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Lifestyle›Gas and Charcoal Grills

The Best Gas and Charcoal Grills

By The Consumer's Guide Research Team·Updated August 31, 2026

Most of what a grill does is unglamorous. Burgers on a Tuesday. Chicken thighs for four people who are already hungry. Roughly two-thirds of American households own a grill or smoker, and most of those get used fast, often, and without much ceremony. So the things that matter aren't the ones printed on the box. You want even heat, grates that stay hot when cold meat lands on them, and a cleanup routine you'll actually follow instead of avoiding until the next cookout.

No grill does everything. Gas is ready in ten minutes and wipes down easy, but blind taste tests keep showing that people can pick out charcoal-cooked chicken by smoke and char alone. Charcoal gives you that flavor and asks for ash duty in return. Both fight rust, and both want a cover. Nearly all of them also arrive in a box: published assembly comparisons put the average gas grill around two and a half hours, with design complexity, not cost, predicting the pain.

So start with how you cook, not with specs. If you grill on weeknights and want dinner off the fire in half an hour, get gas and spend your money on even heat and thick grates. If you cook on weekends and care about smoke, get charcoal and accept the ash. If you want to hold a brisket at low heat all day, you need something with real insulation. We think that the Weber Genesis E-335 is the best grill for most people, and that the Weber Original Kettle Premium 22-inch is the one to buy if you care more about smoke flavor than weeknight speed.

At a glance

Product	Cooking Space	Fuel Type	Price
Weber® Genesis E-335 Gas Grill for OutdoorTop pick	—	Propane	$1,099On sale
Weber® Original Kettle Premium Charcoal GrillRunner-up	—	Charcoal	$219
Char-Griller®Smokin Pro Charcoal Grill and Offset SmokerAlso in lineup	—	Charcoal	$299.99
PK Grills PK300 Aaron Franklin Cast AluminumAlso consider	—	Charcoal	$943.59
Napoleon P500RSIBPSS-3 Prestige 500 RSIB Propane GasUpgrade pick	500 Sq In	Propane	$1,879
Kamado Joe Classic Joe Series II 18-inchAlso great	250 Sq In	Charcoal	$1,499On sale
28 Inch Blackstone Griddle 2080 Original 3-BurnerAlso consider	613 Sq In	—	$439.99
Royal Gourmet CC1830SC Charcoal Grill Offset SmokerBudget pick	823 Sq In	Charcoal	$143.99

How we picked

Even heat. We leaned on published temperature-mapping and heat-distribution results, because a grill with hot corners will burn one burger and undercook the next. Anything with a documented tight spread across the main surface moved up.

Grates and heat retention. We compared grate material and mass from manufacturer specifications, favoring porcelain-enameled cast iron or heavy stainless. Thin plated grates lose their heat the moment cold food touches them.

Ash and grease handling. We looked for slide-out grease trays and one-motion ash catchers, since cleanup design is the single biggest predictor of whether owner feedback turns sour after a season or two.

Build and longevity. We weighted repeated durability themes in owner reports and multi-year reliability rankings — rust-through, paint chipping, warped barrels — more heavily than headline BTU numbers.

Assembly and footprint. We noted published assembly comparisons and owner accounts of setup difficulty, plus overall dimensions, because a grill that doesn't fit your patio or your patience isn't a good grill.

Top pickOn sale

Even heat, thick grates, and a sear zone you'll actually use

Weber® Genesis E-335 Gas Grill for Outdoor

A three-burner propane grill with cast-iron grates, a dedicated high-heat sear zone, and a side burner. It heats evenly end to end, cleans up through a slide-out grease tray, and has the kind of build record that makes replacing it a problem for the next decade.

$1,099fromAmazonList price ~~$1,199~~ · Save $100 (8%)

Even heat is the whole point of a gas grill, and this is where the Genesis earns its keep. Published testing measured temperature variance of about fifteen degrees across the main cooking surface, one of the tightest spreads recorded for a three-burner grill, and Consumer Reports has rated the Genesis line excellent for evenness in back-to-back cycles. In practice that means the burgers at the edge finish alongside the ones in the middle.

