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If you dream of making slow-smoked meats from home but have little experience, a pellet smoker might be right for you. Think of it as a smoky outdoor oven that cooks tender and moist brisket without constant babysitting. After testing three pellet grills and smoking 100 pounds of beef brisket, pork shoulder, and chicken, we think the Traeger Pro 575 is worth its admittedly high price: It’s the most precise, fuel-efficient, and well-built pellet grill we tried. Amandus Kahl
They’re pricey, but compared with traditional smokers, pellet grills provide a smoother path to great results for fledgling pit masters, limiting waste on expensive cuts of meat.
These low-and-slow cookers can reliably turn out brisket, pork shoulder, and chicken that’s silky, tender, and just a touch smoky.
Pellet smokers run on electricity and produce heat by igniting pellets of compressed sawdust. In our pick, one full hopper lasted 12 hours at low temp.
Good pellet smokers can keep the temperature super-steady, and Wi-Fi–enabled options (like on our picks) let you check in from your couch.
We’re impressed with the precise temperature control, simple control panel, and exceptional fuel efficiency of Traeger’s newest entry-level model.
Of the three pellet smokers we tested, the Traeger Pro 575 was the best at holding low temperatures with the fewest spikes in heat, thus producing more tender, juicier meat. It’s reliable and easy to control, and it can connect to Wi-Fi so you can control it remotely on your phone (which could actually come in handy over the course of a long, slow smoking session). Yes, it’s expensive, but meat is too. And tough barbecue is a real bummer. We think the Traeger Pro 575 makes up for its high price by increasing a beginner’s chances of success.
If you like barbecue with a more robust smoky flavor and a darker crust, this is the pellet smoker for you. But you can’t easily buy it online; use the Green Mountain Grills website to find an authorized dealer in your area.
The Green Mountain Grills Ledge is an excellent pellet grill in its own right. It’s sturdy, well made, and spacious. We tested the Daniel Boone Prime (now discontinued) and the Ledge is nearly identical and should perform the same, though it has some minor upgrades: thicker gauge grates, a light in the smoking chamber, a collapsible front shelf, and a redesigned power cord (along with a substantial price increase). In our previous tests, the Daniel Boone Prime produced a lot of smoke, which made for the darkest and smokiest-tasting brisket and pork shoulders. We experienced slightly more dramatic temperature spikes with the Daniel Boone Prime than with the Pro 575, but that’s something you’ll likely be able to regulate as you get to know your grill. The Daniel Boone Prime also burned through a hopper full of pellets the fastest of all the pellet grills we tested—a necessary trade-off if you want smokier barbecue.
We’re impressed with the precise temperature control, simple control panel, and exceptional fuel efficiency of Traeger’s newest entry-level model.
If you like barbecue with a more robust smoky flavor and a darker crust, this is the pellet smoker for you. But you can’t easily buy it online; use the Green Mountain Grills website to find an authorized dealer in your area.
I love cooking meat over fire. It’s one of my greatest joys in life. Cooking over mesquite wood fire is my favorite, but who am I kidding? I’ll gladly grill over charcoal and propane gas flames, too. This affinity started when, at 23, I began working the wood-fired grill at a restaurant. It was my responsibility to build and maintain the fire in that grill from the moment I started my shift until the end of dinner service—about 10 hours a shift for two and half years. Every night I walked out of the restaurant a smoky, sooty mess, and I loved every second of it.
Now my scrappy line-cooking days are behind me, and as a senior staff writer for Wirecutter I help review grills (gas, charcoal, and portable) and grilling tools, along with all kinds of other kitchen tools and appliances.
They’re the same thing, and the names get used interchangeably. Powered by electricity, pellet smokers allow you to make slow-smoked barbecue at home with a lot less guesswork and babysitting than in more traditional methods. Instead of wood and charcoal, these grills use pellets made from compressed sawdust for fuel. You set the grill to a specific temperature, and it automatically dispenses and ignites these pellets as needed to heat the cooking chamber over the long, slow smoking process.
