaches a deeper vacuum than any external sealer.

A 10-inch seal bar and a roughly 5-inch-deep chamber: wide enough for the bags most home cooks use, deep enough to stand a pint jar or lay a quart jar down. If you seal oversized cuts, you hang the bag mouth over the bar and let the rest drape outside, which works on this format.

Cheap flat pouches, not textured rolls: chamber bags are smooth-wall and dirt cheap by the case because they do not need embossed channels. That is the running-cost advantage that offsets the steep purchase price if you seal a lot.

How well it preserves

The chamber design pulls air from the whole box, so a full vacuum is routine and liquids are a non-issue. This is close to unanimous, and for anyone coming from a FoodSaver it is a different category of machine rather than a nicer version of the same one.

I'm thrilled with my VP-215. I decided not to go for one of the premium machines because I just don't think I use it enough. It was easy for me to justify an extra $170 to get a pump that I expect will last a lot longer, but I have a hard time believing that the Henkelman or Minvac machines, at 2.5x the cost will last me 2.5x longer. The 215 does everything I want, I preserve food, marinade meat, compress fruit, and can fit a standard size mason jar. It also pulls a strong vacuum, really no complaints about it!

The vacuum it pulls is strong enough to do things an edge sealer never could. It handles the molecular-gastronomy party trick of boiling water at room temperature, and compressing and infusing fruit, both of which depend on getting close to a total vacuum rather than merely a tight one:

My VP112 has enough pressure to boil room temp water. It can easily reach 26-27" Hg and works for compressing fruit and infusing etc.

In everyday use that translates to fast, reliable seals on marinated meat, leftovers, and portioned cuts, day after day, without babysitting. One long-term owner sums up the ordinary rhythm of living with one:

I have a vp-112, been using it for about a year and a half, great machine, no problems whatsoever. Use it pretty much daily, mostly for a quick vac marinate before going on the grill or bagging up leftovers. Also, works fabulously for infusing/ compressing fruits.

Size is the limit, not quality. The chamber caps how big a single bag can be, so very large cuts need the hang-over-the-bar trick or a second pass. For the core job of pulling a deep vacuum and sealing anything wet or dry, nothing in the external-sealer world is in the same conversation.

Built to last

When one of these lives, it lives a very long time. A decade of daily service is routine, and it is not rare to find one still running after nearly twenty years, which is why a VacMaster is a purchase rather than an appliance:

Which vac master? I’ve been using a VP112 for nearly 2 decades and it’s still running great.

The build backs that up. The seal is a simple rubber gasket rather than a fragile mechanism, and owners who use theirs hard push back on the idea that the lids are delicate:

I think it's a relatively new model because it certainly wasn't available when I bought my 112 a year and a half ago. I will say though, the lid issues are way overblown with the 112, the lid sits on a rubber gasket to keep an airtight seal, there's nothing more to it, so people breaking their machines are just being stupid and mishandling them. a double seal-bar is nice to have but also not a necessity, i've never had a seal fail in 1.5 years of heavy use FWIW

The brand reputation is earned, and it is the single most repeated point across every thread: if you ask a room of sous-vide cooks which chamber vac to trust, VacMaster is the reflex answer.

Well, VM is the most respected brand of chamber vacuums, so they clearly know what they are doing and have a stellar reputation.

The asterisk is service, not build. Two failure modes come up: a cracked plastic lid on older units, and a dead control board or relay. These machines are serviceable, and a handful of owners bring dead units back for the price of a single component:

I bought a 'broken' VP112 a few years back that wouldn't seal anymore. I found that the relay that powers the sealing bar went bad. It was a $2 replacement and has worded ever since. It's been years ago, but I simply followed the sealing wires back to the board and traced out which relay it was connected to.

The bad news is that parts for older models are drying up, and support does not always rescue you. One owner watched a five-year-old VP-112 lose its seal bar and hit a wall trying to get working replacements:

After about 5 years of faithful service my sealbar on my VP-112 (original) stopped sealing. Wasn't even any residual heat to the touch. I figured no problem, I'll order some replacements from Webstuarant store. NOPE. Replacements not working either.

When the board is the culprit and stock has run out, the machine can become an expensive brick, which is the sharpest version of this complaint:

Damn that makes 2 of us. Not a single board to be found. I’ve got a very nice $800 paper weight now.

If you are buying used, the cracked-lid failure mode is the thing to inspect for, and it is easy to check before money changes hands:

The most common problem is a cracking plastic lid. Throughly check the lid for hairline cracks where the handles attach and throughout the lid. As for other mechanical things, there's not much to check. Run it and see how quickly the vacuum starts to build, and if the rubber seal is still pliable.

The longevity stories are more common and just as real, so none of this outweighs them. It is why the number below, while high, is not a perfect score. Buy from a seller with a genuine return window, and if you buy an older unit secondhand, price in the chance that parts have gone scarce.

