The Best Pellet Smokers for Easy Wood-Fired Cooking (2026)
Since they first showed up in the 1980s, pellet grills have been bridging the gap between two approaches to outdoor cooking that were once thought to be mutually exclusive: propane grilling, with its easy push-button accessibility, and wood smoking, with its deep flavor and hands-on ritual. The two styles were the Montagues and Capulets of backyard cooking—their followers forever fighting. Choosing the benefits of one meant sacrificing everything good about the other. But the pellet grill? It made the lofty promise that you could have it all.
Our top picks
- The best pellet smoker overall: Weber Searwood 600
- The most versatile pellet smoker: Recteq X-Fire 825
- The best budget pellet smoker: Traeger Westwood
I’ve been lucky enough to get to teach myself quite a bit about live fire cooking since beginning at Bon Appétit and Epicurious in 2021, and I developed a real love for feeding, tending, and controlling fires. But here’s something else I learned: It’s unusual that I have time to do all that. And as the technology on pellet grills has continued to improve, the control and convenience have almost turned them into wood-fired versions of a kitchen range. And as I’ve tried to keep my smoking and grilling habit going with small kids around, that sort of low-impact cooking has been incredibly important.
You don’t need to be the parent of a periodically temperamental 4-year-old to make good use of a pellet grill, though. They’re terrific as an entry point for smoking if you’ve felt put off by the amount of work involved to use something like an offset smoker, but they also produce delicious chicken, ribs, brisket, and anything else in their own right.
To find out which pellet grills deserve a spot on your backyard patio, I got to grilling. I smoked ribs, grilled chicken, tested longer cooks like brisket and pork butt, and tossed on some burgers to see how each pellet grill handled high-heat tasks. Along the way, we got into features like app connectivity, built-in meat probes, and the ability to sear as well as smoke to land on our top picks.
In this story
- How pellet smokers work
- More on our top picks
- How we tested pellet smokers
- What to look for in a pellet smoker
- Other pellet smokers we liked
- Pellet smokers we don’t recommend
- The pellet smoker questions you should be asking
But first, what are pellet grills?
Before I get to how they work, you should know what wood pellets are. They’re made from wood shavings, chips, or other byproducts that come from lumber mills, compressed into something about the size of a large vitamin capsule. Originally, they were used as a more efficient source of heat in home stoves, but in the ‘80s Joe Traeger (the Traeger of Traeger fame) rigged up a way to use them in a grill configuration.
There are four basic devices that pellet grills use today to heat and maintain cooking temperatures.
- First, an augur: It’s basically a big screw that sits between a small fire pot and the hopper full of pellets. As it turns, it moves pellets from the hopper to the firepot.
- Next, a heating element: This is a small metal rod that gets incredibly hot and lights any pellets in the fire pot. It’s used to automatically start the fire inside.
- Third, a fan system: This circulates air around the grill and speeds up, slows down, or shuts off to give more oxygen to the fire in the burn pot and keep it burning at the right level.
- Finally, a PID or thermostat. This keeps track of the temperature (like the thermostat in your house), and if it starts to dip too low, it turns on the fan and/or the augur (the same way your thermostat tells the heater to kick on) to move more fuel to the fire.
Together, those three create a self-regulating space inside a closed grill that, if it works correctly, you can walk away from and not think about for hours. Importantly, though, most pellet grills are more challenging to use for open-top grilling, because, unlike a gas or charcoal grill, there is one small source of fire that doesn’t provide direct heat to all parts of the cooking space the way multiple burners or a fully spread out charcoal bed would.
You can see the difference in “high” temperature grilling between the Weber Searwood (pictured here) and the Traeger Westwood (on the right).
It's hard to get those hard grill marks on most pellet smokers because, in almost every case, you don't have direct heat right under the grate.
The best pellet smoker overall: Weber Searwood
Weber
Searwood 600 Pellet Grill
BBQGuys
Ace Hardware
Lowe's
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Wide temperature range
- Creates a very smoky cooking environment
- Manual feed settings allow for open-top grilling
Cons:
- Control panel isn’t intuitive
Specs
- Size: 45.75" x 38.50" x 23"
- Grilling area: 648 square inches (420 square inches in main cooking area)
- Temperature range: 180°F (“super smoke”) -600°F
- Pellet capacity: 20 lb.
