I am thinking about purchasing a foodsaver for packaging and preserving food (for BWCA trips and to prevent freezer burn). Any recommendations on model. Online I am finding the cheaper models have their issues. Unfortunately I was hoping not to spend the big bucks. Any cheap success stories?
thanks,
tg

Mine is a FoodSaver Vac 1050. It is probably more near the bottom of the line for Foodsaver. I believe I got it for $80-90 at Fleet Farm. It works just fine. Keep your eyes on the ads.

thanks sloughman

I just purchased a Kenmore food saver with some good features at K-Mart for 100.00. I looked at a lot of different makes and models and this one appears to be the best with the most options with the lowest price. I vac and sealed jerky, works great.

I have a black and decker vacuum sealer that i bought a walmart that works great. i've found that the food saver bags work better than the ones that came with my machine. it made cooking food at home and taking it with us much easier for our Memorial day trip

Here's a tip:
2 years ago for Christmas my husband and I received a Foodsaver brand foodsaver as a gift. I have no complaints about it. It works excellent. I swear these were the best things invented for packing food for camping.

The odd thing is that about 2 weeks after we received the first one we were at a local thrift store and found a foodsaver that was the exact same as the one we got as a gift. The only difference is that it was marked down to $5.95. Apparently the people there didn't know what it was. It was brand new, just out of the box and still had the stickers on it. Of course we bought it. We gave it to my parents and the thing works like a charm. Moral of my story, check a local thrift store, you might be able to find a brand new one there for a steal.

The cheapest one won't last long for sure. You should know that the tech in vacuum sealer is quite mature these days, and you can easily get a great one withn $100 bucks. Like this maxkon food saver sealer at Crazysales, I bought the white model as personal preference for $89 years ago. The machine has two 3m rolls of small (22 cm) and big (28 cm) sized bags (free with every machine). The bags are very durable & thick while being see-through and they’re top-shelf dishwasher safe for re-use! I’ve never know vacuum sealer bags to be re-useable before! BIG TICK! It is then great not only to see the food but to enable you to seal the ‘heavier’ things like meats or whole fish and vegetables. The vacuum food sealer uses the bag slicer compartment to give you precision and desired bag sizes. Rolls of bags will also be purchased.

I had a couple seal a meals... junk! Got a foodsaver in the $80 range and it's been the bomb. That being said, I don't seal as much as I was doing. Mainly my meats and things I dehydrate.

I have a cheapo 1st gen foodsaver. A couple tips -

the foam seals will compress over time, and are expensive to replace. They are meant to be replaced however, and are therefore easy to remove. use the seal as a template, and cut a piece of cardboard in the exact shape of the seal. Place that in the groove on the machine, and put the old seal back in place right on top of it. Back in business.

use genuine food saver bags - the generics haven't been worth the money IMO. Buy them in bulk from Amazon.

for pasta and other 'pokey' items, place them in an open ziplock bag first, and then in the sealer bag, then seal away. Extra ziplock bags are always useful and weigh nothing.

seal your extra batteries and TP (not in the same bag).

I have had better luck with the ZipLoc food saver bags than anything else. I've found the generic stuff to be junk though.