Harvest Right Freeze Dryer Reviews

Spent over $4k buying on a new small freeze dryer with the upgraded oil-free pump. Received the machine no problem. Shipping and packaging were excellent. After running a few batches I was convinced the machine was not running properly. Contacted tech support, took 7 days to get a reply. Tech support told me to download a new update, installed new update and it fixed the problem. Seems to me when I'm spending that kind of money the programming would already be up to par. Cost me $200 in food I had to throw out because of their programming bug. Tech support was great. Fact that I had to use it within 2 weeks of owning the machine is B.S.

We love our harvest right freeze dryer and customer service has been excellent to work with as well! We would absolutely recommend it for your food preservation needs!!!

I received my medium freeze dryer under a year ago and it has worked amazing with no issues, until last week. I went onto the harvest right website, logged a ticket. I had a phone call back 2 days later. The technician walked me though steps and emailed all instructions. It was so straight forward and after a simple reset the machine is up and running again. Great customer service! The freeze dryer works wonders. It’s So nice to have another option to store food long and short term.

I like the product. I like that the people are friendly and helpful. But the communication is not the best. I didn't sign in with my account for my order, so I can't track it. I was not told my item was back ordered until 3 weeks after the order.

You know I've seen a lot of negative comments on harvest right, and I have to say I have never had any customer service rep. Be ignorant or mean to me. Maybe it's the way you talk to them. I just had a issue and Lizbeth was great to work with and help solve my problem. So I stand behind them, even a new car has problems we all need to be a little nicer.

Fantastic investment!

I'm absolutely in love with this machine. Between the abundance of YouTube videos that provide inspiration to the numerous social media outlets that offer personal experiences to help guide the process. And then, there is the fantastic Harvest Right customer support staff. There hasn't been an issue that they haven't known what to do. They truly care about ensuring your experience both with the Harvest Right team and (more importantly) the investment of a freeze dryer is positive.

THE FIRST RUN:

Once I’d assembled everything (corrected the alignment of the shelving, screwed in the hose, plugged everything in) it was time to do the ever-popular “bread run”. This is where I ran into my first problem.

“But you gave it 5 stars! What’s up with that?”

Oh, fret not, gentle reader. It turns out I needed to perform a procedure known as de-gassing. The unit was, in fact, so new… so fresh off the line… so young and innocent that the glue used in some of the components inside the chamber had not fully cured. This resulted in an inability to achieve a proper vacuum. Remember that Harvest Right customer support? We chatted on the phone a few times, diagnosed the issue, and since then, the machine has been spinning like a top!

HOW I USE IT

Since purchasing the machine, I’ll buy meat that is discounted at the store then freeze it until I can cook it up and place it onto trays. I’ll do the same with broth and stock! Turning food that would be tossed out the next day into something I can keep for 25 years or so. I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. What you can expect from a reconstituted strawberry compared to reconstituted pulled pork.

“What does a normal freeze-drying session look like for you?”

First, I’ll do a little research. I’ve started to get more and more fond of MRE-style meals. Grab n’ go meals. I recently just cooked up and freeze-dried a bunch of fajitas (meat and veggies). After going through the freeze dryer, a 10oz portion turned into 2oz! I will and have freeze-dried single items. In that same session with the fajitas, I had a ton of garden bell peppers that went into two other trays. These will find their way into stews and other recipes.

But back to your question. Yes, I’ll do my research. What do I want to freeze dry? What do I have in the fridge that is looking like it will have to be tossed in a week? What has the garden been doing? And what do I think will just plain be fun?

I then prep my food. If it is a whole meal like arroz con pollo or cajun chicken pasta, I’m cooking that up! If it’s a veggie, I’m checking to see if I need to blanch it (like green beans or corn). Then I’m laying the items on the trays. The machine will take 15 minutes to begin cooling the chamber.

PRO TIPS

For me, I have found a good SCALE is invaluable. Something that you can set your tray on and see a readout. Just because the FDer says it’s done doesn’t mean it’s done. It’s a great machine, but it doesn’t have to eat the food, so make sure you’re double-checking. A scale can help keep a record of how much a tray weighs, continue the freeze-drying process for a few hours, and see if that number has changed. If it remains consistent, there is a great chance that it is ready to be packed away. A thermal camera (something like a FLIR One Pro) is great for finding those spots that are still frozen. (Frozen = moisture.)

KEEP A LOG! Note when you freeze-dried an item. The weight going onto the trays. The weight coming off the trays. Do the math that tells you to add 8oz of water when you rehydrate your fajitas and not just 3oz or 5 cups! Most of this is simple math. There are lots of support channels that offer spreadsheets and logbook templates to help you with the process.