- Wi-Fi connection: yes
- Bluetooth connection: yes
- Warranty: Firebox, 5 years; electrical, 3 years
When it comes to pellet grills, Weber is still fairly new to the game. Joe Traeger first developed and began to patent the pellet smoker in 1986, but the first Weber model didn’t hit backyards until 2020. Despite its late addition to the pellet grill scene, the Searwood, Weber’s second-generation smoker, offered the best balance of performance and utility of anything I tried.
What we love: During the smoking tests, I didn’t find that temperatures moved more than five degrees in either direction, and the Searwood created a richly smoky environment that imparted wonderful wood-fired flavor to the food.
The Searwood offers a few upgrades to Weber’s original pellet grill tech, notably the addition of manual feed settings. That means that instead of using the thermostat to trigger more pellets (and therefore more fire) from the grill’s burn pot, you can just set a continuous pace for them to drop in. That makes it easier to maintain the higher temperatures that you need for open-top grilling of burgers or steaks, and it makes the Searwood truly multi-faceted. Weber claims the Searwood can hit temps of 600°F, and that’s what I found (specifically, my laser thermometer registered 611°F).
The central location of the burn pot made this the most evenly heated of the pellet grills I tested, with a temperature difference of only 10°F from one side to the other.
Finally, the Searwood is compatible with Weber's lineup of adapters called Weber Crafted; you can drop these accessories, such as a huge flattop griddle, wok burner, and pizza stone (though it doesn’t quite get hot enough that I’d recommend this as a pizza oven), into the grill to transform the cooking surface. It all adds up to a pellet smoker that could be your only piece of outdoor cooking equipment, which, if you’re going to spend up to $900 or $1,000, is important.
What we’d leave: Surprisingly (because Weber generally has such thoughtful design), the interface was a little confusing to use. I wouldn’t have figured out all the settings without thoroughly reading the instruction manual. For example, to shut the grill down, I had to first push the menu button, turn a dial until a tiny power icon flashed at the bottom of the display, then push a button to engage it. The experience of using Weber’s app was much more straightforward than the physical interface.
The cooking space on the Weber I tested might be a little tight for someone throwing a neighborhood-wide BBQ, but there is an XL version of the Searwood that offers almost 50% more room.
In the long run: With more than a year regularly using the Searwood as my primary piece of outdoor cooking paraphernalia, it's held up well. Some of the things I found annoying about the interface during my first use were easy enough to get used to. I've been impressed at how easy it cleans up, though if you want to keep the inside looking good, I'd line the bottom with heavy-duty foil and replace the “flavorizer” bar (which will catch all the fat drippings from whatever you cook) every couple of seasons.
The best budget pellet smoker: Traeger Westwood
Traeger Westwood
Traeger
Home Depot
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Offers extra low temperature to infuse more smoke
- Quality build
- Great extras available
Cons:
- Temperature maxes out at 450℉
- Temperature less stable than more expensive grills
Specs
Size: 46" x 47" x 35"
Grilling area: 653 square inches (424 square inches in main cooking area)
Temperature range: 180°F-450°F
Pellet capacity: 18 lb.
Wi-Fi connection: Yes
Bluetooth connection: Yes
Warranty: 7 years
Traeger grills have been synonymous with pellet cooking for decades, but because they cook so well, they’ve usually been some of the most expensive (they’re top of the top-of-the-line Timberline series of grills starts at $3300). But as interest in pellet smokers has grown, Traeger has introduced more inexpensive grills, and their most affordable launched in 2026, the Westwood. I know calling something that costs $700 a “budget” choice might seem suspect, but it is a meaningful climb down in price from either of the other two picks. And smokers are one of those categories of items where, if you choose to get something really cheap, you'll just be shooting yourself in the foot. Materials and construction on cheap smokers are often apparent, and it's hard to get the kind of consistent temperatures you need to achieve the results you want.
