Easy to unpack and set-up. No damage noticed nor disconnected wiring as others have noted in their reviews. Ready to go except for adding oil, hooking up the battery, and adding fuel.
Quick Start Guide (QSG) said to add oil until full. Manual said to add entire bottle of oil and showed a picture of full that doesn’t match the unit (opening is straight to side rather than angled up). Neither even mentioned the dip stick on the plug. So I slowly filled until the level hit the bottom of the threads on the plug port similar to the picture. The dipstick showed about halfway up the hashed area. So that seemed OK and left a little bit in the bottle. It’s possible the entire bottle could fit before hitting the high mark on the dipstick. I didn’t try it. They should clean this up so all matches and gives clear guidance.
The QSG said to make sure the battery was hooked up. It wasn’t and it also was not secured in place. You could miss it but it was sitting on a rubber strap. I reseated the battery with strap over the top and attached the clip. Unlike the guide picture, the battery cables were already attached to the battery and there was just a quick connect in the line to push together. The manual does show that however. No mention was made of needing to charge the battery first so I didn’t.
I hooked up a propane tank which was as easy as hooking up to grills, etc. Note that there is an o-ring in one end of the hose you need to attach. It can fall out, hence the plastic bag that came over that end. I currently plan to only use propane in it but nice to have the option and one reason I bought this one.
The manual and QSG have other errors in them. There is no on/off “Battery” switch. There is a Run/Stop switch instead. There is no Start/Stop push button either as shown. It says ON/OFF on it with “PUSH BUTTON ELECTRIC START” under it. The two control panel pictures in the manual on p. 10 and 11 do not match each other and neither matches the actual control panel. It is significantly re-arranged compared to those pictures. While I noted various document errors, they were easy to figure out. However, I do expect documents to be correct.
I only ran it once so far for an hour for check out and break in. It started right up on the second attempt. Probably need to get fuel in the line and air out on the first try. After that, ran like a charm. I did a couple of shut downs and restarts with the unit’s button and remote. Fired right back up each time. Slightly noisier than I had hoped but I think quieter than many others I have heard. Can easily converse next to it but can hear inside the house. My first generator so nothing to directly compare to other than neighbors’ units I’ve heard from a distance, some of which are very loud.
Per the manual I only used it up to roughly half power for the break in period (first 5 hrs.). I hooked up to my chest freezer and varied some lights and small heaters on/off to change the load up and down. Always worked fine. Tried both 20 amp outlets and both USB ports. No issues noticed. Almost :-) looking forward to the next power outage to really use it. 5 stars for features and usage so far and minus 1 star from that for document errors.