Harvest Right Freeze Dryer Reviews

in December and didn’t expect to receive it before the New Year. it arrived 2 days after Christmas. It was well packed however the oil filter pitcher was cracked. The box was undamaged. We took pictures and called HarvestRight right away. Customer service was awesome to deal with. We did Skittles and Jolly Ranchers worked great. Strawberries and pickles for our next 2 batches. There are a lot of videos on it and they helped us with everything…from delivery inspection, setup, bread run, and what to expect on future freeze drying ventures. The pro pump is quite. The control panel is very intuitive but there are some things that you might have to look up. Putting it into candy mode is easy. Having been on the fence about a freeze dryer for many years I have to say that I am very happy with our HarvestRight purchase

I have been so excited for nearly three years, about my favorite kitchen/hobby. I can’t even begin to describe how EXCITED I was when the first Harvest Right sales rep. That I spoke to told me that they have a layaway program. I knew it would take me a while to pay it off. But never did I think it would have taken me this long between Covid and my husband getting laid off. I would literally think about how many things could be different for her house and other homes full of people we care about.

Since having my HARVEST RIGHT FREEZE DRIER medium, my first task with a coworker was to come up with a really neat Christmas gift for our entire family. Now I am currently working on a bunch of meals that I can send with my husband as he works out of state most of the year! He has loved having home-cooked meals! Because of his busy work schedule 18 hours a day six days a week, it doesn’t leave much time for grocery shopping and cooking for himself. Thanks to HARVEST RIGHT freeze dryer, I can make sure that my husband has healthy meals while he’s away.

I have to say my freezer has never been so full. My shelves are currently getting emptier and emptier as I keep finding different things to freeze dry. I’m having a blast and at this point have probably prepped enough items to go into my fridge dryer to keep that sucker running for the next month or more. Some could cause my new addiction. lol!!!! AND LOVING IT!!

Thank you, HARVEST RIGHT for making it possible for people like me who need a little extra time, to achieve such a HUGE GOAL and bring home such a great product and what I believe will be their next favorite appliance.

DMMoffett

Because of the limit of max. 500 character, I cannot write a proper review - but here we go.

Neutral: 9 months old, xl 6 tray FD

Problems:

-Screws, inside and outside, not snug, loose to point you can unscrew with bare hands

- Heating pads not heating consistently, top 2 shelves burned food, rest shelves fine, equal amount food on each shelf

-premiere pump, rusty gunk oozing out, pressure not good, cleaned, still problem, nothing solved, trying to get help for almost a week

Pluses:

-Customer service good unless get Lizbeth, she’ll cancel you ticket without reaching out to you.

Was very hesitant about this purchase due to the initial upfront cost, but after researching decided to take the jump! This is a great product that works amazing. Was able to take advantage of the holiday sale and purchase the medium size one.

Everything is great construction and very solid. Actually went and picked it up from FedEx because they were saying another week for delivery. Packaging was secure and product was undamaged.

Ran the test run as instructed and a few other batches after that. The machine worked great! There was an issue with the impulse sealer, but a phone call and a few pictures emailed and a new one was on the way! Great company and a solid product!

We purchased a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer to diversify our curriculum about food production and food preservation. Students have been able to gain knowledge and experience in Preservation, Sanitation, Maintenance and Food Production. Students have worked in their Agricultural Education classes to grow produce and then worked with Family and Consumer Science Classes to prepare these products for drying and then developing recipes to utilize different freeze dried components. This has been a great addition to both departments curricular offerings.

As a new freeze dryer user, I had a question regarding when a batch is complete, as I thought I had done something incorrectly or missed a step. I called Harvest Right support and only had to wait a few minutes before speaking to a support person. She listened to what my question was, asked me a couple questions and then assured me that I had done exactly what I was supposed. She bolstered my confidence and told me to call whenever I had a question. Having my Harvest Right freeze dryer gives me the assurance and comfort that I will be able to provide healthy meals and to have long term food storage for my family.

