I have been using a Cabela's brand sealer for many years, and been quite happy with it. My daughter has the same model and likes hers just as much as I like mine. However, the model we have is not longer for sale at Cabela's, so no need in discussing it. I do not know if the replacement model is worth a hoot or not.
You do indeed want good bags however. And these can get quite expensive. The Cabela's brand bags are OK, but not the best. Some do leak after sealing. So I looked elsewhere. I picked up these off of Amazon after reading the reviews:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NAEGXYG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They are quite a bit heavier than the old Cabela's bags I had. I like them a lot and will be buying them again when I run out. I used to try to skimp and save by using the continuous roll and cutting bags to the size needed for a particular job. This did not work as well as simple precut bags, so nowadays all's I use are the precuts. More convenient IMHO. I pretty much have standardized on the quart bags for my two person household. This is by far the most useful size for me. I used to think I was "wasting" material when a specific job could have used a smaller bag. But the small job difference in cost between a quart bag (wasting half of it) and a pint bag (using all of it) is really inconsequential. A penny or two. So you're not really wasting much of anything. Also note that you do indeed pay for the "name" on bags. Name brand bags cost a ton more, and I have found that they are no better, and sometimes inferior, to much cheaper no-name bags. But you have to watch out though, some no-name bags are no-name for a reasons, and it's not because they're good.
Good quality bags have one side of them with an embossed pattern. This gives little air channels so the vacuum sealer can suck all the air out. If they bags don't have this, and are totally flat on both sides, then bubbles of air can get trapped inside during the vacuum process.
One thing that I do, is double seal my bags. If liquid gets sucked up to where the heat seal is, it won't seal well. So I do a second seal about 1/4" up from the initial one. So if that 1st seal was compromised, the 2nd one holds well.
One feature that may be nice to have is adjustable vacuum level. My sealer sucks things down really tight (which is good 99% of the time). But for things like shredded cheese, it will suck things down to where your shredded cheese is compressed back into a solid lump of cheese. Since my model does not have adjustable vacuum level what I do is have it suck things down and right when it tries to start the heat sealing process, I hit "stop". Then I let the bag breath a little, still in place in the sealing unit, so the vacuum level is reduced, And then I hit "seal only" - which turns on the sealing element without the vacuum. So it's a poor man's way of doing adjustable vacuum level. But it works well doing things this way on my unit. But 99% of the time I want maximum vacuum anyway, it's just every now and then you need less.
Another trick. When you want to seal up a liquid, soup perhaps, what you do is put it in a plastic container and freeze it. Then you take the resulting chunk of frozen material out of it's temporary plastic container and put the chunk into a bag in your vacuum sealer and seal it in its pre-frozen state.
One other trick. When sealing something like a steak, which can be juicy, don't try to cram it into the minimum sized bag. A larger bag gives you more room for the juices to creep up towards the sealing area without actually making it to the sealing area to cause a bad seal. This is another case where trying to skim and save on the bag material makes things tougher for you. Another trick here, if that steak is so big that you don't have an oversized bag to fit it ... take a paper towel and fold/roll it up into an appropriate sized long thin rectangle and put it on the top edge of the steak and just seal it up with the steak. The paper towel will absorb the juices as they are being sucked up towards the sealing area and stop them before they get there.
Use your Sharpie marker to label the bags with contents and date before you put anything in them. This is much easier than trying to write on them after you have sealed something inside.
