Grill Buying Guides

When you're cooking for a crowd, square inches matter. We ranked every grill and smoker we track by primary cooking area, from big multi-burner gas grills to barrel-sized pellet rigs. If you regularly host, cater, or just hate cooking in batches, start at the top.

You don't need to spend four figures for a grill that cooks great food for years. Every pick here costs $500 or less and is ranked by owner rating, so the highest-rated value champions come first.

A great crust needs serious heat. We ranked the grills that get hottest — by max temperature — so you can find the one that'll char a ribeye in seconds. Owner rating breaks ties.

Smart grills let you set the temperature, watch your meat probe, and get a done alert from the couch. Every pick here offers WiFi/app control or PID temperature management, ranked by owner rating so the most reliable smart cookers lead.

Real barbecue is a low-and-slow game. We pulled together every pellet grill, offset smoker, kamado, and electric smoker we track and ranked them by owner rating — whether you want set-it-and-forget-it pellets or a stick-burning offset, the most-loved smokers are here.

Smoking the Thanksgiving turkey is the category's final exam, and the equipment question is mostly a clearance question: a 12-14 pound bird needs real grate space, and a spatchcocked one needs even more width. Every pick below holds steady indirect heat with room for the bird — ranked by owner rating.

A tailgate grill has one extra spec that matters more than any other: it has to survive the truck bed and set up in a parking spot. Everything here weighs under 100 pounds and earns its rank by owner rating — from griddles that feed a whole lot row to kettles that have worked stadium lots for fifty years.