I keep a twenty year logbook of hold times, pellet brands, and what Kansas weather does to a cook, and every October I get the same text message from three different neighbors: which one should I buy? So here is the pellet grill comparison I keep retyping, built around the four products that come up in that conversation most often. Three of them are cookers and one is the cheapest accessory in this article. This is not four brisket graphs. It is a look at what each machine is built to do, where the design gives out, and who should actually spend the money.
For most people, the Camp Chef Woodwind WiFi 20 is the pick, because the ash cleanout removes the worst chore in pellet cooking and the controller is the part you will notice on every single cook. The Weber SmokeFire EX4 is the better pure grill and the bigger gamble. The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800 is the one to buy if you want charcoal flavor with digital convenience. And the 12 inch stainless pellet tube is the cheapest upgrade in the whole article.
Weber SmokeFire EX4 Wood Fired Pellet Grill, Black, 2nd Generation
Real grill behavior: open lid searing, high heat, and a design that treats grilling as a first class job instead of an afterthought
Wants clean, dry pellets and a clean grease path, and the first generation's reputation still follows the name
2 Pack 12'' Stainless Steel Pellet Smoker Tube, with Brush and Hooks
Adds real smoke to any cooker at any temperature, and the two pack means one tube is always loaded
It is a workaround, not a controller. You still have to light it, place it, and remember it
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800 Smoker Grill - Charcoal Grill plus Griddle Insert, Digital Control, App Connectivity, 800 Cooking Square Inches in Black, Model MB20040221
Charcoal flavor with digital control, 800 square inches, and a griddle insert that turns it into a flat top
It is not a pellet grill. More ash, more fuel handling, more parts, and it needs power like everything else
Woodwind WiFi 20 Pellet Grill
The ash cleanout is the most useful feature in the category, and the controller handles the overnight cook
Smaller chamber than the big rigs, and the app is a convenience, not a feature
Prices and availability were captured from Amazon Creators API and may change.
How I judge a pellet grill
Temperature stability is the entire game. A cooker that swings thirty degrees is a campfire with a hopper, and no app notification fixes that. So when I look at a machine, I look at three things in order. First, can I log the temperature and see what it did while I slept? No log, no verdict. Second, where is the firepot and how thick is the steel around it? Thin steel warps and starts lying to you in year two, and a cheap firepot rusts out on you. Third, what is the auger's reputation? Jam stories spread fast in this community, and an auger that jams at hour six of a brisket will do it again at the worst possible moment.
WiFi is a convenience, not a feature. I say that as a guy who checks his phone for the temp graph every twenty minutes. The app is how you watch the cook, not how you cook. Judge the machine on the cook.
Hopper capacity is a camping spec. A ten pound hopper means you are filling it at 2 AM like everybody else. What matters is hold time, which is how long the temp stays put without any input from you. Everything else is garnish.
Weber SmokeFire EX4, 2nd Generation
Weber had the best idea in the category: build a pellet grill that is also a real grill. Open the lid, run it hot, and sear a steak instead of baking it. The flavorizer bar layout comes straight out of their gas grills, which means drippings hit hot metal instead of sitting in a puddle and steaming. That is a genuine difference in the food, and it is why I wanted to love this machine from the day it was announced.
The second generation is the version to shop for, and that label on the box is not marketing filler. The first version's reputation is exactly why SmokeFire starts arguments in every pellet group on the internet, and Weber's own revisions tell you what they thought needed fixing. If you are buying used, buy the later one.
Where it loses: it is the fussiest of the three cookers here. It rewards clean, dry pellets and a clean grease path, and it punishes you when either one slides. If you buy the cheapest bag on the shelf and store it in a humid garage, this is not your grill. If you want a machine that grills as well as it smokes and you are willing to keep it clean, it is the most interesting cooker in this comparison.
Verdict: buy it for the grill, keep it clean for the smoke.
Camp Chef Woodwind WiFi 20
The ash cleanout is the most useful feature in the pellet category, and I will argue with anyone about that. Emptying a firepot at midnight with a shop vac and a flashlight is the chore that makes people quit pellet cooking. Camp Chef put a lever and a cup on the problem. Pull it, dump it, keep cooking. I do not understand why every manufacturer has not copied it.
The WiFi 20 sits in the middle of the Woodwind lineup, which means a smaller footprint than the big rigs, enough grate for a packer brisket plus a couple of pork butts, and a controller built for the overnight cook. The app does what apps do, which is show you the graph and tell you when something drifts.