What we love: In its price range, Westwood produced the best-tasting ribs of the bunch, and grilled chicken nicely when it was cranked up to the max (450℉). And that could have been the whole story right there, but it scored well on all the objective tests too. During a 3-hour smoke at 250℉, it held temperatures very steady. The several times I cracked the lid to check the temperature it was within about 10 degrees of the set temperature. It was not perfectly even across the cooking area (it was hotter on the end away from the firepot because of the way air circulates and vents), but pretty close.
It was, however, very even on its highest setting, with temperature readings within 5 degrees of each other. That makes it a good versatile choice—it’s good for burgers and chicken breasts as well as longer, cooler smoking sessions.
The Westwood used its pellets efficiently: In order to put a meaningful dent in the pellet pile in the hopper, I had to run at the max temp for more than an hour.
I’ve also come around on the idea of WiFi technology for pellet grills. As I’ve used them more, relying on the ability to check and control them without walking out of the house and across the yard (even being able to control them while I’m out running errands) has come in handy. And the Westwood was the most affordable grill I’ve used with a WiFi connection.
Finally, choosing Traeger opens you up to a world of convenient accessories. The PAL rail system Traeger uses for all its new grills and griddles gives you access to as many hooks as you need for your tools, a basket to keep condiments nearby, and a paper towel holder for any particular saucy cooking you do on it. As I’ve become more and more enamored of cooking outside, I can’t overstate how nice it is to have a place to keep everything you need near the grill.
What we’d leave: Like the Weber, the interface isn’t as clear as it might be. In order to start the grill, you have to hold down a button that triggers a 3-2-1 countdown. A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
And, while I’m picking this as a budget choice, it is $100 more expensive than the previous budget winner from Pit Boss. Ultimately, though, to be able to get Traeger quality at a price that’s within shouting distance of less expensive brands put this over the top for me.
Good to know: I think the 424 square inches in the main cooking area of the standard Westwood is enough for anything besides a huge cookout, but there is an XL version of the Westwood that gives you space for another couple racks of ribs.
The most versatile pellet smoker: Recteq X-Fire 825
Recteq
X-Fire Pro 825
Amazon
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Wide temperature range
- High-quality material
- Manual feed settings allow for open-top grilling
Cons:
- Controls aren’t intuitive
- Heating is a little uneven across the cook box
Specs
- Size: 47" x 54" x 30"
- Grilling area: 842 square inches (578 square inches in main cooking area)
- Temperature range: 225°F–1250°F
- Pellet capacity: 20 lb.
- Wi-Fi connection: yes
- Bluetooth connection: yes
- Warranty: Firebox, 6 years
One limitation of older pellet grills is that they don’t really get hot enough to truly grill. If you want to sear a steak or get those idyllic grill marks on your burgers, a top temperature of 450°F doesn’t always cut it, especially when you consider the fact that to hit even that modest temperature, the lid needs to be kept closed.
Recteq’s X-Fire series does not have that issue. Not even close.
What we loved: This Recteq grill gets hotter than any other pellet grill I’ve ever used or even heard of. When set to high with its sear burner opened up all the way, my laser thermometer, which tops out at 1000°F, gave me an error message trying to get a reading on the cast-iron grates. Recteq says it can hit 1250°F. That’s definitely hotter than you need, but it means you can easily get more useful searing temperatures, and, with a pizza steel, use this as a pizza oven if you want.
That’s because the X-Fire is designed to alternately function as a smoker or a pellet-fired grill thanks to the inclusion of two burn pots and its adaptive sear controller (basically a cover that you can open to expose food directly to the live fire in the pot).
You can dial the heat back, though. Choosing the smoke setting on the Recteq activates only one of the burners and lets you set temperatures between 225°F and 400°F, adjusted in 25-degree increments. I found that the temps fluctuated up to 20°F during a multi-hour cook, which is more than the Weber, but still within what I’d consider an acceptable range.
It also doesn’t produce as much smoke as the Weber, but it still left my ribs tender with a rich, smoky flavor.
Finally, this just feels like a high-quality piece of equipment (which, given its $1,500+ price tag, it should). Made of heavy stainless steel from the lid to the front shelf to the impossible-to-miss bullhorn handle, this is a high-end cooker in every way.