The sear zone is the part you'll notice on a weeknight. It's a concentrated high-heat section, so you can put a crust on two ribeyes while chicken cooks gently at the far end. The porcelain-enameled cast-iron grates hold their heat when cold meat hits them, which is exactly the moment thin grates give up and start steaming your dinner instead.

Underneath, the Flavorizer bars catch dripping juices, vaporize some back into the food, and funnel the rest away from the burners so flare-ups stay rare. The grease itself lands in a tray that pulls out from below the cookbox. That sounds minor until you've knelt on concrete scraping a fixed drip pan. You slide it out, dump it, and you're finished.

Webers last, and that's most of what you're paying for. Owners routinely describe getting ten or fifteen years out of one before it needs replacing, which is why the brand keeps sitting at the top of long-term reliability rankings. The tapered PureBlu burners are shaped to shed debris rather than clog, and there's a side burner for sauce or onions plus a closed locker for tools and the tank.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Assembly is a real afternoon. Owners consistently say the printed manual is dense and that lowering the cookbox onto the cart needs a second pair of hands. Weber's 3D app helps a lot, though a few people report it doesn't match every configuration exactly. Plan for a few hours and recruit someone.

It's a wide cart, so measure your patio before you order. And the WEBER CRAFTED accessories that make the grates so flexible — pizza stone, griddle, dual-sided sear grate, Dutch oven — are all sold separately, so the grill is the beginning of the spending, not the end of it.

Runner-up

Real charcoal flavor with very little fuss or footprint

Weber® Original Kettle Premium Charcoal Grill

The 22-inch kettle is the grill every other charcoal grill gets measured against. It sears fast, does indirect cooking well enough to roast a whole chicken, and dumps its ash through a one-touch catcher that takes about ten seconds to empty.

$219fromAmazon

This is the benchmark, and it holds up. Load it, light it, and it climbs past seven hundred degrees in under fifteen minutes with a full charcoal bed, faster than the kettles it competes with in published heat-up comparisons. For steaks, burgers and anything else that wants a hard sear, that's all the firepower you need, and it costs a small fraction of what the ceramic cookers do.

The flavor difference isn't in your head. In blind tasting run by America's Test Kitchen, experienced tasters correctly identified charcoal-grilled chicken thighs about three-quarters of the time, pointing to smoke and char as the tells. If smoke is the reason you're looking at charcoal at all, this is the least complicated way to get it. Add a chunk of hickory and it smokes, too.

Bank the coals to one side and you've got two zones: hot over the fire, gentle across from it. That's how you cook a whole chicken without scorching the skin, or hold ribs at a low temperature for a few hours. The lid thermometer gives you a rough read from the outside, and the aluminum damper lets you throttle the fire without lifting anything.

The Premium name mostly refers to cleanup, and it's worth having. The One-Touch system sweeps ash into a covered high-capacity catcher that lifts off and empties in one motion, so you're not tipping a bowl of gray dust into the wind. The lid hooks onto the side rather than sitting in the grass, the nylon handles don't rust like old hinged ones, and owners commonly report six years of weekly use with no drama.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

There's no prep surface, no shelf and nowhere to put a platter. You'll want a table next to it.

Temperature control is on you. There's no dial — you're managing coal quantity, vent openings and lid position, and that takes a few cooks to learn. A single charcoal load also runs roughly four to five hours, so a long brisket means adding fuel partway through and letting heat out to do it.

Budget pick

A big charcoal barrel plus an offset box to learn smoking on

Royal Gourmet CC1830SC Charcoal Grill Offset Smoker

This barrel grill pairs 475 square inches of main grate with a bolted-on offset firebox, a warming rack and a weather cover. It's the least intimidating way to find out whether low-and-slow cooking is something you'll stick with.

$143.99fromAmazon

You get a lot of grate for very little. The main chamber holds 475 square inches of porcelain-enameled steel, with another 151 on the warming rack and 197 more in the offset box — enough to cook for a full backyard without staging batches. A cover is included, which matters more than it sounds like, because uncovered thin steel is what turns a cheap grill into a rusty one.

