[ag-before-rating]Review Summary:
The Waste King L-3300 is one of the best value 3/4 HP garbage disposals your money can buy. With a 10 year warranty, stainless steel guts and powerful performance, this should give you many happy years of continuous feed garbage disposal.
Pros: Strong performance, removable splash guard, easy installation, great value, big warranty
Cons: Small feed opening, loud on startup
[/ag-before-rating]
Waste King L-3300 Review
Waste King is known for the excellent value their products bring to the market, and the L-3300 is another solid entry in their lineup. This is a powerful 3/4 HP continuous feed unit that spins up to 2,700RPM, so keep your hands safely out of it.
The price is right, the specs look good, it’s stainless steel and the warranty blows most other garbage disposals on the market out of the water. Let’s see what this unit has to offer and if it’s a good one to recommend.
Installation
This is quite a bulky unit, almost an inch taller than the 1/2HP L-2600 model, while also adding an inch extra outside bulk and a few pounds to the weight. The extra weight and size can make for a tricky installation under tight sinks.
Fortunately, the EZ sink mount system found on this and many other Waste King models will help ease the installation pain (if you know the trick).
There are a few good videos on Youtube showing how this is done, but the trick is basically not to push the cushion mount too far up the sink flange: it should only slip over the lip of the flange. That way the mount ring can descend far enough to accommodate the disposal unit.
It actually does say that in the manual, but who reads those things, right? 😉
As always, the ease of installation will also depend on your current sink setup. You may need extra piping in certain cases.
As is customary with Waste King disposals, you get a 36-inch electric cord with standard 3-prong plug attached. So, if you don’t have a wall outlet, the easiest would be to install one or get an electrician to install one. Alternatively you can remove the plug and hard-wire it, but using the plug is probably the better option.
So, it’s a pretty standard Waste King EZ mount installation. No big deal.
The Waste King L-3300 in action
One of the pet peeves many people have with Waste King units is the noise they make when they start spinning. The L-3300 is no different. This is normal for the brand and, really, is not as big a deal as some people would make it. Once you’re used to it you’ll learn to ignore it.
Once it’s running, however, the Waste King L-3300 is an appreciably quiet unit. The sound insulation on this is well executed and while not whisper quiet, it’s pretty good for such a powerful piece of equipment going at 2,700 RPM.
Now, the feeding hole is quite small and some people complain that they can’t get their hands in there to remove unwanted objects. Well, first of all, you shouldn’t be putting your hands in there. At all. Ever.
Secondly, the feed hole is on the small side but it doesn’t detract from performance, although it does make feeding a little more cumbersome.
This is a powerful, thorough workhorse and even traditionally tricky items like lemon peels doesn’t pose a problem for the L-3300.
Bottom Line: As far as 3/4 HP garbage disposals go, the Waste King Legend Series L-3300 is a great buy. It is powerful, well built with a stainless steel grinding chamber and it comes with a 10 year in-home warranty and a lifetime corrosion warranty. All this for under $100 if you get a good deal online? I think that’s an easy recommendation to make.
I also calculated the averages of online reviews for this unit at major stores, and 95% of people either review it positively or would recommend it to a friend.