What we’d leave: The biggest issue with the X-Fire was that its heating was uneven across the grill. Because the smoke setting only uses the burn pot on the left side of the grill, that side ran sometimes more than 30°F hotter than the right side (it’s worth noting that, while the heat wasn’t even across the grill, the two sides did move in parallel; if temperatures increased 10 degrees on one side they increased about the same amount on the other). It’s a problem that you’ll also find on some offset smokers, but one that a good pellet smoker, with its fans and thermostats, would ideally correct for. If you’re smoking something big like a whole brisket, need to make sure to face the thicker part towards the hotter side or you’ll get some wonky results.
The one other issue I had was dealing with the interface. The mode setting (smoke or grill) happens with large dials at the center of the grill, and the temperature setting happens on a digital controller to the left of the grill. The instruction manual was not entirely clear about operation, though Recteq does a great job with the how-to videos on its website.
How we tested pellet grills
While most big box stores offer white glove assembly services for big items like pellet grills, we thought it was important to get a full picture of what buying one means, so the first thing we did was unbox and assemble all the grills. (The Weber Searwood was an exception due to delayed shipping; the store provided assembly.)
Next came the objective tests. I timed how long it took the grill to heat to a normal smoking temperature of 250°F and a more grilling-friendly 450°F. Then I ran them for an hour at 250°F and used the Thermoworks air probe thermometer to check how close the temperature in the cooking chamber came to the one set on the controller and how stable it remained over time. To check maximum temperatures, I used a laser thermometer after half an hour of preheating at the max setting.
Finally, I cooked with them. On every pellet smoker, I prepared ribs (prepared using Rodney Scott’s method) as well as various cuts of chicken. I continued cooking on the models that performed well, doing longer cooks like brisket and pork butt, and hotter ones like burgers. During these cooks, I also checked features like Wi-Fi connectivity, the convenience of integrated meat probes, and overall app experience if a grill featured one.
What to look for in a pellet grill
Temperature versatility
The best pellet grills are expensive. Even the budget grill in this story costs more than $500. So, in a perfect world, it could be the only outdoor cooking apparatus you need to own. That means it should offer a temperature range that runs from low and slow for smoking (225°F and ideally even lower) to regular grilling temps for burgers or hot dogs (450°F), and preferably even hotter for a hard sear.
Temperature stability
The real advantage of a pellet grill over a charcoal or other wood-fired grill is that it takes most of the work out of smoking meat. That means it needs to hold a consistent temperature for several hours without any intervention from you.
A user-friendly interface
Unlike most wood or charcoal grills, a pellet smoker is a techy piece of cooking equipment. It has buttons, it has dials, it has firmware. Good pellet smokers are so intuitive to operate that you shouldn’t even need to look at the instruction manual. Bad ones have a lot of unlabeled buttons or mysterious icons.
Other pellet grills I liked
Pit Boss 850 FB2
Pit Boss 850 FB2
Pit Boss Grills
Walmart
For a grill that costs less than $600, this Pit Boss felt like it had a quality build, right down to the casters and heavy rubber wheels that moved easily over a bumpy driveway. During testing, it lit easily and heated quickly in a little more than 15 minutes. The interface was easy to figure out and adjusts in 5-degree increments, with more precise temperature control than the 25-degree increments on the Recteq or the 10-degree increments on the Weber. At least in theory. In practice, it was a bit less precise than the Weber and about the same as the Traeger Westwood.
It produced succulent ribs and chicken and showed no issues of jamming or burning through pellets quickly, which sometimes show up in inexpensive pellet grills. The main cooking area is a little bigger than the standard Traeger Westwood, but I don’t think that difference is so much that it would impact most people frequently.
The choice to pick the Traeger as my top affordable grill really came down to the convenience of cooking with it. The Pit Boss lacks a shelf to hold food as you put it on or take it off the grill (you have to use the top of the hopper), and any of the extras available to add to the Traeger. But this is still a great choice for a relatively inexpensive pellet smoker.