I purchased a Medium size Pro home model with the oil free pump. It has been running almost non-stop since setting it up. On batch 14 now. I’ve dried fresh elk, bison, and cow stew meat, steaks burger and tested some after the freeze drying. I was like is was fresh cut. What surprised me was how quickly it dehydrated and how much water it took.

We’ve also done apples, rhubarb, carrots, left over turkey, ham, and mashed potatoes with gravy. All of it was just like sitting at the Thanksgiving or Christmas table. AMAZING! We’ve rendered ground elk, freeze dried it and mixed with rendered elk lard to make pemmican bars. Now that is a wonderful roast dinner in your pocket!

Christmas eve, we were a big hit with the grand kids as I freeze dried 5 trays of skittles, and gummy worms and bears. I was most amazed with the Skittles, a big hit for adults too.

About the company and the unit. It arrived very well packed and quite easy to set up and get started. A set of extra trays a big plus to have the next batch loaded on trays and frozen. I did have one issue with blowing a fuse to the vacuum pump but tech support is great and very responsive. Fact is, the fuse is in-line in the harness on the inside of the machine. I would recommend they move that to a more operator serviceable location but was not difficult to access as is. We had a real cold snap and our furnace went out then in the space where the Freeze Dryer is located. I had a cold room warning which I ignored instead of stopping and moving things back to the freezer. It was 47 or 48 in the room which I attribute to causing more of a startup surge on the pump. In short, you can always move your batch back to the freezer and start over. If the room is too cold, stop and don’t run, not racket science.

Overall, great unit and great support. I am very glad to have selected this unit for purchase.

I have both the xl and the medium machines. The xl IMHO is much better built as it has given us no issues. The medium machine has had some issues with the pump as well as the fact the door seal has to be pulled out every batch or it will not attain vacuum. Customer service, however, has been absolutely amazing!! I am not sure why people are complaining about it honestly. They have been prompt, courteous, and eager to help. What more can you ask for? Two thumbs up for Harvest Right support. The medium machine e is far better at candies and other items that expand. The xl is better for large batch prepared foods as it doesn't have as much space between the shelves.

Cool process. Great taste in the fruits and vegetables we have done. Simple to run and I think the equipment is top quality. Just learning the ins and outs at this point but and running it every chance I get. Using up many of the things I once had in the deep freeze so as to not rely on frozen foods and deep freezes. Great taste in the eggs we dried. just like fresh. have run 45 times and its amazing what the food is like for taste. Kids love the pineapple and pars and strawberries etc. Not so much candy being eaten for treats.

I received my new Medium Pro Model Harvest Right freeze dryer last week and I am very pleased with it. I really like the 5 tray capacity and premier pump included with this newest model. I've run two batches so far with great success. The machine and vacuum pump are surprisingly very quiet. Everything has a nice build quality. The operation of the machine is straight forward and pretty much automatic. Also I am very pleased with the assistance I have received from the company. Everyone has been very helpful, courteous, and informative. Just a great company to deal with.

I wanted to get one of these for many years. I was very hesitant because of the cost. In the end, I decided to justify it because I got a raise at work and I’m on a low FODMAP diet. This allows me to travel with food that I can actually eat. I had a little hiccup with the customer service which made me wonder if customer service was talking to the technology people but in the end I got the latest software update and it’s working great. I’ve got a lot of peace of mind knowing I can control my food when I travel and accumulate food storage.

Great food preservation appliance and worth every penny spent on it. I purchased it after doing a lot of research on food preservation and found that retaining 97+% of nutritional value far outweighed the cost as compared to canning and dehydrating.

Great for camping and hiking because 50-95% of the weight of food is water.

The long term benefits beat inflation and are great for prepping.

