The Best Pellet Smokers for Easy Wood-Fired Cooking (2025)

11 5 minutes read

What we’d leave: As a budget grill, the Pit Boss is more limited. Its temperature range is supposed to go from 180°F up to 500°F when you open the “flame broiler” plate below the grates, but I struggled to get temps that high with the lid open. During smoking, the temperature also bounced around more than the Weber or the Recteq, sometimes as much as 30°F, and it didn’t create nearly as much smoke as the Weber or the Recteq.

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

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.

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 we tested and liked

Traeger Woodridge

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.

At $800 at the time of writing, it’s still 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

The Ironwood is a big step up in price from Traeger’s entry Woodridge grill and offers a couple features the Woodridge does not: a low temperature “super smoke” setting, and additional insulation. Both contribute to a smokier environment and produce 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

The oldest line of Traeger reviewed here, the Pro 34, is a serviceable and very 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

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 we 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.

A note on some 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 are bad grills, but if you find them available, I don’t recommend them anymore, as there are now so many newer releases that offer performance that is just as good for less money.

The questions you should be asking about pellet grills

How do pellet grills work?

Pellet grills get their heat from wood pellets. A mechanical auger, regulated by a thermostat, moves them from a hopper into a fire pot to maintain a consistent temperature inside during long cooks.

Wood pellets are typically made from waste wood, like shavings and sawdust, compressed into small, dense pieces. Because they’re more compact and uniform than regular pieces of wood, they don’t burn as hot or as long.

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.