The Best Pellet Grills and Smokers

A pellet grill is really a wood-fired convection oven with an auger in it. You dump hardwood pellets in a hopper, set a number on a controller, and the machine feeds itself all night. That's the whole appeal — you can put a pork shoulder on before bed and still get eight hours of sleep. So the things that matter aren't glamorous. Does the temperature hold when the wind kicks up? Does the app tell you the truth? And how much of your Sunday disappears into ash and grease?

Here's the honest part: none of these do everything well. Even the ones that climb past 600°F sear with moving hot air, not a wall of radiant heat, so your steak crust won't match a screaming charcoal grate. Smoke flavor runs lighter than an offset smoker, since most of it comes from long cooks under 250°F. Every one of these grills also has an auger motor and an igniter, and those are the parts owners report replacing first. Pellets are a running cost, too.

We compared manufacturer specs, published reviews and owner feedback across the pellet grills available here, then weighed cooking area, temperature ceiling, controller type and cold-weather build against what households actually cook. Replacement covers and accessories were set aside, since they aren't grills. We think that the Traeger Ironwood 885 is the best pellet grill for most people, and that the recteq Patio Legend 600 is the one to buy if you want heavier steel and a much higher temperature ceiling.

Buy a pellet grill if you want smoked food without babysitting a fire. It's the right call for anyone who wants brisket, ribs and pork shoulder to come out well on the first try, and for people who'd rather set a number than learn to manage vents and coal beds. If you mostly grill steaks and burgers on a weeknight, though, skip it — a gas or charcoal grill sears better and costs less to run.

This guide covers freestanding pellet grills and smokers you'd put on a patio or deck. We've left out replacement covers and accessories, which aren't grills, and we only write about models we could confirm. Plenty of good pellet grills exist that didn't turn up in this lineup, so treat the competition section as what our research surfaced rather than a census of the category.

Temperature stability: we favored PID and closed-loop controllers that hold a set point instead of swinging past it, since that's what makes an overnight brisket predictable. Cooking area: listed square inches had to map onto real cooking — two pork butts, a few racks of ribs — not just look big on a spec sheet. Heat ceiling: anything under 450°F can't sear, and anything above 600°F earns credit for it. Build and insulation: double-wall or fully insulated steel and stainless components matter more than capacity if you cook in the cold or live somewhere damp. App and probes: WiFi is everywhere now, but owner feedback about connections dropping mid-cook separated the brands that mean it from the ones that list it.

This is what our research turned up on Amazon, not every pellet grill on the market. A few well-regarded models weren't available to confirm, so their absence here isn't a judgment. The grill below is a real option — it just lost out to a pick on specifics.

The Pit Boss 700 Carbon Series Wood Pellet — The Pit Boss 700 Carbon Series is the simplest grill here, and that's both the pitch and the problem. You get 718 square inches, a 180°F to 500°F range, porcelain-coated grates, a meat probe and a grease bucket, all at about 98 pounds — the lightest grill in the lineup and the easiest to wheel around. It lost to the Z Grills on two counts: the controller is listed as an LCD digital unit rather than a PID, and the 13.5-pound hopper is small enough that a long overnight cook will probably need a top-off. Still, the 500°F ceiling beats the Z Grills by 50 degrees, Pit Boss parts are easy to find, and if you want a straightforward grill with no app and no setup, this one makes sense.

Keep your pellets dry and they'll keep working — moisture swells them, jams the auger and makes smoke taste off. Store the bag sealed indoors, not in the hopper through a rainy week, and use the cleanout if your grill has one. Vacuum ash out of the firepot every few cooks, more often if you smoke low and slow, since ash buildup is what causes failed ignitions. Empty the grease bucket before it overflows, and scrape the drip tray whenever you can see pooling. A cover is worth buying; sun and standing water do more damage than cooking ever will. If something eventually quits, it'll most likely be the auger motor or the igniter, so check parts availability for your brand before you buy.

For this guide:

• We read manufacturer spec sheets for every grill here, comparing listed cooking area, temperature range, controller type and insulation.
• We reviewed published reviews and owner feedback themes for each brand, paying particular attention to app reliability, cold-weather performance and reports of auger and igniter failures.
• We set aside listings that are accessories rather than grills, and we did not use or operate any of these products.
• 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.