Final thoughts I tell people about purchasing the Harvest Right freeze dryer:

It is an appliance. Most appliances in your house are expensive. When you spend $20 at the store for ingredients to make dinner, that meal probably costs ~$20. You don’t factor in the $600-$800 oven in that recipe. Similar to a Freeze Dryer. The barrier to entry is steep, but if you care about food security, minimizing food waste (saving those leftovers), preserving the nutritional value of your food, have an eye for deals at the grocery store, this is a great investment.

Recently, there was a family at my church who was dealing with some medical issues that made it very difficult to put food on the table. So people would bring dishes, casseroles and pastas and things. Knowing that it was just the two of them, I was afraid their fridge was probably overflowing with food at that point. So, I cooked up two dishes, freeze-dried them, and took it over. The idea was, “Hey you can eat it now or in 25 years. Just add water. Follow the instructions. Enjoy!”

Point is: This machine can be a blessing if you use it correctly.

just bought a new Harvest Right small PRO Freeze Dryer. I received it (no issues with that), but have only done the bread test as of yet (and not issues with that either). I did called support to make sure that I had the newest software/firmware on my freeze dryer. The Harvest Right rep I dealt with was Grace, who was very friendly and responsive to my questions. She answered all of my questions, and explained about some other things that were relevant to my question. I would highly recommend Harvest Right’s support – especially Grace!

We purchased a medium Harvest Right freeze dryer and love it! We have freeze dried fruits including pineapples which were awesome, apples and bananas. We also did several varieties of vegetables including green beans which make a great crunchy snack! We are currently freeze drying our massive amount of chicken eggs!

It is an expensive product but we felt it was a great addition to our homestead. It is another way to preserve an abundance of food for long term storage.

We purchased our freeze dryer a year ago and use it often. But just recently had an issue with the system. We called the customer support and spoke with Deserae. She walked us through the updating of our software and we communicated several times via email. Then she called to make sure everything was good!! We received excellent customer service.

We highly recommend the freeze dryer to our friends and anyone who asks our opinion of the product.

It took over 6 months to receive my freeze dryer, but I did know this when I bought it. Thankfully, it had no shipping damage when it arrived. However, in the first load, I was already having issues. It took hours and hours of work to try to figure out why, and it turned out to be the pump. A brand new pump. HOW?! I had an oil less pump (an older version than what they make now) at the time. They sent me a new one and some Mylar bags for “my trouble.” Not exactly a fair trade. I began having more issues a year later, but I had not been using my machine much during that time. It turned out to be the pump again (the replacement pump they sent me), and it was out of the year warranty. I now have to buy a new pump. It is very frustrating to spend thousands on a machine that ends up having so many issues. I’ve spent countless hours trying to fix the problems that should not even be issues seeing as our machine has so few hours on it. We may sell it and buy another brand. The best they could do was give me 15% off a pump to replace it. Very disappointed. In terms of the performance, when it did work, it took so much longer than I anticipated to dry anything. Like 2-3 days at best.

Spent almost $5,000 on this worthless machine, it won't hold vacuum and customer service won't provide a new hose to TRY (no guaranty it will fix it) unless I pay for it??? They say I can solve the problem by simply buying a new machine. Yeah, waste another $5,000! Horrible company doesn't repair what they sell nor stand behind their products.

Harvest Right is an amazing company with great prices and supplies. I called customer service with a question and they were incredibly informative and helpful.

Everything about the machine and customer service has been great. Was packaged really well. After a firmware update the machine runs perfectly!

The customer service is seriously lacking, was warned about it before purchase but wished I'd of listened.

Finally got my own Harvest Right Large Freeze Dryer.

The experience has been easy & fun, from set up to use and cleaning and care. Harvest Right staff have been very helpful & friendly. The freeze dryer works great on fruits & veggies. Looking forward to trying meals, raw meat, snacks, just about anything. Should have bought one years ago.

When I got the dryer home, it came with s wrong power cable and no drain hose. I called and was told they would ship out the proper and and hose within a couple of days. Three calls over the next six days indicated they still had not mailed the items. So I made a trip #1 to their facility to get the proper items. When I got the dryer going it would not function properly. I called and was told to get a thumb drive and they would send instructions on what to do and they set up and appointment for a week later to talk with a technician. That is not my job so I decided to return the item for repair. I called and was told I could return it on Saturday during business hours. So I mad trip #2 on Saturday only to be told they didn't have the warehouse open on Saturdays. So I took the item back , trip #3, the next week and was told it would take about 3 days to repair. Five days later I Went in and then was told it was ready. It was a software glitch. It now works wonderful and I am happy. However, the oil filter comes with no instructions as to when, what and where to get new filter. While the product is good, the lack of communications is bad. Even this review takes me to 5 locations in order to receive a promised credit.

