Harvest Right Freeze Dryer Reviews

We couldn’t be happier with our Harvest Right. It did take a few rounds with customer service and the tech team initially to find the simplest issue with a vacuum leak in a hose connection that needed a bit more tweaking.

Everyone at HR was great to work with. We’ve done many different fruits, berries, vegetables and meals with absolutely no disappointments. Sure makes camping and backpacking easy and light ...and without comprise of deliciousness.

We bought a large Harvest Right freeze dryer a few weeks ago, and we're very pleased. So far, we have run nine batches of food and the results are amazing. Freeze dried strawberries are crunchy little explosions of flavor! Reconstituted broccoli has great taste and texture!

Before we brought it home, we watched tons of videos on YouTube and followed a FB channel called 'Retired By 40'. Once we got it, we read the instructions thoroughly and planned our space for it. Take time to learn and plan. Expect mistakes. Both the machine and the learning process are investments. Once you have some experience, stuff gets easier. The unit does almost everything automatically during the FD process, but is by no means a mere toaster oven.

Expect your costs to go beyond the machine itself. The large requires a dedicated electrical circuit, so you may need an electrician to install that. If you plan to store your FD food long term, you will need a steady supply of high quality mylar bags and O2 absorbers. We ended up buying a large upright freezer, two heavy duty prep tables and installed a sink for our FD area. The unit weighs almost 200 lbs, so get a good table for it.

We did have a couple of minor issues. Our large FD came with medium trays and the impulse sealer was defective. Customer service was awesome, and they rectified both situations quickly. The large trays came after a couple of weeks and we got to keep the medium trays. They did require that I send them a video of how the sealer did not work, but did not require that I send it back to them.

We are looking forward to buying another Harvest Right FD to increase our output.

We love BOTH of our Harvest Right freeze dryers. We buy deals on bulk food and freeze drying just makes sense. Establish a relationship with your meat market manager and sometimes they may have product about to go out of date but glad to sell below cost rather than dump.

While great for long term storage, it’s great to be able to grab a bag, rehydrate and have a quick meal.

Review for harvest right freeze dryer. I would start this review by letting you guys know that I have used my harvest right for about 40 batches or so enough to change the oil once and then some more. So when I first got my freeze dryer it worked exactly as it should. This is of course an expensive unit but for what it can do it’s very much worth the cost for the way I can preserve food for such a long time really can’t be beat.

Because I have a small place. I bought the smallest of all three of the units. I very much appreciate that for no extra cost they are now including the premier Air pump with the units which is fantastic. This air pump does need oil changes but it only needs them every 20 to 30 batches which is awesome it’s relatively quiet and oil changes are super easy before this used to be a $700 upgrade and now it comes with it which is absolutely fantastic. So with my particular unit. Not long after my first oil change three things went wrong and I will explain.

So my touchscreen stopped working properly and I was only able to touch it in the center of the screen on the sides it would not recognize my fingers presents. And the part where the USB plugs in on the machine did not work.

So I called customer service and they first tried giving me a software update through email I had to put it on a thumb drive but at the time I didn’t know the thumb drive plug didn’t work so what ended up happening was harvest right sent me the board where you would put in a thumb drive for software updates and they also sent a new touchscreen.

Which I ended up replacing myself which for me was OK because if you send your freeze dryer out to get repaired it takes like three weeks and I got the part within a week. And because in my case I was dropping screws where I wasn’t supposed to I had to

take all the sides front and back off to get to them and because I’ve never done something like this before it took me probably six hours to do it but I will definitely be faster now. Now of course I think that this particular fix might be a little much for the average consumer so I told customer service of harvest right that I thought that I thought it would be a little much for the average consumer and I guess I was not the only person to think that.

I also mentioned to harvest right that it would be helpful if they updated their instructional videos on how to replace parts because some of the videos are from older units and mine is newer and is a little different but between looking at things and figuring them out and the videos I was able to do it however I viewed replacing the parts myself as a challenge and I was happy to take it on now I know more about my freeze dryer.

After replacing the board and screen I did a test function of the heat trays but unfortunately I did not feel them to see if they were hot I just looked at the screen and as far as the machine was concerned they were working but when I did a test batch with food i found out I had something called a mid batch heater failure.

So after that I took my food out put it back in the freezer and then I did the function test again and I felt to see if the heat trays got warm after 15 minutes and they did not at all so I was like OK that makes sense.

so I called harvest right again. And the first thing they had me do was check the wire connections so I took them out and put them back in and checked all the ones associated with The heat trays which they explain to me in an email.

After taking them out and putting them back in it appears that it is working again in the test functions I turned on the heat trays and they all heat it up so now I’m doing a test Batch with food. And if this works with this batch of food in the next batch I’m going to consider it fixed and I will call harvest right with an update.

One other thing I’ve been doing is I’ve been very good about keeping them updated on my progress the one lady told me that a lot of times they send out parts to people to fix things and they never hear back and then they wonder harvest right is interested in the conclusion as to how the customers made out.

Their customer service has been great. I actually like that they have me troubleshoot things first because if I can fix something myself that’s awesome. I totally understand why if they could they would send parts so the person could fix it as these units are very big and heavy and probably difficult to ship and if the customer can do it themselves they will get their machine up and working faster.

I am very pleased with the Harvest Right Medium freeze dryer. I did have to call customer service to inquire about some items that I did not receive. They told me, due to high demand some items were back ordered. They insured me that I would receive the items within a couple weeks. Within 5 days I received two of the items that were back ordered. After 7 days I called them again on another issue and to find out if the rest of the items I ordered were in and Parker Kimbel told me that it was going to be shipped out on the same day. As far as I am concerned Harvest Right is doing a great job on customer relations. Thanks To all of the Harvest Right team for standing behind their product and giving me an awesome experience.

P.S. This type of service is hard to come by these days.

Thanks again.

George.

I am very pleased with our purchase

the old saying you get what you pay for,

In this case this is not true...

the quality of the product

far surpasses the cost of the machine.

In addition to having an outstanding product

I have had nothing but excellent customer service.

Being a new customer, I had some questions, which were all answered professionally and in a manner that I felt comfortable to continue to use the Harvest Right

Why did I wait so long to buy one

We are fairly new to freeze-drying and have run approximately 25 batches in our medium sized Harvest Right freeze dryer.

At first, there was a bit of a learning curve to understanding the process, but their customer service is outstanding. Most questions have been immediately answered on the phone; and those questions that needed a bit of research were answered in a couple of days after making an appointment.

We have freeze-dried several different foods such as soups, stews, pasta dishes, various fruits, and even made colorful salt water taffy balls. And now we have a good idea of how long the foods take to freeze and dry. We have learned also from videos people have contributed on the internet.

So far the experience with Harvest Right has been great. We are having fun and augmenting our regular cook meals with freeze-dried.

• Food is expensive and important to each of us.

• Safe long term food storage is important to me.

• I bought a large Harvestright food dryer November 2018 and have been using it since then.

• An email notifying me of an urgent software update was sent June 21, 2022, so I installed it.

• The update caused freezing and vacuum issues that prevented the unit from completing cycles.

• I sent a service ticket request hoping for a quick response since it is garden season.

• It is over three years since I purchased the unit, but Harvestright stood behind their product and sent me an update file that has repaired the unit and I have been able to complete two loads of products.

• THANKS