Here’s how it works: The pellets sit in a hopper attached to the side of the grill. When you start the grill and set the temperature, an auger dispenses pellets into the fire pot. The grill then ignites the pellets, and when it reaches the set temperature, it automatically maintains that heat throughout the cooking process. As long as your grill is reliable, you could load it with pellets before you go to bed and have a beautifully smoked brisket by morning, without having to wake up and tend coals every couple of hours.
Despite the name, pellet grills aren’t the best choice for traditional grilling, which requires direct high heat to produce a seared crust on meats like steaks, chops, or burgers. You still need a propane gas grill or charcoal grill for that. Pellet grills or smokers are best suited for cooking slow-and-low barbecue: Think brisket, ribs, whole chicken, and pulled pork. You can also use one as an outdoor oven, with the caveat that anything you make will pick up a slight smoky taste—Traeger offers recipes for braises, roasts, and even baked goods.
As long as your grill is reliable, you could load it with pellets before you go to bed and have a beautifully smoked brisket by morning.
Compared with offset firebox or bullet smokers, pellet smokers are expensive but also significantly easier to use. There’s a lot of trial and error involved with mastering a regular smoker that a pellet grill eliminates, so if you’re a home-barbecue newbie you could save yourself a lot of failed briskets. But you should also know that most pellet grills generally produce milder-flavored meats, so if you’re into super-smoky barbecue, you may be interested in our runner-up pick.
Traeger isn’t the only company that makes pellet smokers, but it is the company that invented them. And from what we can tell, its lineup is still the most popular choice. Although we did test two less-expensive pellet grills from other companies—the Camp Chef SmokePro DLX and Green Mountain Grills Daniel Boone—we went into this guide with the main goal of determining whether Traeger earned its reputation as well as the hefty prices on its smokers.
Since we couldn’t test every pellet smoker Traeger makes, we decided to focus on its entry-level options, and after carefully comparing specs, we ultimately settled on testing the Traeger Pro 575. It isn’t the most basic entry-level model the company makes; Traeger still produces some simpler, older-generation models like the Pro Series 22. But we thought that the updated features on the Pro 575—such as more-precise temperature control and Wi-Fi connectivity to your phone or a smart speaker—would be useful to budding pitmasters, even though these additions made the grill more expensive.
Before we opened the first bag of wood pellets, we had to unbox and assemble the grills. We noted whether the assembly manuals were easy to follow and evaluated the skill level needed to put these things together.
Since we’re never ones to pass up an opportunity to torture ourselves, we decided to first test beef brisket on the pellet grills. Brisket is one of the most difficult cuts of meat to smoke because you need to maintain a steady low heat for up to 12 hours (or more depending on the size) if you want tender and juicy meat. We bought whole briskets (“packer” cut) and trimmed the fat caps with the help of Daniela Gorny, then associate managing editor at Wirecutter (and the best barbecue buddy a girl could ask for). We seasoned the briskets with salt and pepper and let them smoke at 225 degrees Fahrenheit until they reached an internal temperature of 165 °F to 170 °F, which took about eight hours. At this point the briskets hit a “barbecue stall.” Then we wrapped each brisket in foil (the old Texas Crutch) and returned them to the pellet grills to cook at 275 °F. There they stayed an additional four to five hours, until they reached an internal temperature of 190 °F to 200 °F.
For the second test, we smoked two large bone-in pork shoulders in each pellet grill. We wanted to see how the pellet grills performed when fully loaded with large cuts of meat. Compared with brisket, smoking pork shoulder is a little easier: You don’t need to trim the fat, and this cut isn’t as sensitive to temperature fluctuations. Other than that, we smoked the pork using the same process as we did with the brisket.
In a Traeger-only bonus round, we smoked three whole chickens. We had already concluded that the Traeger Pro 575 was our favorite of the three grills from the brisket and pork tests, and the chicken test didn’t tell us anything new, but since we already had the chicken, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to get an even better feel for the grill.
Throughout the entire test, we monitored the temperatures inside the pellet grills, each with their own ThermoWorks Signals 4-Channel BBQ Alarm Thermometer. We set the four probes of each thermometer in the same positions on every grill grate: both back corners, the middle (close to the meat), and the front corner farthest from the hopper. We also kept an eye on how fast the grills burned through pellets and how much smoke they let off.
