It can be just as painful doing leg presses if you give it 100%.
And your spotters can strip the plates off much faster between reps on the leg press machine. Plus you have removed a possible weak link, your lower back.
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I rekon these are worse, especially if you include giant drop sets.
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It is for me, because my lower back tires faster than my hips and thighs.
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Same. The amount of quad burn/pain I can achieve on leg press is much higher than with squats.
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Can definitely relate to that with skinny legs being a very strong family trait! Tried numerous ways to grow my legs from heavy-ass squats to high-rep bodyweight standard, split squats, sissy, etc and a bunch of variations in between. Its given me strong and explosive legs but Iām the only one who knows that, everyone else just sees a pair of chicken legs but at least I donāt get chafe 
To target my quads on a squat I would have to: 1) use high bar (like damn near on the neck), and 2) have my heels on a pair of 10#s. On a normal low-ish bar session I hit my glutes, adductor magnus & VL. Thatās what is sore anyhow.
My go-to for quads is Hack Squat. We have only one in our 50k+ square foot gym, so thereās usually a queue. We have a V-squat that is awkward as hell to climb in and out of. Iām not convinced of its effectiveness but the sample size is small. We have one dude that does Barbell Hack Squats, but my arms are too short and my ass is too big for those. Every rep doinks off my meaty hams.
The Leg press is ok, but my fat middle gets in the way, and my knees have to track outside my shoulders. The solution here is obviousā¦
DNA. Good answer.