The offset firebox is the whole reason to buy this one. Fire burns in the side chamber and the heat and smoke drift across the meat instead of under it, which is how Texas-style barbecue works. There's a side door for adding charcoal or wood mid-cook and pulling ash out, so you're not dismantling the fire every hour. Air vents let you stoke it back up quickly.

It's quick off the mark for a charcoal cooker. In published timed comparisons it hit 400 degrees in eighteen minutes, the fastest preheat among the budget offset combos in its group. The charcoal pan adjusts to two heights, so you can bring the coals up close for searing or drop them away for gentler cooking, and it holds a bit over four pounds of fuel.

For a first outdoor cooker it's a forgiving thing to make mistakes on. Front and side tables give you somewhere to set a tray, the bottom shelf takes accessories, and it's light enough at under fifty pounds to reposition on a deck by yourself. Owners who bought it purely as a smoker are generally happy after some fiddling.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The steel is thin, and thin steel leaks heat and smoke. Serious offset users routinely add gasket tape and a baffle to get stable temperatures, which is a fair amount of homework for something you just bought.

Fit and finish are what you'd expect. Some owners describe paint chipping after only a few cooks and a frame that wobbles if you lean on it. Assembly also takes considerably longer than the box implies — plan on an evening rather than forty minutes.

Upgrade pick

Steakhouse-grade sear and a rotisserie that gets used

Napoleon P500RSIBPSS-3 Prestige 500 RSIB Propane Gas

A four-burner stainless propane grill with an infrared searing burner on the side and an infrared rotisserie burner at the back. It does two things a normal gas grill simply can't, and it's built like it plans to outlive the patio.

$1,879fromAmazon

The infrared side burner is the closest thing to a steakhouse broiler you can put on a patio. It reaches roughly 1,800 degrees in about thirty seconds, and Good Housekeeping Institute testing found it laid down full sear marks in under a minute per side. Standard gas burners can't get near that. If a hard crust on a thick steak is the thing you chase, this is the shortcut.

The main cooking area is generous without being unwieldy. Four stainless burners put out 48,000 BTU across 500 square inches — roughly 31 burgers at once — with another 260 square inches on the warming rack above and 140 more on the side burner. Stainless sear plates sit between the burners in layers, spreading heat and vaporizing drippings the way Weber's Flavorizer bars do.

The rotisserie isn't decoration. An 18,000 BTU infrared rear burner and a heavy-duty spit kit come with the grill, and owners who assumed it was a gimmick tend to end up using it for chicken and pork loin. JETFIRE ignition sits on every main burner, with a crossover channel so one burner can light the next if an igniter ever quits.

Build quality is where the money goes. It's stainless, it weighs nearly 200 pounds, and owner feedback skews toward years of hard outdoor use without failure — including a few accounts of it surviving being blown over. Napoleon's customer support also comes up repeatedly and favorably, which is not something you can say about most grill brands.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Not everything is stainless. The cabinet and cart use painted panels, and that's the most common complaint from owners who expected all-metal construction at this price tier. Some report doors and panels arriving dented or fitting poorly.

It's heavy and wide. Assembly is manageable solo but genuinely easier with two people, and once it's built you're not moving it up steps. This is also the most expensive grill here, and the sear burner is the main thing that justifies the gap over our top pick.

Also greatOn sale

Holds low temperatures all day, then sears at furnace heat

Kamado Joe Classic Joe Series II 18-inch

An 18-inch ceramic kamado that runs a stable 225 degrees for a full workday on one load of charcoal, then climbs high enough to cook pizza. The two-tier grate system lets you cook two things at two temperatures at once.

$1,499fromAmazonList price ~~$1,499.99~~ · Save $250.99 (17%)

Nothing else here holds a low temperature the way ceramic does. In published testing the Classic II stayed at a steady 225 degrees for more than eight hours on a single charcoal load — roughly double what a standard kettle manages. That's the difference between babysitting a pork shoulder and putting it on in the morning and going about your day.

The SlōRoller insert is a genuinely useful piece of engineering rather than a badge. It's a hyperbolic baffle that circulates smoke through the chamber instead of letting it run straight up, and brisket comparisons found around 12 percent higher internal moisture retention versus a direct charcoal setup. Smoke reaches the meat from more directions and the surface dries out less.

