Meykers Burger Press vs Cuisinart Adjustable Patty Maker: Which One Is Worth Buying?

Here is the short answer. If you need a burger press today and you want it to work well without overthinking it, buy the Meykers. It makes a clean, uniform patty, it comes with 150 wax papers so you are ready to press on day one, and it costs less than a bag of buns at some grocery stores. The Cuisinart 3-in-1 Adjustable Patty Maker is a real piece of equipment, but the premium you pay for adjustable patty weight and three size settings is hard to justify once you actually use both side by side.

I have been pressing burgers in my West Texas backyard for going on 25 years, first over a beat-up charcoal kettle my dad handed down to me and now on a gas grill I refuse to retire because it still runs hot and even. I have formed patties by hand, used a wide-mouth mason jar lid (do not do this), and eventually graduated to actual burger presses. The Meykers and the Cuisinart are the two presses most people consider when they start shopping. I have pressed more patties than I care to count with each of them. Here is everything I know.

	Meykers Burger Press	Cuisinart Patty Maker
Material	BPA-free plastic body with smooth non-stick surface	Plastic body with removable die-cast aluminum insert
Patty Styles / Sizes	One size: standard 4.25-inch diameter patty	Three sizes: 3.5, 4.5, and 5-inch diameter patties
Non-Stick Surface	Smooth injection-molded plastic, naturally low-stick when used with wax paper	Coated aluminum insert, requires careful hand-washing to preserve coating
Included Patty Papers	150 wax papers included in the box	No papers included; must buy separately
Cleanup	Rinse under warm water, no disassembly needed	Must remove aluminum insert, wash separately, dry thoroughly to prevent spotting
Current Price Range	Under $10 (one of the lowest-priced presses available)	Roughly 3-4x the Meykers price
Durability Over Time	Solid after dozens of uses; no cracking at the hinge with normal use	Insert fits precisely when new; slight loosening noted after extended use by multiple reviewers
Weight / Portability	Light, easy to toss in a bag for cookouts away from home	Heavier due to aluminum insert; stays on the counter
Best For	Weekend cookouts, families, first-time patty press buyers	Cooks who want adjustable patty sizes for sliders through thick pub burgers

Where the Meykers Wins

The single biggest advantage of the Meykers is that it comes ready to use. Open the box and there are 150 wax patty papers sitting right there. That matters more than it sounds. When you are prepping for a cookout for a dozen people on a Saturday morning, the last thing you want is to discover your press sticks to the meat because you forgot to order papers. The Meykers anticipates that problem and eliminates it on day one. The Cuisinart gives you no papers at all, and until you buy a separate pack, you are either pressing bare (which causes sticking) or cutting squares out of parchment roll and feeling vaguely annoyed about the whole thing.

Cleanup is faster too. The Meykers is one smooth plastic piece with a simple hinge. Rinse it under warm water, wipe it dry, and you are done in under thirty seconds. The Cuisinart's removable aluminum insert is precisely machined, which means food and fat work their way into the seam where the insert meets the body. You have to pull it apart, scrub it, dry it well, and reassemble. After a cookout when I already have a grill to clean and a sink full of platters and a cutting board that smells like onion, that extra disassembly step gets old very fast. For a tool this simple, cleanup should not be a three-step process.

The price difference is real and significant. Buying the Meykers and a second pack of 150 replacement papers still costs noticeably less than the Cuisinart alone. For most backyard cooks pressing standard quarter-pound or third-pound patties for a family, the one size that Meykers offers covers everything they actually cook. You do not need three diameter settings to feed a family of five on a Tuesday night or twelve people at a Fourth of July cookout. The Meykers makes a patty that hits the grill flat, holds together, and cooks evenly, which is exactly what a burger press is supposed to do.

Where the Cuisinart Wins

The Cuisinart 3-in-1 Adjustable Patty Maker earns its price tag for one specific use case: you cook burgers at wildly different sizes depending on the occasion. The 3.5-inch setting makes a perfect slider that fits a King's Hawaiian roll without any trimming. The 5-inch setting makes a proper thick pub-style patty that can hold up to a full tablespoon of compound butter stuffed in the center. If your cookout rotates between a slider bar for the kids and big char-crusted patties for adults who want a serious burger, having all three sizes in one press is genuinely useful. That is a legitimate argument for the Cuisinart, and I want to give it credit where it is due.

The aluminum insert also feels more substantial in the hand than plastic. When you press down on it, you feel the weight and the precision, and the resulting patties have a slightly sharper, more defined edge than what comes out of the Meykers. For someone who takes pride in every aspect of the patty from shape to thickness, that tactile quality matters. The Cuisinart is also designed to stay on a prep counter for years, not travel to a neighbor's cookout in a tote bag. If you view your burger press the way you view your cast iron skillet, as a permanent kitchen tool rather than a seasonal backyard accessory, the Cuisinart fits that mindset better.

