Special Note – I have personally switched to a chamber vac machine (Vacmaster VP230) but these are the best regular vac seal bags for the money I have ever found.

Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

For today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day we have Avid Armor Vacuum Sealer Bags.  Long ago I spent a lot of hard earned dollars to buy a Cabela’s Commercial Grade Vacuum Sealer.  The one I have is no longer even made which is why I don’t have one on TspAZ.  I tend not to recommend something unless I have personally used it.

Over the years I have tried a number of brands of bags and never have been really happy.  They have always been super expensive or low cost but absolute garbage.  The low cost bags failed to seal properly or would fail from pin holes.  The expensive ones worked but were well expensive.  Often you’d need to double bag the cheap ones, well now they are expensive.  On and on it goes.

I found the Cabela’s brand bags to be the worst of both worlds.  Better than the cheap but still flawed and as expensive as the most expensive bags out there.  Bad price to value ratio!

Eventually I found the Avid Armor Vacuum Sealer Bags.  These cost right at half the price of Cabela’s branded bags and are about twice as good on quality in my view.  These things are tough!  Now if you have a sharpe bone or something I am sure they can still pinhole but I have almost zero failures with proper use.

They have them in many sizes and in cut and make your own size rolls.  The three options that will work best for most people’s needs in my view are…

1. Qty 100 Quart Size 8×12 Inch – Cost 18 Bucks
2. 150 Bags 50 each of Three Sizes – Cost 28 Bucks
3. 11 inch by 50 foot rolls cut your own size – Cost 20 Bucks

I find those options can do 99% of anything you want to pack away.  And the price is great for top quality bags that do not fail.  Like I said what good is half price if you need two bags to do the job right.  Also this price is about half the cost of the sort of okay bags Cabela’s sells.  So they cost half and are twice as good.

On the cost the quart bags come out to 18 cents each.  You can find cheaper but not lower cost and as good in my experience.  Also if you want to use rolls, variety packs, a different size you can see everything Avid Armor makes here.

Note though that they also make their own vacuum sealers, chamber sealers and chamber seal bags.  I don’t yet know how good their equipment is and chamber seal bags WILL NOT WORK with vac sealers.  Vac seal bags have ridges inside that let air out and chamber sealers don’t need this.

This actually means while chamber sealers cost more, their long term cost is lower.  As I said I picked up the Vacmaster P230 last year and I am absolutely in love with it, but if you are using a lower cost vac sealer I just don’t think you can get better bags for the money then these.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

P.S. – Okay this is why you read my reviews, no matter what sealer or bags you use I am going to tell you how to solve a huge problem that causes failures.  Moisture that gets drawn up to the seal, then your seal is not good, so it fails.  We have all had it happen.  The solution is stupid simple and really speeds things up from a work time perspective.  It takes longer over all but you don’t do anything for most of the time.

Say you have a good day at the lake and need to bag up fish fillets into 6 bags.  Get your six bags out, leave the vac sealer on the shelf for now.  Put your fish in the bags, do wipe any moisture that gets on the inside up by the seal with a paper towel.  Now just put the bags in the freezer unsealed.  Set a timer for about 2-3 hours so you don’t forget.

By then your food will be 90% frozen, certainly the outside will be.  Set up your sealer, go get your bags out and seal them.  You will get perfect seals and no water of blood up flow to ruin the seal.  Label and return to the freezer.  Don’t you wish someone had told you that long ago?

One more tip, bag reuse.  I generally don’t trust a bag in the freezer long term with reuse, I reuse them for sous vide though on shorter cooks, say 1-4 hours, I always double bag a longer cook.  Just seal them as close to the top as reasonable and use a sharp knife to cut just below the seal.  Rinse them with hot water and store them in a separate place for sous vide use.  Your quart size bags (ones I use the most) are now about 7 cents in real cost.

Again these two tips work with any sealer or bag, but as to bags for me, now that I have found Avid Armor I have found my bag of choice.