Over the years we’ve had a few different vacuum sealers. We were initially gifted an “As Seen On TV” one from my MIL who had bought one off QVC or somewhere else in the 90s. It worked okay but struggled to suck and seal anything but the thinnest bags. We didn’t like it. Then my parents got a FoodSaver and it worked! It really sucked the air out of everything and sealed it up well.
They were an investment.
I ended up getting a battery operated one from Ziploc that worked with only ziplock bags and it honestly did pretty okay. But the hard part was finding the ziploc brands. My local grocery was always out of stock. I of course hacked coffee bag air locks and duct tape to make my own bags, but that was a lot more work than I wanted. I also made my own vac lock jar lids with coffee bag air locks and metal and plastic jar lids and food safe silicone caulking. Those worked really really well.
Then I was visiting my parents and saw that Marden’s had a whole shelf of FoodSavers on deep discount. I got a nicer middle of the road model for around $70. At the time it was an investment.
It has worked so well ever since. I’ve needed to replace the seals once and will likely need to replace them again soon. But it works and works well. It seals up all the bags, even bags from other brands
Anyway, the vac sealer technology has come a long way since then and I’m not even sure that FoodSaver is the top brand anymore. But I can say that I love mine and have for around 15 years. It’s a worthwhile investment if you are thinking about buying in bulk OR are planning to garden.
Food preservation is a whole other area that all these “grow a garden and save some money” types don’t think about. Preserving a harvest isn’t as easy as just throwing everything into a zipper bag. It takes knowledge and skill to put up an entire harvest to eat through the winter. I wonder how much of the minimization of this skill has to do with misogyny? Putting up the harvest was often women’s work. That’s a whole other post though.