For the most part, the customer service and cost of accessories is really good. I was a little disappointed that the newer freeze dryer added an extra tray but the cost to upgrade the rack to a 5 tray is a little spendy. I have two units so it will be a while before I can upgrade both of them.

Overall great appliance at the cost compared to buying FD food at retail. Cost recovery is about 6-8 months depending on usage.

We bough our Large Freeze dryer in 2020 and have been using it just about everything except for herbs. As far as ease of use is quite easy to use. I would recommend either to get a second set of trays and/or tray covers from harvest right. The reason for the cover are three reasons: one they can be used as trays themselves, cover your food while you pre-freeze, and it makes it that much easier to stack while either freezing or preparing each tray. Speaking of tray stackers “meh” I made my own out of wire and bought a set but ever since we got the covers we no longer use them, not to mention they’re easily lost. We done: beets, bananas, apples, strawberries, blueberries, yogurt, cream cheese bits, carrots, onions, garlic, ginger, zucchini, cooked chicken, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, potatoes mashed and shredded, corn, and more.

FYI on the sizes Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large.

Both small and medium can run off a regular plug 15 amp, while the large and extra large require a dedicated 20 amp plug.

Other things to take into account is you will want to have a room or area for it to run in. This room also needs to be cooled in summer months because it creates a lot of heat in the freezing process. If you can’t cool it then have/make it vent-able area and use fans to push the heat away from it. Join a FB group and ask questions or look up the topics they’re covered.

We have had several problems one time we had to ship it back to HR to get it checked out. I very DIY kind a guy and they provide good how to check this or that and while under warranty they have you covered. After they start charging for help but that’s to be expected.

HR has just upgraded their use units too! They now do more and have better parts. Also made it easier to work on. They have removable panels to get to different parts. They also have higher quality parts. I want to say they have been listening to and watching their customers base. I’m still waiting for a Bluetooth or WiFi enabled units to come out but they’re more then likely working on it.

Overall I would recommend it to anyone that has the money and desire to get one.

We chose the SMALL dryer. It is big enough for 2 people. I have only had my unit in use for about 10 days. I have made frozen eggs so far. We have done 80 eggs so far. We had an issue with set up it was operator error, we fixed the problem then called HarvestRight to ask questions about what we experienced and how we fixed it.

Tech talked my husband

through what we saw and said he fixed it properly. Company is easy to talk to and have always answered our questions.

So far I love my unit. Would recommend HarvestRight to anyone looking for long term food storage.

Very pleased with our purchase of the large Harvest Right Home Pro. They delivered quickly with a no stress or mess unload! Normz at Customer Service was awesome answering all our questions and was very helpful when we thought we didn't receive the power cord (we did, it was with our hose). Setup was easy using the owner's manual and so is operation. Highly recommend purchasing this wonderful machine to preserve your garden harvest, proteins, herbs, etc.

After having spent a few months researching Freeze Dryers and what they can do for me I finally decided to bite the bullet and order one. It wasn’t an easy decision because frankly they aren’t cheap. But after weighing the benefits vs the cost, we bought a medium Harvest Right freeze dryer. It has five trays (upgraded from 4 trays on older models) and also came with a premier oil pump (also upgraded from previous models). We’ve had it now for just over a month and love it.

We’ve put up several batches of food and even a few batches of freeze dried candies. With turkeys and hams on sale over the holidays we bought a few of each and so far freeze dried 2 turkeys and 3 hams. We also freeze dried 3 rotisserie chickens from Sams club (all in one batch) . When these meats are rehydrated they taste exactly like they just came out of the oven. To me, that’s the amazing thing about freeze drying… it does nothing to affect the flavor. Even raw veggies rehydrated taste just like you picked them. So we’re basically locking in 2023 prices on everything we’re freeze drying and can enjoy these foods out to 20 or 25 years. Imagine if you bought food in 1999 and were eating it now how much money you’d be saving. Plus… this is a prepping tool for sure. We hope that grocery stores will always be here with fully stocked shelves but you just can’t be sure they will be with all the stuff going on in the world today.