After a marathon week of smoking a total of 100 pounds (untrimmed) of meat, we gathered some Wirecutter staffers at our Los Angeles office to taste and judge.
We’re impressed with the precise temperature control, simple control panel, and exceptional fuel efficiency of Traeger’s newest entry-level model.
The Traeger Pro 575 pellet grill is easy to use and fuel efficient, and it does an excellent job of maintaining its set temperature. It’s smartly packaged and easy to unbox and assemble. The Pro 575 is Wi-Fi enabled, which means you can control the grill via the Traeger WiFire app on your phone or a smart speaker. Even without any connectivity features, the newest entry-level Traeger pellet grill is a solid machine that will let you make delicious barbecue with little effort.
The Traeger Pro 575 gets the fundamentals right: It produced tender and moist barbecue in all of our tests and excelled at holding precise cooking temperatures. All bells and whistles aside, those are the most important factors. Can you imagine smoking a near-perfect, tender and juicy brisket on your first or second attempt? Frankly, I couldn’t until I did it on this grill. (It’s technically a smoker, but we’ve been over that.)
Throughout the cooking process, the four air probe thermometers we placed around the perimeter of the Traeger model’s grill grate all registered no more than 10 degrees above or below the target temperature. On the other two pellet grills we tested, the results fluctuated much more: The Camp Chef SmokePro DLX pellet grill, for example, regularly spiked up to 75 degrees over the set temperature, and the resulting brisket was noticeably drier than the one from the Traeger. Since the Traeger maintained a steady low temperature with the fewest spikes, it took around 12 hours to completely cook the brisket and pork shoulders—about two hours more than the other grills. But that is in no way a ding against the Traeger. You simply can’t rush good barbecue.
We also found that the Traeger Pro 575 is especially fuel efficient. All the grills had full hoppers at the start of each test. Over the course of a 12-hour cook (eight hours at 225 °F plus four at 275 °F), the Traeger ran out of pellets only at the end, when I was just about to take the meat off the grill. (In comparison, the Green Mountain Grills Daniel Boone Prime needed a pellet refill after around nine hours.) That means you can do a long, overnight cook on the Traeger without worrying about its running out of pellets and shutting down while you’re sleeping. But note that the Traeger will notify you with a low-temperature alert only when you’ve run out of fuel, at which point you have to take 15 minutes or so to go through the process of firing up the grill again and waiting for it to come to temperature after you’ve refilled the hopper.
The Pro 575’s simple control panel, located on the hopper, is intuitive to use. It consists of just two buttons (menu and ignite) and a dial that lets you set the temperature (in 5-degree increments) and scroll through menu options on the digital screen. This arrangement is an improvement over the controls of older models, which include an analog temperature dial that offers much less precision.
You’ll also find a jack for the probe thermometer that comes with the Traeger Pro 575, which allows you to monitor the internal temperature of your meat. Honestly, we thought this would be kind of a throwaway feature, since built-in temperature probes are rarely as accurate as a good instant-read thermometer. But much to our surprise, Traeger’s built-in probe consistently registered the exact same temperature as our ThermoWorks Thermapen. That’s pretty impressive.
Remember that pellet grills are powered by electricity, so they need to be plugged in.
The app allows you to adjust the grill’s temperature, set alerts, and turn off the grill. One thing it doesn’t do is turn the grill on, which is a safety feature we think makes a lot of sense. The app also includes recipes, which Daniela liked because they’re tailored to Traeger grills and come with customer ratings. But she didn’t try the “make now” feature, which walks you through certain recipes and sends alerts when it’s time to adjust the grill’s temperature.
Traeger’s packaging design and assembly setup make this grill easy to put together. Since the cooking chamber is a cylinder, the instructions tell you to keep it secured in the box so that you can attach the legs without it rolling around. Sadly, I didn’t get to experience that little convenience, because I had slashed up the box before cracking open the assembly instructions. Do yourself a favor and don’t be like me. Also, remember that pellet grills are powered by electricity, so they need to be plugged in; make sure to set yours up in a spot where you have access to an outlet.
