The Best Pellet Grills

Traeger's app puts the cook temperature, the meat probe and the pellet level on your phone (a sensor in the hopper reads how much is left), and AmazingRibs calls it one of the best Wi-Fi systems they've come across. There's a lot of room, too. Traeger says 970 square inches fits seven pork butts or nine racks of ribs.

The 24-pound hopper burns about a pound of pellets an hour at 225°F, so an overnight pork shoulder won't need a refill. It's weaker at grilling. The dial says 500°F, but it topped out around 480°F in AmazingRibs' cook, and the grates themselves stayed under 300°F. Chicken thighs still take a decent sear. A thick steak is the Searwood's job.

A PID controller for under $500

The PID controller is what you're paying for. It adjusts the pellet feed and the fan to hold the heat, and on the Wi-Fi version of this grill (the 7002C2E) Smoked BBQ Source saw the temperature move barely more than 5°F. Its reviewer pointed to this 7002B as the cheaper way in, with the same kind of controller and no app. For about $489 you get 700 square inches and a rain cover in the box.

Z Grills puts the top at 450°F, fine for chicken and pork chops, not for searing. Everything else here I'd describe from that Wi-Fi sibling: no side shelf (the hopper lid ends up as the cutting board), a lid handle close enough to the hot lid to catch your knuckles, and about an hour and a half of assembly.

Two fire pots sit under cast iron grates, and a sear knob opens the cover over them. Bon Appétit pointed a laser thermometer that reads up to 1,000°F at the grates and got an error message; recteq claims 1,250°F. Nobody needs that much heat, but a dark crust on a steak stops being a project. The knobs (smoke or grill, left and right burners, sear) will feel familiar to anyone who cooks on gas.

In smoke mode only the left fire pot burns, and that side can run more than 30°F hotter than the right. Point the thick end of a brisket to the left. In grill mode there's no temperature readout at all.

The Trek runs on 12 volts, so it plugs into your car's power outlet or into the wall at home with an adapter. The grate is only about 17 by 12.5 inches, but Green Mountain says a whole brisket or a turkey fits, and the dial runs from 150°F to 550°F in 5-degree steps. This 2.0 version has sturdier legs than the Davy Crockett it replaces, and it arrives almost fully assembled.

What I know about how it cooks comes from the previous Trek Prime, which AmazingRibs cooked on. It weighed 63 pounds, came with clips to run off a car battery, held 9 pounds of pellets, ran 10 to 12 degrees under the setting until it was calibrated in the app, and ran hotter on the left until the heat shield was moved (there's a rod with a scale for that). For burgers over a flame at the beach, a portable propane grill is the better tool anyway.