When a product advertises that you can assemble it in 10 minutes, should you take their word for it? Our wrench-wielding colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports decided to test Hamilton Beach’s claim that a customer could assemble one of their gas grills in 10 minutes, equipped with only a screwdriver, but with the help of a friend. Their verdict? The grill doesn’t take as long to assemble as similar products, but it takes more than 10 minutes.
Right now, approximately 57% of you are quoting from this clip from The Simpsons, so let’s get that out of the way:
Consumer Reports bought two grills, then put together a test panel consisting of one employee who had never assembled a grill before (Dan DiClerico), and one assembles about 20 every year for the magazine’s tests (Rich Handel). That sounds fair, right?
Hamilton Beach’s clock starts after the assembler unpacks the parts, reads the manual, and watches a short instructional video. Those preliminaries took Dan 14 minutes, and took Rich 10 minutes. Their “official” times didn’t add up: the actual assembly took Dan 30 minutes, and it took Rich 18 minutes.
The same team assembled a similar size and type of gas grill from Walmart, which took Dan 78 minutes, and took Rich 44 minutes. Final verdict: while the grill took more than 10 minutes to put together, it took them less than half as long to assemble it as a similar grill. Anything that gets you to your burgers faster is good, right?
Hamilton Beach, for their part, maintains that the 10-minute figure is fair and accurate. In a statement, the company explained, in part: “We stand by the claim that the Hamilton Beach Quick Assembly Grill can be assembled in 10 minutes or less with a friend and a screwdriver, after unpacking and reading the instruction manual.”
If you’ve found this post because it took you at least three times that long to put your model 84341 grill together, we hope that the Consumer Reports test made you feel better.
Hamilton Beach Quick Assembly Grill Not as Quick as Company Says [Consumer Reports]