I have been freeze drying my own food for almost eight years now, and have just upgraded from a medium to a new LARGE freeze dryer. I love what Harvest Right has allowed me to accomplish. Being strongly independent, I could not stand by and NOT somehow prepare for any kind of disaster, or economic Hardship (like my upcoming retirement) and not have food on hand.

For eight years, the Harvest Right freeze dryers have proven themselves to me over and over. The machines are top notch, and while I can not speak to the nature of these newer models (just received) I can state honestly, my old medium NEVER gave me a moment’s trouble. While there are other dryers in the field now, I would never stray from Harvest Right as THEY created this home freeze dryer market from nothing.

These machines will pay for themselves quickly by calculating the savings between purchasing commercial freeze dried foods and home freeze dried. Noteable, I saved roughly 140 dollars on freeze dried hamburger patties alone. If you have an independent streak, If you have a prepper’s heart, and ESPECIALLY if you are already purchasing commercially freeze dried foods, do yourself a favor and purchase a Harvest Right. I did, twice now, and have never regretted my decision…not even once.

We've owned our FD a couple of years now and are still learning all the ways we can use it. We love it! It's a great way to preserve vegetables from our garden. It still takes work when everything comes in at the same time, but so nice to have veggies on hand to make things throughout the year. My latest craze is making my green powder from the abundance of greens that grow. I love to add it to smoothies, soups, and other recipes for an extra green boost.

Customer Service has always been very helpful and responsive as well for the few times I've called.

Ordered the large unit and was excited they had increased the trays and I was sent the newest version. Set it up and let it settle for 24 hours. Experienced an error message when first starting the unit up. Submitted a help request and was assigned to Gavin Fudge so we could fix the problem. After emails back and forth he gave me instructions on how to access the control panel. A wire connection was not connected tightly and has fell off during shipment. Reconnected loose wire and unit works great. He checked back with me after the first initial run to see if all was still going well.

We got our freeze-dryer about 3 years ago now. At first, I was frustrated because we had gotten one that would work ok on the primary tests but would not work for the real work. 6 months of our first year our machine was in their shop. Because of their dedication to making it work, we have not had an issue since. They truly took care of us.

Now three years and almost literally tons of food later, we are exceptionally happy with our large dryer. They have worked hard to update the software to make the machine run more efficiently and more user-friendly. The candy setting was a brilliant addition. I do recommend to anyone buying one of these to get a large (or even extra large if you can) because once you see what you can save and taste the garden fresh flavor in January, you will be complaining that the large is not large enough.

I purchased a new XL freeze dryer that had no more than 15 batches ran through it.

Initially the sales team was great. Nathan in particular has been very helpful. Not only was Nathan a good sales guy, but he also was very helpful when it came to sending my unit back for repairs.

The tech department was not so helpful, the people working in the department seemed to be overworked. When I was talking to the lady helping me she said she had to get off the phone to get to her next appointment. Email communication seemed very slow. My freeze dryer went down on the 07/24, it is now 08/14, it is supposed to get picked up on the 15th. So don't get in hurry, this is a long process that hopefully they can improve on.

When I ran into a problem with my unit, I contacted Harvest Right and was forwarded to someone in their tech department who did not speak great english. They set me up an appointment to talk to a tech in Utah. After talking to the Utah tech they required I send audio of my compressor not running right, and I was sent an email with instructions of how to download the files from the freeze dryer and send them back. This diagnostic step was a several day ordeal and felt like hoops to jump through to prove my freeze dryer was broken before we could get on the road to repairing it. I wanted a tech to come out and assess the unit, because the XL freeze dryer is very heavy and requires two strong men to lift it. At the time I was never informed they had their own techs in my area, only that if I used my tech they would only cover up to $200 of the service charge. With this information it seemed like my only option was to ship the freeze dryer back to be repaired. Which I was told normal repair time takes 2-3 weeks, but that it could possibly be fast tracked.

Harvest Right sent back packaging with no instructions showing you how to package the unit. It was just a box with some foam and straps. I had to scour the internet for a tutorial on how to pack the freeze dryer for shipping. The tutorial was helpful, but Harvest Right failed to send the bag (which was shown in the tutorial) that protects the unit from scratches during shipment.

After all this, I then received a newsletter email stating Harvest Right has over 6,000 techs throughout the country and would have one in my area. It would have been helpful if they began this process with "we can send one of our techs out".

At this point my freeze dryer is waiting to be shipped back to Harvest Right. I will update this review once repairs are completed from Harvest Right.

I do believe Harvest Right has a good product, even if my freeze dryer did break down rather quickly. I will likely be purchasing more units if we can get some of these details worked out. If all Harvest Right personal cared as much as Nathan they would only have five star reviews. So stay tuned for the sequel of this saga I intend to post.