Anova Precision Vacuum Sealer review

REVIEW – I recently received an reviewed my first vacuum sealer a little over a month ago. It worked great and was really economical. It was made my Uten and you can find the review here. When the chance came to review the new vacuum sealer by Anova, I jumped at it because I know they make some quality sous vide products, and I wanted to see how this sealer compared to a less costly sealer. Read on to see how it went!

The Anova Vacuum Sealer is exactly what the name says it is. It is a vacuum sealer that will suction the air out of specially made plastic bags and then use heat to form an airtight seal on the bag. It is a great way to preserve foods longer. Also, a lot of people will often buy meats in bulk and use the sealer to portion off smaller meal sizes to store in the freezer.

Anova sent me the vacuum sealer and an additional box of vacuum sealer rolls and a box of sealer bags. One box had two rolls that you self cut to size with the dimensions of 11 inches by 9 feet. The other box had 50 bags with dimensions of 7.9 inches by 11.8 inches.

The following items were in the actual sealer box and are shown in the first picture above.

The first thing I noticed was that the bags provided by Anova seemed to be a bit more studier. I say this because the bags provided by Uten had the texturized thicker plastic on one side of the bag only. The other side was a thinner clear plastic. The bags Anova provided had the thicker textured plastic on both sides of the bag.

This first picture is a shot of the buttons on the machine. There is not the moist/dry option that the Uten sealer had, but with my chicken test, I found it pulled all the air from the bag without any issues. There is a vacuum/seal button that will vacuum first, then seal the bag all in one step. There is a seal only button that you would use with a roll where you would want to seal one side first to close the bottom of the bag. Finally, there is a pulse vacuum button where you can control the vacuum level yourself. Once you have vacuumed as much air as you want manually from the bag, you would then press the seal button.

This next picture shows you the entire vacuum sealer. I noticed it had the same pop-up nozzle that pulls the air out of the bag that the Uten did. I wonder if I can attach the hose provided by the Uten and use it to suck the air out of containers as the Uten can. Unfortunately, I do not own any of those containers or I would have tested that feature. I did notice the area where the seal is made is much larger than what the Uten had. It is all a single piece while the Uten had the metal band running separately on top of the whole heat band. One thing the Uten had that I wish the Anova had was a storage spot under the sealer for the power cord.

So I decided to do a chicken test again, but this time with leg and thigh quarters. As shown in the picture above, you place the edge of the bag over the drip tray and then close the top down until you hear the click of both sides locking into place.

I pressed the vacuum/seal button and let the appliance go to work. It pulled all of the air out in about 22 seconds and then took about another five to six seconds to seal the bag. In the picture above I tried to show you the actual seal. It is a slightly wider seal than what the Uten provides.

This last picture shows the back of the chicken so you can see the level of vacuuming that took place. It did a really good job of pulling the air out of the bag. Below is a video I took of the vacuum sealer in action.

I really like this vacuum sealer. Overall, it seems much more heavy-duty than the Uten with the wider heat sealing strip and the fact it is ever so slightly wider than the Uten. I noticed the Uten is no longer available on Amazon as of the day I wrote this review. It was listed for thirty dollars cheaper than Anova, but what good is that if you can no longer buy it. I also love the fact that Anova is a U.S. company that is based out of California.

I have used this vacuum sealer many times since my review and it has worked flawlessly. It has become a necessary gadget in my kitchen.

Price: $69.99Where to buy: Anovaculinary.com and AmazonSource: The sample of this product was provided by Anova