Traeger strongly recommends that you use only its brand of wood pellets in its grills. We’re not quite sure how much that matters, as long as you use high-quality pellets made from 100% wood (no fillers). We used both Traeger and Camp Chef pellets, and both worked fine.
The Traeger Pro 575 comes with a seven-year warranty that covers manufacturing defects and replacement parts.
We were never able to use the Wi-Fi function on the Traeger Pro 575 while testing. But we’re confident that our trouble with connecting it to our Wi-Fi network was a placement problem and not the grill’s failure. To connect, Traeger advises minimizing the interference (namely, from walls) between the grill and your router. At our Los Angeles office, the router was tucked away in a closet, and the connection was very much interrupted by a few walls; we had no way to move the router closer to the grill or vice versa. When Daniela took the grill home for long-term testing, she connected it to her Wi-Fi network with little trouble.
We didn’t miss using the WiFire app, which offers detailed recipes for smoking various meats as well as the ability to monitor and control the smoker from your phone or an Alexa smart speaker, but that option could be really nice to have if you want to monitor the progress of an overnight smoke from the comfort of your bed. If you want to use the app, consider whether your Wi-Fi will reach your yard or whether you might need a Wi-Fi extender.
It’s also important to note that most current Wi-Fi routers transmit over two frequencies, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, but like almost all smart-home devices, the Traeger grill connects only to the 2.4 GHz band. If you’re struggling to connect the grill to the app, make sure your phone is also on the 2.4 GHz band.
Even though the Traeger Pro 575 costs the same as our runner-up pick, it does lack some useful features, like built-in side tables. However, the Traeger was easily the best-performing pellet grill we tested, so we think it’s worth the investment.
Because the Traeger is so fuel efficient, the brisket and pork shoulder we cooked on it had the mildest smoke flavor of all three grills we tested. That was something our taste testers noticed—although the Traeger meats got high marks from all of them—and it’s worth considering if you prefer super-smoky barbecue. If you love a lot of smoke on your meat, you might be happier with our runner-up, the Green Mountain Grills Ledge, which produced the darkest and boldest-flavored barbecue we made on any of the grills. The trade-off: It burned through pellets a lot faster than the Traeger and emitted such enormous plumes of smoke that we dubbed it the “smoky girl who loves drama.”
When Wirecutter editor Daniela Gorny first brought the Traeger 575 home in 2020, she had one small complaint: “The one feature it doesn’t have, which I wish it did, is an alert to tell me if the pellets are running low.” But in the two years since, Daniela has changed her mind about the need for a pellet sensor, mostly due to the Traeger’s efficiency. She mentioned there were pellets still in the hopper after smoking pork butts overnight—we’d experienced the same in our 2020 testing—so not having a sensor hasn’t bothered her too much. If you’re curious, Traeger sells a $90 pellet sensor that, if added to your smoker, then enables the app to alert you.
Though it took a few tries, Daniela successfully connected the grill to her Wi-Fi network using the Traeger WiFire app. She told us, “The app can be a bit clunky but overall works great. I was able to monitor the temperature of the smoker, and towards the end I inserted the probe [the thermometer included with the grill] into the meat and was able to just sit on the couch and read while keeping an eye on the internal temp.”
Daniela also mentioned how Traeger has improved its app while she’s had the grill. She said that in the beginning she had trouble connecting the app to the grill, even after multiple tries. And for a spell, the app would occasionally crash on her. However, it seems Traeger is committed to providing app updates to fix those sorts of bugs, because it’s been working very smoothly for her for at least a year now.
If you like barbecue with a more robust smoky flavor and a darker crust, this is the pellet smoker for you. But you can’t easily buy it online; use the Green Mountain Grills website to find an authorized dealer in your area.
The Green Mountain Grills Ledge is an updated version of its well-loved pellet grill, the Daniel Boone Prime. In early 2020, we tested and picked the Prime, which has since been discontinued. In those tests, we noted that the Prime produced a lot more smoke than the Traeger Pro 575, so it has its downsides but is good for folks who prefer smokier barbecue. Also note that the Ledge and other Green Mountain Grill models can be purchased only from authorized brick-and-mortar retailers. The website helps you locate your nearest authorized dealer.
