Review on PICKWILL 80KPa Automatic Food Vacuum Sealer With Starter Bags & Rolls, Dry/Moist Modes, Built-In Cutter, Compact Design For Easy Use by Will Porter

I've wanted to have a food vacuum sealer for years, so I jumped at the chance to review this. Sadly, while good, I was not amazed by the Pickwill food vacuum sealer. While it's extremely serviceable, it's missing some things that I think make it worth the price of over USD 100.The good:The instructions are mostly clear. The function is pretty intuitive: Select the type of food that you're sealing (dry vs. moist), put food in the vac bag, place bag into the machine against the stops, press down on the ends of the lid with both hands until you hear each side click into place, press the appropriate button (vac, seal, vac/seal) and wait until the LED bar stops moving. Press the release buttons on the sides of the lid, take your sealed food out of the machine, label, repeat.The unit can seal bags up to 11.8 inches (29.9 cm) wide without a problem.The sliding cutter on the top of the sealer is handy when cutting rolls of sealing bags to size for custom use. I can only assume that it's extremely sharp because I used it with the roll of bag that comes with the unit as well as a roll from a different manufacturer. The cutter sliced right through both bags with no problem while not being able to cut careless fingers. Just make sure that you have the bag material flat on the top of the machine before sliding the cutter. If you don't, the cutter will bind up and get stuck. Bad words may have been spoken before I figured this out. :DThere are three main functions: Vacuum, to just remove air such as from jars via the included accessory hose; Seal, to heat-seal any compatible bag without using any vacuum; Vac/Seal, to automatically vacuum the food to the appropriate level and heat seal the bag with one touch. You can also press and hold the "Stop/Pulse" button in order to manually control the amount of suction that is used in the bag, so that you can seal things that are a little more delicate, like shredded cheese. Once the contents are under enough vacuum for your needs, take your finger off the button, press "Seal" button, and your job is done once the indicator lights stop blinking.Also, one of the best things about this sealer is that the top and bottom come completely apart, which makes cleaning up messes extremely easy. All of the mechanics are in the top so that you can just lift it off of the bottom and clean out the drip tray. As a side note, there are spring-loaded kickstands on the bottom so that the lid is lifted slightly when the device is not in use. Great little added feature!The bad:There are less expensive vacuum sealers that are available with not many differences, feature-wise. Yes, this includes an accessory hose that can be used to seal container lids or reusable bags, neither of which are included. There's also no suggestion on where to buy things to use the hose with, or any details about the size of the end of the hose that goes on the external/reusable storage containers. The instruction pamphlet shows a container and a wine bottle stopper as being available but there is no reference as to where to get them. The instructions also recommend to use only containers and bags from the same manufacturer as the device but there is no website listed to buy them. Even after an exhaustive (I'm very good at finding obscure info online) search for the manufacturer's website, there was no joy with finding accessories from this brand.Also missing on this unit is the option to automatically create a double seal, with two lines of heat seal instead of just one. There are some less expensive units on the market that have this function, so this is kind of a significant miss in my book.Furthermore, the instructions are not consistent. At one point, thy say to wait 30 seconds between uses to prevent the unit from overheating, but at another point, the instructions say to wait at least 1 minute between uses. Which is the correct use?Finally, there is no place to hold a roll of sealing bag material in order to make it easier to cut to size.Overall, this is a pretty good unit, though I wouldn't pay the asking price for it myself. There are just too many issues on this unit to warrant the price.