Review: Geryon Sous Vide Vacuum Sealer

The Geryon vacuum sealer comes with a suite of great options at its price point, but is a temperamental unit with a few questionable design choices. If you’re looking for a budget workhorse this could very well be the vacuum sealer for you. Just make sure to get comfortable with its oddities, and fill out the warranty, before putting it through its paces.

Let’s get into it.

Specifications

One of the biggest benefits of the Geryon Vacuum Sealer is its universal bag system. Unlike some other vacuum sealers, the Geryon uses almost any vacuum sealable bag on the market. Just make sure that you use bags with cross-hatched markings on either side. This is manufacturer’s code for a vacuum sealable bag rather than one that will only have a simple, non-vacuumable seal.  As this is an introductory kit the Geryon comes with a number of starter options so you can get sealing right out of the gate:

• One 7.8″ x 78″ vacuum roll for the unit
• One 7.8″ x 12″ pre-cut bag
• One hose for vacuum sealing
• Moist and dry settings
• Gentle and normal mode

Although it doesn’t come with the same number of pre-cut bags as other units in this price range this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Learning how to custom cut your bags is a big part of sous vide. Use the pre-cut bag as a guide and get to experimenting!

Build Quality

The Geryon sous vide Vacuum Sealer sits comfortably in the $70-$100 range in terms of build quality. The plastic shelling is light weight, finished on one side with a high-gloss sheen. This is a nice touch considering that, in general, we found the unit to feel below-average in terms of feel.

Likewise, the buttons and controls are about what you’d expect. Changing settings come without a chime, and are instead indicated through the lighting up of a switch or a button if using the moist/dry and gentle/normal functions. The actual feel of the display is much like pressing your finger into a brick wall. There’s almost no give, likely because this unit uses a membrane to receive inputs rather than a mechanical system. In addition, as you can tell from above, the LEDs behind each button don’t light the entire panel. This is a clear marker for the Geryon’s build quality across the board.

On that note, one strange touch with this unit is with its hinge system.

Unlike some other units, which have locks, the Geryon sous vide vacuum sealer has a floating hinge. This means that you can easily separate the base from the control panel. We kind of liked this in terms of serviceability, always a bonus, but the fact that there was no lock made it seem like this was the result of design budgeting rather than careful deliberation. As for accessories, the Geryon sous vide vacuum sealer comes equipped with an accessory port and hose for vacuum sealing containers with a matching valve.

This is a handy little feature common among most vacuum sealers. In light of this, we were a little harsher on the quality here. Although the hose was serviceable its plug felt slightly loose in the socket. Even so, this had minimal impact during testing.

Function

The Geryon sous vide vacuum sealer makes about as much noise as you would expect at its price point. It’s quite a loud unit, although not quite the loudest we’ve reviewed in the past. Think a sump pump turning on, or someone vacuuming in the next room over. The good news is that sealing itself is fast and efficient with proper bag alignment.

As you can see above, we performed a double seal as recommended by both the manufacturer and experience. If you’re using a new vacuum sealer never hesitate to double seal while getting used to things. There’s nothing quite as bad as bag bursting during a long cook. With that said, the Geryon sous vide vacuum sealer is a little finickity to line up. Even so the seal performed well under pressure. Bigger problems come with the floating hinge issue mentioned under Build Quality.

Like many vacuum sealers, the seal on the bag is made using a superheated strip of conductive metal on unit’s inside lid.  However, because of the floating hinge if the unit isn’t positioned just right with its locks released there is some rocking when opening and closing the vacuum sealing chamber. Naturally, this is a potential safety issue when dealing with a hot strip of metal. It’s certainly an odd quirk to be sure.

The good news is that these build quality and safety issues come with an upside. The Geryon sports both moist and dry settings along with a “normal” and “gentle” seal. The gentle sealing method is noticeably quieter, but I’m uncertain when it would be best used. The normal setting, based on testing, does just fine with everything that we tried. You don’t want to mess around with seals, not when it comes to sous vide.

Meanwhile, the Geryon’s moist setting can be used for vacuum sealing liquids or sous vide meals with a high percentage of liquid or marinade in the bag. In our opinion this is an absolutely essential feature, and the Geryon performed well with no significant, non-user-based issues.

Stress Testing

To properly stress test the unit we tried a number of basic vacuum seals, plus one recipe. In short, the Geryon sous vide vacuum sealer is a loud little workhorse with some long-term build quality issues. A survey of reviews on amazon.com and other sites showcases that the most common issues with this unit are centered around ease-of-use. The Geryon is temperamental, but budget friendly.

We vacuum sealed soup stock, sausages and finally took a shot at lamb leg steaks (see the recipe here). All of the seals held fine during cooking, although we did end up double sealing when using the moist setting.

Overall, the lamb leg steaks turned out great – if only in need of extra mint sauce for plating. Since consistency is king when it comes to vacuum sealers, we feel fairly comfortable with recommending the Geryon sous vide vacuum sealer to new, or budget sous vide cooks. Just know that it likely won’t last in the same way as a higher end unit, and that you need to really get to know its strange design decisions before getting cooking.

In short, the Geryon isn’t quite “plug and play” enough for a full endorsement. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your time