The Ledge is almost identical to that smoky beast we tested over two years ago, save for a few upgrades (and a price increase). We’re confident that the Ledge will smoke meats the same as the Prime we tested. In addition to the features we liked on the Prime—digital display, Wi-Fi connectivity, two thermometer jacks, built-in side tables, windows in both the pellet hopper and lid—the Ledge has upgrades, such as thicker and stronger cooking grates, an interior light, a collapsible front table, and a redesigned phone app. The Ledge also costs $900 (at the time of publishing), which is $200 more than our previous runner-up pick.
In our initial tests, compared with the Pro 575, the Prime had slightly more dramatic temperature fluctuations, about 25 degrees above and below our set temperatures. This inconsistency has continued occasionally in long-term testing, usually appearing as a brief temperature spike as the smoker adds more pellets to its hopper. It levels off and returns to the set temperature within minutes, and we don’t believe it has ever affected the outcome on a long, slow smoke, although some foods might be more sensitive to it than others. The Prime’s push-button control panel and black-steel-box design aren’t as sleek as the Pro 575’s scrolling LED display and rounded-barrel shape.
Now let’s talk about the smoke. The Prime burned through a hopper’s worth of pellets about 20% faster than both the Traeger and Camp Chef grills, which was not at all surprising to us considering the massive plumes of smoke that poured from the Prime. That amount of smoke is great if you love smoky barbecue meat. The pork shoulders and brisket we cooked on the Prime were dark, flavorful, and the smokiest of all the meat we cooked that week. The Daniel Boone put a pretty decent bark on the brisket, too, but in juiciness its brisket came in second (though a close second) to the brisket we cooked on the Pro 575.
But there are some downsides to getting that much smoky flavor: In our tests, the Prime created so much smoke that the fumes wafted into the office and created a campfire haze that was hard for us to ignore. That made me think about the fact that I live in a densely populated area, and my neighbors might get really tired of sporadic clouds of wood smoke, especially over the course of 12 to 16 hours. And then there’s the risk of running out of pellets if you’re smoking, say, a brisket overnight. No one wants to wake up to a cold grill and partially cooked meat.
The Ledge has a single spacious cooking grate that measures 458 square inches—large enough for three large pork shoulders with extra room for airflow. Even though the Traeger Pro 575 technically has a bigger cooking area (572 square inches), that number combines the main grate (418 square inches) and a narrow upper rack (154 square inches).
We couldn’t test the Wi-Fi on the Prime for the same reason we couldn’t on the Traeger: Our router sat behind a bunch of steel and concrete, which obstructed connectivity. However, Wirecutter editor Harry Sawyers has been long-term testing the Prime since 2020 and finds the app a bit clunky.
After testing pellet grills in 2020, we handed off the Daniel Boone Prime to Harry Sawyers, a senior editor at Wirecutter. Harry noted that the Prime is easy to use and maintain. He told us that it smokes meat well, either fast (chickens) or slow (pork butts), adding that the “grate size is ample; easily enough room to arrange a rack of ribs, two chickens, and assorted smaller stuff for a holiday crowd.” He says it’s accessible to clean: “[It’s] pretty easy to remove grill grates with a pair of tongs (even while hot) to scrape the drip tray before big messes stiffen up.” And running it manually (not using the cooking programs in the app) is just about as simple and straightforward as it gets.
However, Harry also had some criticisms of the Wi-Fi connectivity, app, and temperature probes. On the Wi-Fi, he noted, “The app generates its own Wi-Fi network. To use the app, you disconnect from your home network and connect to the grill network.” So if you’re using your phone for other things while using the app, you have to toggle between your home Wi-Fi network and the app’s. Harry also found it too easy to accidentally turn the grill off through the app because the power button is “at the top of the phone screen crammed very tight against other buttons you routinely need to press, like “connect.”
