How to buy a grill – 4 rules from an expert grill tester

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1. Don't be fooled by jargon
2. Be realistic about how much food you eat
3. Stick to brands
4. Know your grill types
Grilling FAQs

published 17 July 2024

Amazon Prime Day discounts mean there are a wide range of grill deals out there, so it's a smart time to invest in a good grill.

However, grills are beset by hyper-masculine jargon and tenuous marketing. If you don't know what you're looking for, you can easily spend thousands of dollars by accident.

As a product tester, I've tested dozens of the best grills. I know first-hand which grills are worth buying, which features are gimmicks, and how to find a good deal. These four rules for buying a grill should help you find a great grill at a fair price.

1. Don't be fooled by jargon

A close up of grilling sausages on a charcoal grill, with grill smoke

One of my best pieces of advice is to be realistic about your grilling needs. Grilling marketing relies on playing up to alpha-male stereotypes, offering over-the-top functions like rotisseries, steam injectors, and offset ovens. These can all be great fun, but they are almost always unnecessary.

There are lots of great grills out there with a host of functions but most people never actually use them. Even side burners can be surplus to requirements. The most popular foods to grill are hamburgers, grilled chicken, and hot dogs. You don't need a side burner, a rotisserie function, or a fancy probe thermometer for these.

When I tested the Weber Genesis E-435, available at BBQ Guys, a few years ago, the other product testers and I couldn't decide if we liked the rotisserie arm. It makes delicious chicken, but it's difficult to set up and store. If you're hosting a big family gathering, you don't need to go to the trouble of trussing chickens when you can spatchcock them and roast them for basically the same effect.

You don't even really need an expensive grill - one of my friends cooks off a tiny notebook grill like this from Amazon. It costs $30 but I've she's made some incredible food with it. I've had a better hamburger yard sitting on a pallet in her yard than I've had from some six-burner gas grills I've tested for work. When I need to grill, I rarely fire up some huge smoker. If you need to feed a crowd, you're much better off with a simple charcoal or gas grill. It's faster and simpler

Of course, that said, if you're a real gourmand, it pays off to invest. When we tested the Weber Smokefire EPX6 Pellet Grill we found that it made incredible smoked ribs, shwarma, and shoulders of lamb. We've tested wok functions in grills on garlic shrimp and even tried cinnamon in rolls in some grills. If you already have a simple grill and want to be able to do more, then it's probably time to invest in a more expensive grill. If you just need some burgers, a basic grill is all you need.

2. Be realistic about how much food you eat

The other thing to consider is how much food you eat. People often overestimate how much food they eat. Every year, my family descends on my parents' backyard for a cookout, and we can just about cater to 15 people on a small charcoal drum grill. It's a bit of a squeeze to fit all the chicken legs and burgers and it takes some planning, but we pull it off every year. My family lives all over the world, so we only cook for this many people every so often. For the rest of the year, when it's just the nuclear family, a little charcoal grill is more than enough.

For example, my favorite gas grill, the Weber Spirit II E-310, is about average size for a three-burner grill. According to Weber, it has enough space for 15 smashed burgers, and from my tests, I think you could just about get away with grilling 20 traditional patties. That's a huge amount of food, and you rarely need to cook that much.

I think some grills are frankly overkill. We loved the Weber Genesis SPX-435, in part because it can fit 40 burgers. That's great if you have your extended family round for a party every other week, but most people won't ever need this much food.

3. Stick to brands

When I write about grills, I worry that it comes across as an extended advert for the big brands, especially Weber. I've spent years trying to find a significant flaw in their products but I'm still yet to find one. That said, my honest advice is to stick to name brands. I've tried a lot of no-name grills, and while they can save you a lot of money, and often cook as well as big brand products, they are almost always badly machined. I've had to replace screws, drill new holes for mounting racks, and in one case, hammer a part into shape to get it to fit on a cheap grill.

For example, I've tested this grill at Amazon a couple of times, listed under different names across Amazon and Walmart. It's currently sold as a 'Sophia & William' at Amazon , as an 'MFSTUDIO' at Amazon, and as an 'Alphajoy' at Walmart. There are tiny differences in some of the finishing, but the body of the grills is identical; I suspect they're from the same factory. It's a fairly good grill, and I love the adjustable charcoal tray so you can increase and decrease the temperature. However, every time I've built one of these grills, it's been missing an essential component and I've had to jerry-rig my way around it.

On one level, I enjoy this sort of DIY, but you shouldn't have to do it. More than anything, it's dangerous. Charcoal grills reach blistering temperatures, and cooking on a grill with legs cobbled together from spare parts is a burn and fire risk.

So, while a name-brand grill doesn't guarantee easy assembly - Napoleon grills are notoriously hard to build - the big brands are at least accountable. A Weber, Kamado Joe, Traeger, or Char-Broil grill comes with a warranty. If you're missing a part, you have a right to it. If anything breaks, you can claim it on the warranty. They all have customer services and replacement parts available online.

However, the vaguely-named grills you can find on Amazon aren't accountable. These grills are cheaply manufactured, given a vague, temporary brand name, and then sold through murky storefronts, usually based outside the US. If anything goes wrong, they're almost impossible to contact. It costs more, but a name-brand grill is much safer.

4. Know your grill types

Above all, work out what grill type is best suited to you. Each type has pros and cons that you need to know. In summary:

Charcoal grills cook with charcoal. They make the best-tasting food and are the cheapest type of grill. However, there's a learning curve to lighting them, and you have a short window in which to grill.

Gas grills use propane or natural gas. They make good food but lack the smokiness of charcoal grills. You also have the significant expense of keeping them topped up with propane. However, these grills are easy and fast to use.

Smokers are designed to smoke food low and slow for hours. They make delicious smoked food that's incomparable to any of the other types of grill. However, these are almost always around $1000, take up a lot of room, and are a little limited for other styles of cooking.

Kamado grills are the fancier version of charcoal grills. They use ceramic plates, so they become very hot and they can maintain heat for hours, so you can also use them to smoke. However, like smokers, these grills start at $1000, so aren't an option for most people.

Electric grills cook with electric filaments. I rarely recommend these - they are expensive and taste a little sterile.

Which of these you prefer is up to you. If you value taste above all, buy a charcoal grill. If money is tight, buy a charcoal grill. If you need something easy, buy a gas grill, and for anything fancier, consider a smoker or a kamado.

Grilling FAQs

When is the best time to buy a grill?

The best time to buy a grill is in a sales event, such as Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday. You often see good prices in winter when there's less demand.

Can you buy a grill already assembled?

Some retailers offer grill assembly services, most notably Home Depot and Ace Hardware.

For more help with grilling, take a look at our guides to how much you should spend on a grill, or our comparison of grills vs griddles.

As Head of eCommerce, Alex makes sure our readers find the right information to help them make the best purchase. After graduating from Cambridge University, Alex got his start in reviewing at the iconic Good Housekeeping Institute, testing a wide range of household products and appliances. He then moved to BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, assessing gardening tools, machinery, and wildlife products. Helping people find true quality and genuine value is a real passion.