Day to day, the small details are what you'll appreciate. The air lift hinge takes almost all the weight out of the heavy ceramic dome, so it opens with a finger and won't slam. The Kontrol Tower top vent holds its setting when you open the lid, so you don't reset your airflow every time you check the food, and it shrugs off rain.

It sears and bakes as well as it smokes. The thick ceramic walls store enough heat to run hot for pizza and steak, and the Divide & Conquer half-moon grates let you keep vegetables gentle on one side while the other side runs hard. Stainless grates, a cast iron cart and locking casters come with it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It's small and it's enormous at the same time. You get 250 square inches of primary cooking space — less than a 22-inch kettle — inside something that weighs 232 pounds. Once it's placed, it stays placed.

Ceramic is fragile in the specific ways ceramic is fragile. Drops and sharp thermal shocks can crack it, and shipping damage shows up in owner reports often enough to be worth inspecting carefully on arrival. You're also paying far more than a kettle costs for less grate area, and the payoff only makes sense if you really do long cooks.

The research

Who this is for

This guide is for anyone buying a full-size backyard grill: someone stepping up from a rusted starter model, a first-time buyer who wants one good thing instead of two mediocre ones, or a weekend cook who's ready to try smoking. If you grill more than a couple of times a month, the durability gap between a Weber or Napoleon and a bargain-brand unit will pay you back, because you'll buy one grill instead of three.

It's not for everyone. If you're on a balcony where open flame is banned, none of these will work and you should be looking at an electric grill instead. If you already own a dedicated pellet smoker and just want fast weeknight heat, skip the offset combos entirely. We also don't cover pellet grills, electric grills or built-in outdoor kitchen units here, and portability is only a factor for the cast-aluminum option we mention below.

How we picked

We judged every grill here on five things. Even heat: published temperature-mapping results across the main cooking surface, since hot spots ruin more dinners than low BTU numbers do. Grates: material and mass from the specifications, with porcelain-enameled cast iron and heavy stainless preferred over thin plated wire that dumps its heat on contact. Cleanup: whether ash and grease come out in one motion or require dismantling something. Build: repeated themes in long-term owner feedback and multi-year reliability rankings — rust-through, chipping paint, warped steel — weighted above spec-sheet bragging. Setup and size: documented assembly difficulty and real dimensions, because a grill you dread building or can't fit is one you won't use.

Other gas and charcoal grills worth considering

If you want smash burgers, fried rice and pancakes outdoors: The 28 Inch Blackstone Griddle 2080 Original 3-Burner ($439.99) — The 28-inch Blackstone is a flat top, not a grill, and a lot of people cross-shopping grills actually want one. You get 613 square inches of steel — about 25 burgers at once — heated by three independently controlled burners putting out 48,000 BTU, so you can run a hot searing zone and a warm holding zone side by side. A hood keeps debris off between cooks and grease drains out the back into a cup. What you give up is fire: no grates, no drip-and-vaporize smoke flavor, and no way to smoke anything. It also needs seasoning and consistent cleaning, and owners note it doesn't sear quite as hard as a screaming cast-iron skillet.

If you want a charcoal grill that can't rust: The PK Grills PK300 Aaron Franklin Cast Aluminum ($943.59) — The PK300 Aaron Franklin Edition is cast aluminum rather than steel, which means it won't rust through the way thin-gauge barrels do. Thermal imaging published by AmazingRibs found no hot spots at all across its cooking surface, with heat transfer rated far more uniform than steel competitors in its class, and its four-point venting system gives you finer control over the fire than a kettle's two dampers do. The capsule shape also lifts off its cart for tailgating. It costs considerably more than a kettle for less cooking area, though, and it's a niche product with thin availability, so it makes sense mainly if precise charcoal control and lifetime rust-proofing are what you're after.

The competition

This is what our research surfaced, not a survey of everything sold. Plenty of good grills — pellet cookers, drum smokers, built-ins — sit outside the scope of this guide. Here's the one remaining model we looked at and where it landed.