There are tons of videos online showing you how to get the most out of your freeze dryer by giving you tips and tricks for its operation and also giving you recipes and ideas for freeze drying stuff.

And finally, the staff at Harvest Right are super friendly and helpful. Of course you’d expect the sales staff to be but when I called tech support for set up questions they were great to talk to.

Overall, I’m super happy with this investment and love knowing I’m getting it back with every load of food I freeze dry.

My experience was with Tech Support in replacing a damaged thermal link. It took a little longer than I would have liked, but the tech person was professional and helpful.

I have been using my freeze-dryer for about seven years now and have had very good success, storing 25 17-gallon totes full of FD mylar bags of food.

Remember that HarvestRight is now supporting a decade of different models of machines which are constantly being upgraded and improved. The process itself is complicated and involved. There are a lot of details to keep track of!

A year ago I had a very involved problem, and the tech person worked with me for several weeks, trying numerous approaches before finally fixing the problem.

Overall I am very pleased with the help I get from HR.

Beautifully designed appliance and easy to use. The unit was very well packaged and shipped on time. I am excited that I will be able to harvest every last apple from my apple trees and enjoy them in the alternate bearing years. This machine will also help me beat inflation at the grocery store and I'm lovin' that. The money spent on this appliance will go straight to my bottom line, will feed my family when things get tough, and will increase our nutrition over home canned produce. My only regret is that I didn't purchase it sooner.

I am giving these guys a solid 4 stars out of 5. I have had a few negative experiences but lots of positive ones. Let me explain. Firstly the tech support is fantastic, even if you are outside their warranty they will give you assistance. They are members of the BBB and they care about their product.

The bad news is that these freeze driers are not simple machines and have to be respected. If you dont set it up properly and keep it clean and oiled you will run into trouble.

I bought 2 freeze drying units from Harvest Right just over a year ago. The customer service is excellent. The first unit has worked great without any issues. The second unit is out of commission and has been for some time. About 6 months into having the freeze dryers, one of them quit working completely. Just a week prior it ran a batch just fine. When I tried to run it, the machine wouldn't get colder than room temperature. The tech support had me send them some files from the machine, and they decided the compressor, or something like that, was out. I sent it back under warranty (thank goodness), and they "fixed it". When I got the machine back a few weeks later, I plugged it in, turned it on for about an hour, saw it was getting cold, and I thought they had truly restored the freeze dryer to proper working order, so I turned it off and covered it until winter.

Fast forward to about a week ago. I found a crazy good deal on bananas and onions. The machines had sat in my kitchen for about 6 months without use due to life being crazy busy, and summer was super-hot. Winter is a great time to freeze dry because the units heat up the house quite a bit, so I like to mainly freeze dry in the cold months. Well, to my dismay, the unit they had "Fixed" under warranty, would only get down to 9 degrees, when it has to get colder than -10 degrees to process the food. I let the super awesome customer support people know, and they informed me it was out of warranty, and I would have to pay shipping and for parts and service. I tried to explain how if I had ran a batch as soon as I got the freeze dryer back from them 6 months ago, I would've discovered it was not truly fixed, it would've been under warranty, and they should've taken it back under warranty to fix it. I realize my trusting nature was at fault; I should've ran a batch all the way to verity it had been fixed instead of being excited to see after an hour it still wasn't at room temperature, then turning it off because it seemed to be working.

I was informed they would do free parts and labor, probably because they felt bad for me. I truly think they have great customer service representatives, but now I have to pay the $357.24 to round-trip ship it to them.

All- in-all, I am happy with the ability to freeze dry at home. It is cheaper after like 400 batches to put up food bought in bulk at home, than to buy it freeze dried in the can. If my troublesome freeze drier worked like my other one, or they showed me a little more mercy at my situation since I feel we're both at fault, they'd have a solid 5-stars.