Regarding the temperature probes, Harry said he believes one of the jacks in the control panel is occasionally inaccurate. He said, “When running a food profile, thermometer issues can cause real problems, because they may think the food is ‘done’ based on an inaccurate reading, causing the smoker to shut down.” So let us take this moment to say that no matter how “smart” your appliances are, you may still need to rely on your senses, experience, and knowledge. A leave-in probe thermometer can only take you so far because it’s taking a reading from one tiny part of the meat. It’s a handy tool for monitoring progress, but you still need attention and a good instant read thermometer toward the end of the smoke.
Pellet grills work best if you regularly clean and maintain them. Compared with propane or charcoal grills, pellet grills are more prone to grease and soot buildup because the wood pellets burn at a low temperature. Pellet grills also have electro-mechanical parts, which require extra care and attention—we’re not talking kid gloves here, but you can’t blast your pellet grill clean with a hose or power washer. Your grill will perform better for years to come if you follow these tips.
Do not hose down or power wash a pellet grill. They have electronic parts and motors that could short out.
Even though these grills are pretty sturdy and are made to stay outside, that doesn’t mean they’re impervious to the elements. If you live in a humid or rainy climate, remove the pellets from the hopper before storing your grill. Moisture causes wood pellets to expand and possibly dissolve into one solid mass, like cement.
Do not hose down or power wash a pellet grill. They have electronic parts and motors that could short out. If you have a gunked-up grill on your hands, it’s best to spray the affected areas with degreaser and scrape off the layers of soot with a putty knife. Wipe everything down with a wet rag and then run the grill hot to burn off any residue.
Store your pellet grill in a covered area, or even better, in a garage or storage shed. If you don’t have that kind of storage space, get a grill cover. Both Traeger and Green Mountain Grills make covers (which you have to buy separately) for their specific models.
Wood pellets are arguably the most sustainable fuel for smoking and grilling. Unlike propane and natural gas (nonrenewable fossil fuels), pellets are a renewable biofuel. And compared with lump charcoal (wood chunks burned in a vacuum) or briquettes (sawdust often bound with chemical fillers), pellets are simply extruded mashed wood pulp—produced without incineration. Cooking pellet manufacturers use a combination of harvested trees plus waste from sawmills, like sawdust and scrap wood. Wood pellets that are 100% wood (the only type you should be using) are clean-burning, efficient, and easy to use. As far as the electricity used to ignite the wood pellets, a representative at Traeger told us that the Pro 575 uses 300 watts to heat up, then 50 watts per hour for the duration of the cook. By contrast, electric home ovens use between 2,000 and 5,000 watts per hour (depending on the temperature setting).
We were going to shout out the Camp Chef SmokePro DLX Pellet Grill as a decent budget pick, but it looks like the first-generation model we tested is no longer available. Although the model name is the same, the new version has an updated control panel that includes an LED screen and a dial (similar to the Traeger Pro 575). If you're considering the updated model, here are our notes on the first-generation SmokePro DLX:
Traeger has a lot of pellet grills to choose from. We chose to test one from the Pro Series because it was the company’s newest line of entry-level models at that time. (We avoided retailer-specific Traeger models because they’re not as widely available). From there, you get into the higher-end Ironwood and Timberline series. Compared with the Pro Series pellet grills (PDF), the Ironwood and Timberline models have extra features such as double-wall insulated fireboxes, adjustable grates, locking casters, and built-in side tables.
If you’re looking for a less-expensive Traeger, you might consider the first-generation Pro Series 22 (the Pro 575 is the second generation), which we didn’t test; it costs about $200 less. The Traeger Pro 22 has only 10 preset temperature options up to 450 °F, whereas the Pro 575 lets you set the temperature in 5-degree increments up to 500 °F. The Pro 22 also doesn’t connect to Wi-Fi. However, it does come with two temperature probes, whereas the Pro 575 has only one.
As we mentioned above, Traeger also makes many retailer-specific models. These are difficult to tell apart at a glance. Many, but not all, have the first-generation Pro Series control panel with a temperature dial and a simple LED display. Costco has the largest selection of exclusive Traeger pellet grills, which includes the following:
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.
Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting on all things cooking and entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd.
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