The Meykers presses a better patty for the price than anything else I have tested. The Cuisinart is a fine press. But when I am in a hurry feeding a crowd on a Saturday afternoon, I reach for the Meykers every single time.

A Note on Paper and Sticking

Every burger press works better with patty papers, full stop. People who complain about their press sticking to the meat are almost always pressing directly onto the plastic surface with nothing in between. With wax or parchment patty papers, both the Meykers and the Cuisinart release cleanly every single time. The difference is that the Meykers includes 150 papers and the Cuisinart makes you buy them separately. Replacement Meykers papers are inexpensive and sold in big multipacks on Amazon, and standard cut-to-size parchment from the grocery baking aisle works just as well in a pinch when you run out mid-cookout.

I tested both presses with 80/20 ground chuck, the fat content most backyard cooks use for cookout burgers because the fat keeps the patty juicy over direct heat. Both pressed cleanly with papers and both released without tearing the patty. The Cuisinart's edge definition was slightly sharper, which matters if you want that perfectly flat, even perimeter from edge to center. The Meykers comes out maybe two or three millimeters thicker at the outer edge compared to the center, which is a trait of the round-press design shared by most consumer-grade presses in this price range. Neither difference showed up in how the burger cooked or tasted on the grill.

How Each Press Handles Smash Burgers

Smash burgers have become the cookout move of the past few years, and a burger press plays a key role in making them work. The technique calls for a loose ball of ground beef dropped onto a screaming-hot flat surface, then pressed hard and flat with a wide, firm tool. A traditional round burger press is not the ideal smash tool because it is designed for shaping before cooking, not for pressing on a hot griddle or cast iron pan. That said, I have used the Meykers to pre-form thin smash-style patties ahead of time and then finished them by hand-pressing with a wide spatula over the heat. That workflow works well.

Neither the Meykers nor the Cuisinart is built for in-the-pan smashing, and neither claims to be. If smash burgers are your main use case, a flat cast iron press is the right tool. But for pre-forming the thin, wide patties that a smash burger starts as, the Meykers is actually easier because the patty releases cleanly from the wax paper and does not stick to the pan when you lay it down. The Cuisinart's 5-inch setting works too, but the cleanup after handling raw beef and then disassembling the insert before cooking is an extra step I never enjoyed.

Long-Term Durability: What Actually Happens

I ran the Meykers through a full summer of weekend cookouts, roughly 20 press sessions averaging six patties each, so around 120 patties over four months. The plastic hinge did not crack. The surface did not discolor or pick up any odors from the meat. The spring mechanism that pops the top back up still snaps clean after all of that use. After the whole summer, the press looks essentially the same as it did coming out of the box. That kind of durability for the price is hard to argue with. I also stored it in an outdoor kitchen drawer through a West Texas summer where temperatures routinely hit 105 degrees, and the heat did not warp or distort it at all.

The Cuisinart insert fit snugly when I first used it, and that snug fit is what keeps the patty edge so precise and sharp. After extended use, I noticed the insert wobbled very slightly when I pressed down on it. It still worked fine and made clean patties, but the premium feel I paid for had degraded noticeably. This is consistent with what several longtime buyers report in their reviews. It is not a failure, but it is a degradation you do not experience with the Meykers because the Meykers has no removable insert to work loose over time. Simple construction turns out to be an advantage in the long run.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Meykers if you are feeding a regular family crowd of four to eight people, pressing standard quarter-pound to third-pound patties, and you want to spend more time standing at the grill than prepping in the kitchen. The included wax papers, the simple rinse cleanup, and the current price make it the easy answer for the vast majority of weekend backyard cooks. It also makes a solid first burger press for someone who has never owned one and wants to know if a press is even worth owning at all. At the current price, the risk is essentially zero. If you press a hundred patties with it and decide it is not for you, you have lost less than the cost of a fast-food meal.

Buy the Cuisinart Adjustable Patty Maker if you regularly cook sliders alongside thick pub-style burgers at the same event, and the size versatility is something you will genuinely use. Just budget for a pack of patty papers alongside it because the box does not include any. If you are on the fence between the two, start with the Meykers. You can always upgrade later once you know exactly how you use a press, and most backyard cooks never feel the need to make the switch.

For a deeper look at how the Meykers performs across a full season of weekly use, including what happens after the 150 included papers run out and how the non-stick surface holds up through summer heat and cold-weather storage, read my Meykers Burger Press long-term review. If you want the fully honest version with everything that surprised me and the one thing I would change about the design, that is all in the Meykers honest review.