Living with it

Nothing here is the machine doing something wrong. It is cost, bulk, and upkeep. Weight first: these do not move once placed, the larger models are a two-person lift, and even the compact ones are dense:

I know it's not on your list, but I just picked up a new VacMaster VP112 (the precursor to the VP112S). I'm very happy with it. It's compact with a deep chamber and only 50lbs. And it's reasonably quiet. No regrets.

The oil-pump models, which is most of the serious VacMaster line, ask for a little maintenance an external sealer never does. The oil needs draining and refilling on a schedule, and it clouds faster if you seal a lot of liquid or live somewhere damp. It is a five-minute job, but it is a job:

The other thing is we are from a damp climate and many of the things i vac pack have liquid so the oil gets cloudy and you have to drain and replace every 6 months. Aside from these, I am really happy with it. We use it several times daily, not just for SV.

Money is the other one, and owners frame it in a way worth borrowing. A chamber vac beats an external sealer on almost everything except price and size, and cheap flat bags slowly pay back the outlay if you seal in volume:

VacMaster makes some highly recommended ones at ~$1k range. I'm thinking ~$500-700, (especially if it's self-serviceable or parts-replaceable) is more attractive. Bags for chamber sealer are dirt cheap

The commercial price stings once, and then the machine simply keeps working, which turns the cost into a one-time toll rather than a recurring one:

Got the Anova chamber vac and it worked well for a year. Got them to replace it when it stopped working well and the refurb they gave me lasted about 4 months. Kept it for taking on vacations, dealing with it's issues, but bought a Vacmaster for the house. Love it but you're going to pay the price for a commercial vac if you want one.

Where you buy matters as much as what you buy, because return and warranty handling differ sharply by seller if the pump does fail early:

If you buy a VP215, buy it from Webstaurant Store, not Amazon. The pump on mine siezed up after a dozen or so cycles (so barely any use) and needed to be sent back for warranty repair. I had to cover the cost of packing and shipping myself, which was close to $200. Webstaurant Store will cover those costs, whereas Amazon will not.

How it compares

A VacMaster usually gets weighed against one of three machines: something bigger, something cheaper that only handles dry goods, or a budget chamber unit.

Versus the VacMaster VP230: this is the in-house step up, not a rival. The VP230 brings a bigger chamber, a wider seal bar, and more throughput per cycle for someone sealing in real volume or running a side business. Same liquid sealing and near-total vacuum, more machine and more money. If the VP210 ever feels small, this is the answer.

Versus the Weston Pro-2300 external sealer: the Weston is the sensible off-ramp if you do not seal liquids. It pulls a strong vacuum on dry bulk like jerky, garden veg, and portioned meat, seals bags cut to length from a roll, and costs and weighs a fraction of the VacMaster. What it cannot do is soups, brines, or wet marinades, which is the whole reason to buy a chamber vac in the first place.

Versus the VEVOR chamber sealer: the VEVOR is the budget path to the same trick. It seals liquids, runs the same cheap flat pouches, and owners report off-the-shelf pumps that are easy to replace when they wear. Fit, finish, and the reliability track record trail the VacMaster, but if the deep-vacuum, wet-food capability is what you want and the VacMaster price is a bridge too far, it gets you there for far less.

Using it well

Use the fill plate or a spacer to shrink the effective chamber when you seal small bags. The pump reaches vacuum faster and you burn less time and oil. Keep liquids below the seal line, and give hot foods a few minutes to cool, since a very hot liquid can boil under vacuum and foam toward the bar. Buy flat pouches by the case rather than by the pack, because the low per-bag cost is most of the reason to own the machine. And on oil-pump models, put the oil change on a calendar so cloudy oil never becomes a seized pump.

If you are still deciding between a chamber vac and a cheaper external one, it is worth reading how the two formats differ for freezer and sous-vide work before you spend. Our guide to the best vacuum sealer for sous vide and the freezer walks through liquids, bag cost, and longevity with the VacMaster in context against the external options.

Is it worth it

If we sealed liquids or worked in volume, without hesitating. It does the one thing external sealers cannot, it pulls a vacuum close to total, and it tends to keep doing both for a decade or more while cheap flat bags quietly pay down the purchase price. For sous vide, charcuterie, and serious meal prep, this is the machine the whole hobby points to.

Fit is what stops us short of recommending it broadly, not quality. It is expensive, it is heavy, it needs a little oil-pump upkeep, and it is overkill for a kitchen that only ever bags dry jerky. There is a real service tail on older units too, where a dead board can outlast the parts supply. Buy it where you can hand it back and match it to how you actually cook. Seal wet food or in bulk and the VP210 is worth the counter space and then some. Otherwise buy less machine and spend the difference on food.