Traeger Woodridge
Traeger Woodridge
BBQGuys
Traeger
Traeger’s newest line attempts to offer higher quality at a lower price, and the entry-level Woodridge is both higher quality than our budget pick, Pit Boss, and lower priced than our top pick, Weber. It has the friendliest control panel I tested (and a very useful app experience), and produced excellent ribs, chicken, and pork shoulder.
It retails for $900 at the time of writing (though it's often on sale for $800), which is more expensive than what we’d consider a “budget” grill, but for a little less than the Weber and a lot less than the Recteq, this is still a great smoker at a more approachable price.
It doesn’t have as wide a temperature range as the Weber—it maxes out at 500°F, which we could only hit that with the lid closed—so it’s not quite as versatile. But for low and slow cooking, we enthusiastically recommend it.
NOTE: There are two other grills in the Woodridge line (the Pro and the Elite) that are more expensive and come with additional features not tested yet for this piece.
Traeger Ironwood
Traeger Ironwood 885
Amazon
Traeger
The Ironwood is a big step up in price from Traeger’s entry-level Westwood grill. It's also better insulated. The smokier environment inside the Ironwood produced food as good as the winning Searwood.
As with the Woodridge, the Ironwood gets an enthusiastic recommendation, but misses a top spot because of its relatively high price point.
Traeger Pro 34
Traeger Pro 34
Traeger
The oldest line of Traeger reviewed here, the Pro 34, is a serviceable and affordable pellet grill that has simply been overtaken by advances in the pellet grill space. It only has eight temperature settings between 180°F and 375°F, along with “smoke” and “high” settings. The latter of which is supposed to top out at 450°F, but didn’t always get there. However, the Pro is still made with the same level of craftsmanship as the other two Traeger smokers tested here, and if you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive piece for easy smoking, it makes a good second or third addition to an outdoor cooking lineup.
Oklahoma Joe’s Rider 900 DLX
Oklahoma Joe's Rider 900 DLX
Home Depot
When I first tested wood pellet grills, the Rider from Oklahoma Joe’s offered the widest temperature range, hitting 700°F, with a dedicated sear zone in the center of the grill where that heat was focused. As a smoker, it tended to run a little hot, holding at temps 25 degrees above the one set on the thermostat, but it still produced tender, smoky results.
It also has a powerful auger that never jammed and a convenient pellet clean-out design that drops the contents of the pellet hopper straight into a storage bucket, making it easy to switch between pellet types if, say, you want mesquite pellets to smoke brisket and cherry pellets to smoke pork.
Pellet grills I don’t recommend
This budget option from Z Grills, like the Traeger Pro, has been overtaken by improvements in pellet grill technology. But unlike the Traeger, it had a lower quality feel to it, which moved it into this section. Even when it’s on sale for $400 (like it is as I write), I still think it’s worth the extra $150 to get the somewhat heavier-duty Pit Boss.
Cuisinart Oakmont and Weber Smokefire (And a note on discontinued pellet grills)
In an earlier test, I used models that are either entirely discontinued or being phased out, including the Cuisinart Oakmont and the Weber Smokefire (Weber’s first-generation pellet grill). Neither is a bad grill, but if you find them available, I don’t recommend them anymore, as there are now so many newer releases that offer just as good performance for less money.
Other pellet smoker questions you might have
If I have a pellet grill, do I need another grill?
Not if you pick one that can actually hit higher temperatures. Less expensive pellet grills can be limiting because they don’t get hot enough for standard grilling tasks like chicken or burgers. And having tried to grill burgers on a machine that struggles to hit 400°F, I can tell you, it’s incredibly frustrating. In that case, you probably would want something like an inexpensive kettle grill or a gas grill.
Are pellet grills as good as other smokers?
“Good” is far too subjective for me to answer that definitively. For me personally, I think they're good but different. Wood pellets do impart smoke flavor into the food they’re firing. They also come in a range of varieties, like hickory, cherry, and pecan, which allows for some flexibility. Can you get as much smoke as you can from an offset smoker that uses large wood splits? No. And for more intense bbq folks, that may be a deal breaker. But the convenience of using pellets will make them a justifiable trade for lots of people.
More grill gear for your outdoor cooking needs
Source: This story originated with Bon Appétit.
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