Where it loses: it is not a searing monster the way the SmokeFire is, and the smaller chamber means you are not feeding forty people without a plan. And the app is a convenience, not a feature. If the connection drops at 11 PM on a long cook, you fall back on the controller, and the controller is what you should have been judging all along. Camp Chef's controller is the reason this is my pick for most people. The cleanout is the reason I would keep it.
Verdict: the best all around machine here for somebody who cooks more than they grill.
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800
I have a boundary about charcoal, and I am breaking it here on purpose. The Gravity Series 800 is not a pellet grill. It is a charcoal grill that borrowed the pellet grill's brain. A hopper feeds charcoal down into a firebox, a fan stokes it, and a digital controller with app connectivity holds the temperature. You get charcoal flavor with set and monitor convenience, 800 square inches of cooking space, and a griddle insert in the box that turns it into a flat top for smash burgers and Sunday breakfast.
Why it belongs in a pellet comparison: because it is what people actually cross shop. If your real goal is smoke flavor and you do not care which fuel gets you there, this is the machine that delivers the most traditional barbecue flavor of the three cookers here. Charcoal tastes like charcoal, and no pellet blend fully imitates it.
The trade-offs are honest ones. Charcoal means ash, and ash means cleanup on a scale pellet owners never deal with. You handle fuel by hand instead of pouring it from a bag. You buy charcoal instead of pellets. There are more mechanical parts in the fuel path than a simple auger and a firepot, and more parts means more places for something to go wrong. It needs power, which is worth saying out loud, because a pellet grill needs power too and neither one is cooking through an ice storm.
Verdict: buy it if you want charcoal flavor and you are not willing to babysit an offset. This is the crossover machine.
The 12 inch stainless steel pellet tube
Here is the cheapest thing in this article and the one I would buy first if I already owned a grill I liked. A pellet tube is a perforated stainless cylinder you fill with pellets, light with a torch, and lay on the grate. It smolders on its own and puts out smoke independently of the firepot. That matters for two reasons. A pellet grill running at 400 degrees is not producing much smoke at all, and a gas grill produces none.
The two pack matters more than it sounds. One tube smoking while the other sits loaded means you are not standing in the dark refilling a hot cylinder with bare hands. The brush and the hooks in this kit are the unglamorous parts that keep it usable: the brush clears ash between uses, and the hooks let the tube hang off the shelf instead of rolling around in a drawer with the tongs.
What it is not: a controller, a cure for a bad firepot, or a substitute for good pellets. It is a workaround, and a good one. Smoke flavor comes from pellet quality and cook method, not from the size of the firepot, and a tube lets you change the cook method without buying a new cooker.
Verdict: the highest return per dollar of anything on this page.
The trade-offs that never make the spec sheet
Hopper lids that do not seal against rain are the most common design failure in this category, and they are the reason people blame pellets for problems the lid caused. Wet pellets turn to dust, dust bridges over the auger, and the auger jams at hour six. If your grill lives outside, that lid is not a detail.
App connections drop. Every one of them, from every brand, at some point, usually around 11 PM when you are finally relaxed. A machine that holds temp on its own is worth more than a machine with a nicer graph.
Wind is the variable nobody tests for. A 25 mph Kansas wind will pull heat out of any cooker with thin steel and a loose lid fit, and you will chase the setpoint all night. I track which new grills hold temp in that wind because it tells me more about build quality than any marketing claim about insulation.
And I will say the thing I always say: nothing on a smoker is forgettable. Set it and forget it is a slogan for people who have never watched a temperature log at 3 AM. The best smoker is the one that holds temp while you sleep, and that is a design question, not a phone question.
Which one I would buy
If you want one cooker and you cook more than you grill, buy the Woodwind WiFi 20. The ash cleanout alone will save you more aggravation over five years than any feature on this list, and the controller is steady enough to trust overnight.
If you grill as much as you smoke, and you are the type who keeps pellets sealed and the grease path clean, buy the Weber SmokeFire EX4 in its second generation. It is the only one here that treats a ribeye as a first class citizen.
If flavor is the whole point and you do not mind ash, buy the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800. Charcoal with digital control and a griddle insert is a lot of capability in one footprint.
And if you already own a grill that works and you just want more smoke on a hot cook, buy the tube. Two of them, with the brush and the hooks, and you will use it more than you expect.
What I am testing next
I am working through six pellet brands that claim a competition blend, and the smoke rings they produce are not close to each other. Same cook, same grill, same weather, very different pink. That write up is coming, and it will name the ones that failed.
I am also tracking which of the newer grills hold temp through a hard wind, because fall in Kansas City is a stress test that no spec sheet covers. When I have the logs, I will publish the graphs. No log, no verdict.