The Best Outdoor Grills and BBQ Smokers

Even heat is the whole ballgame, and it's where the Genesis wins. Wirecutter's gas grill testing found only about 22°F of variance across the entire cooking grate on Weber's Genesis, the tightest spread in its group. What that buys you is simple: lay eight burgers across the grill and pull them all at the same time. On a cheaper grill, the two at the back are still pink while the front two are gone.

The burners are tapered, which sounds like marketing until you look at why. A narrowing tube keeps gas pressure up at the far end, so the flame doesn't thin out where the burner runs out. The raised flame openings help too, since drippings fall past the ports instead of into them. Clogged ports are the most common reason an aging gas grill starts cooking unevenly.

Cleanup is genuinely easy. The porcelain-enameled cast-iron grates hold heat well enough to sear, and once they've carbonized a few fatty meals they brush clean in seconds. Below them, Flavorizer bars catch drippings, vaporize some of it back into the food, and funnel the rest into a tray that pulls out from under the cookbox. You empty it standing up, not on your knees.

Owners keep these grills a long time, and that's the real argument. People replacing a Weber usually describe one that ran a decade or more, often on original parts, which is why so much of the feedback here is from repeat buyers stepping up from an old Spirit. Weber isn't flawless, and support complaints exist. But the burners, grates and cookbox you'd eventually need are still on the shelf.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Assembly takes a while. Owners commonly describe an hour and a half to two hours, and a second person makes the heavy panels much less annoying. A few report misdrilled frame pieces or hardware missing from the box, which turns a free Saturday into a phone call with a support line that's hard to get a human on.

It's also a gas grill, so smoke flavor isn't really on the menu. A foil packet of chips over a burner gets you a hint of it. If barbecue is the goal, pair this with one of the charcoal picks below and keep the Genesis for weeknights.

If your grilling space is a deck corner or a townhouse patio, the Genesis is just too much grill. The Spirit is about four feet wide with the tables out and roughly half the weight, so you can actually roll it aside to sweep behind it. Owners cooking for four consistently describe it as the right size rather than a compromise, which is not what people usually say about a smaller grill.

The ten-year limited warranty is what makes this an easy call. It covers the parts most likely to fail — burners, grates, the cookbox — for longer than a lot of cheap grills survive at all. And the feedback backs it up: a common story here is someone retiring a fifteen-year-old Spirit and buying this one. That's about as good a durability signal as you'll get without waiting fifteen years yourself.

The sear zone runs hot. Weber's Boost Burners push about 40% more power into it than the standard burners, so you can put a crust on a ribeye without turning the whole grill into a furnace. Snap-Jet ignition lights each burner individually with one hand, which matters more than it sounds like when you're balancing a platter in the other.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The main grate fills up fast. More than one owner says they wish it were a few inches wider, and if you regularly feed eight or more people, you'll be cooking in shifts. Assembly is detailed too — plan on a couple of hours — and at least one buyer reports a box that showed up with no hardware in it at all.

Weber covers the Spirit E-325 with a ten-year limited warranty.

Ceramic is the reason a kamado sips fuel. Thick walls hold heat instead of throwing it into your backyard, so one basket of lump charcoal carries a very long cook. Smoked BBQ Source found that offset smokers burn two to three times more fuel per hour of cooking than a ceramic kamado does. Across a season of weekend cooks, that's a real difference in what you haul home from the store.

The SloRoller is a baffle that sits under the grate and pushes smoke around in rolling waves instead of letting it shoot straight up past the meat. Kamado Joe developed it with Harvard researchers. The practical claim is more even smoke exposure at low temperatures, which is exactly where a plain ceramic cooker has historically been weakest compared with a dedicated smoker.

Then there's the rack system. Half-moon grates sit at three different heights, so you can hold vegetables up high while chicken skin crisps low over the coals. The Kontrol Tower vent keeps its setting when you open the dome, so you're not re-dialing airflow every time you peek. And the air-lift hinge makes a very heavy ceramic lid feel like nothing.

This is the most versatile cooker here and the hardest to learn. Airflow is your only temperature control, and overshooting is easy, because a kamado climbs fast and comes down slowly. You dial the vents early and then wait. Give it a few cooks before you invite people over. Owners coming from gas tend to describe the first month as humbling and everything after that as a hobby.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It weighs 286 pounds. You need two people to lift the ceramic body into the cart, and once it's parked, it's parked. Ceramic also cracks under thermal shock, so no cold water on a hot grill, ever.

Fit and finish complaints do show up. A handful of owners describe damaged parts or poorly seated gaskets out of the box, and sorting it out stretched over weeks. That's a frustrating start on the most expensive cooker here.

The design is almost stupidly simple: a charcoal ring at the bottom, a water pan above it, two cooking grates above that, and a lid. The water pan is the trick. It soaks up heat and gives it back slowly, which is why the temperature curve stays flat here while a thin barrel smoker swings every time the wind shifts direction.

Fuel efficiency is what makes this thing easy to live with. AmazingRibs.com rates it among the most efficient charcoal smokers going, holding 225 to 250°F for eight to twelve hours without a refill. That covers a pork shoulder start to finish. You light it, set the dampers, check on it a couple of times, and otherwise go live your day.

Two grates mean two large cuts at once — two racks of spare ribs up top, a pork butt below. The aluminum fuel door is large and comes off entirely, so adding charcoal partway through doesn't mean lifting a hot, fully loaded center section. A silicone grommet lets you run a probe wire inside without pinching it in the lid.

Nothing here is powered, connected or automatic, and that's the appeal. Three bottom dampers and one on top are your controls. Once you learn where yours likes to sit, it holds there. Owners who've run these for ten years describe the same short routine every single cook, which is exactly why people who compete keep buying them.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

You'll babysit this more than a pellet grill. There's no app, no auger, no thermostat, so if the fire drifts you fix it by hand — and wind or real cold makes that harder. Most owners end up adding a digital probe thermometer, since the lid gauge reads the dome rather than the grate where the meat sits.

It's a smoker and only a smoker. You can't sear a steak on it. Unless you already own a grill, plan on buying one of the gas picks to sit next to it.