The Char-Griller®Smokin Pro Charcoal Grill and Offset Smoker ($299.99) — The Char-Griller Smokin Pro offers more raw space than anything else here: 1,130 square inches across a barrel grill and a bolted-on side firebox, with dual dampers for airflow and a side shelf with utensil hooks. At 115 pounds it feels more substantial than most budget offsets. But owner feedback points in a worrying direction, with repeated reports of misaligned firebox mounting holes, thinner grates than earlier versions and barrel warping that leaves grates sitting unevenly — long-time buyers replacing an older one are often the most disappointed. We'd take the Royal Gourmet instead for a first offset. Choose this if you want the extra barrel capacity and don't mind persuading a few bolts into place with a hammer.

Care and maintenance

Cast-iron grates rust when water sits on them, so treat them the way you'd treat a skillet. Burn off residue at high heat for ten minutes after cooking, brush while everything is still hot, then wipe a thin film of neutral oil across the bars before you close the lid. Skip the soap and skip the long soak. For gas grills, pull the grease tray every few cooks — a full one is the most common cause of a fire under the cookbox. For charcoal, empty the ash catcher before it packs down, since damp ash holds moisture right against the bowl. Buy the cover. Every grill here lasts meaningfully longer under one, and covers cost almost nothing next to a replacement.

Questions we get

Is gas or charcoal better for flavor?

Charcoal genuinely tastes different, and it isn't just enthusiasm talking. In blind tests run by America's Test Kitchen, experienced tasters correctly picked out charcoal-grilled chicken thighs about three-quarters of the time, citing smoke and char. Gas wins on speed and cleanup instead. Most people should choose based on how often they'll cook on a weeknight, not on the flavor gap.

How many BTUs do I actually need?

Fewer than the marketing suggests. BTU output only tells you how much fuel a grill can burn, not how well it holds or spreads heat — a poorly insulated grill with a big number will still cook unevenly. Look at cooking area, grate material and lid construction first. Roughly 40,000 to 50,000 BTU across three or four burners is plenty for a family-sized grill.

Are kamado grills worth it over a regular charcoal grill?

They are if you smoke. A ceramic kamado held a steady 225 degrees for more than eight hours on a single charcoal load in published testing, about double what a kettle manages, and it sears and bakes at high heat too. But you pay a lot more for less cooking area, and it's too heavy to move once placed. If you mostly cook burgers, a kettle does that job just as well.

Can you use a charcoal grill as a smoker?

Yes, and it's the simplest way to start. Bank your coals to one side, put the food on the other, add a chunk of hardwood, and manage the vents to hold a low temperature. A 22-inch kettle will run four to five hours on one load, which covers ribs and chicken. For a full brisket you'll need to add fuel partway through or step up to an offset or a kamado.

What's the best grill for a small patio?

A 22-inch kettle. It has a small footprint, rolls on wheels, weighs about 32 pounds, and still cooks a dozen burgers at once. Full gas carts with side burners and lockers take up considerably more room. Just confirm your building actually allows charcoal, since many condo and apartment rules prohibit open flame on balconies entirely.

How long should a gas grill last?

A cheap one may only give you three to five years before the firebox rusts through or burners fail. Better-built grills last much longer — Weber owners routinely describe getting ten to fifteen years out of one, and burners and grates are replaceable well before the body gives up. Covering it and clearing the grease tray are the two habits that make the biggest difference.

Why you should trust us

For this guide:

We read published testing from independent review outlets covering temperature evenness, heat-up speed, sear performance and long-term durability across gas, charcoal and kamado grills.
We compared manufacturer specifications for every model here — cooking area, burner output, grate material, venting and weight — rather than relying on headline BTU claims.
We looked for patterns that repeat across many owner reports, like assembly difficulty, paint chipping and rust-through, instead of treating any single complaint as decisive.
We read owner reviews on every listing, weighted toward the critical ones, because that is where the recurring failures show up.
We have a systematic way of automatically fetching the latest prices, so the numbers on this page stay current.
This is a research-focused guide, so the team may not own every product listed — though we often do own the top winners, which gives us extra context for the recommendations.
We don't accept free products, and the retailer commission never changes which product we recommend.