Traeger Bbq07e.04 Lil' Tex Elite Pellet Grill, 20000 Btu

I have wanted a smoker for years and researched them as much as I could. I was going to start with a weber or off set smoker from a box store. They are hard to learn and hard to keep a constant temp for 13hr cooks. I looked at electric smokers as well which are great but they can't get up to the high temps for smoking and cooking meat loafs or other hight temp cooks. Example, I can throw a frozen bag of wings on the smoker at 300 - 350 and two hours later they are perfect. Takes over four hours on an electric and maybe longer if frozen. I have never used Traeger pellets and have never had an issue. You can truly set and forget with a traeger. Temp is controlled with auger fed pellets into the fire box. You will not produce as much smoke as a true off set smoker but I supplement with tube filled pellets to get as much as I can. I also use the traeger heat blanket in the winter to help maintain my temp as I use this year round. We use the smoker about once a week and if you like smoked food you will not go back to a BBQ joint and taste the food the same.This is not a grill! Please don't buy this to Grill like you would on your propane fire. I can only get this to about 400+ degrees while my weber propane grill will go 700+. This is a good low and slow and forget about it type of smoker. Wood fired anything is better in my book. I have had the best pork shoulder ever with this traeger. Plus, I was always deep frying my turkeys. No longer. 13lb turkey that was brined and cooked on the traeger for five hours was the best I have ever had.For all the purist out there that use charcoal and wood chunks, I get it, that is very good. But for those of us that have kids and or want to run to the store without freaking out that the fire will go out this is the way to go. I can start this at 3am for a long cook and go back to sleep knowing everything will be great.If you want a big surface area this is not the best. I can maybe fit four shoulders or briskest on the grill but to be fair, two are manageable for this size. I can get 70-80 wings. Hope you enjoy your new smoker.

Very low quality machine, built in China. Not worth the $799 price. From the date received, it won't hold a constant temperature and the internal temperature varies significantly from the set dial setting. Note the BBQ lid remained closed during the evaluation. If you open the lid, the machine looses the heat and will take longer to cook.Another issue is as the BBQ cooked, the grease accumulated on the edge of the lid below the handle and drained on to our brick deck. This BBQ comes with a bucket that the grease drains into but even with the bucket, the grease still drips out of the lid below the handle onto the floor.Temperature dial and inside temperature evaluation:In temperatures below 40 degrees, I was told by Traeger Customer Service and personally experienced the smoke setting won't work correctly, even with the P setting on "0." 0 gives you the hottest temperatures the machine is capable of producing. Even set at "0", the machine net a max temperature of 121 degrees verses the required 160-180 temperature. The "P" setting is a range of different settings you change on the machine when the temperature outside changes. The settings change the pellet distribution cycles into the hopper. Also, if the internal temperature consistently drops below 160 degrees, there is a chance you will lose the fire in the fire pot, thus adding more frustration to the cooking process.Overall, the temperature dial setting did not match the temperatures received, even after changing the "P" setting to meet temperature conditions. It is important to note this is without opening the lid and waiting 20 to 60 minutes. These temperatures were validated using an internal temperature gauge which was viewed outside of the machine.- When setting at 180 degrees, the inside temperature varied from 150 to 214 degrees.- When setting at 375 degrees, the temperature varies from 335 to 225 degrees.- When setting at "High", the temperature will not exceed 465 degrees internally, even on the "0" P setting. The temperature gauge on the machine read 407 degrees while the interior temperature was at 465.Within all settings tested, it will not hold a constant temperature and varies 60 degrees + or -.Traeger Customer Service stated pellets most likely cause the above problems; however, the pellets I used were maintained in a sealed container and inside the house. To test their theory I received two new bags of pellets from Traeger. Results - the same variance in temperatures occured with new pellets as with the original pellets received with the machine.Bottom line: Cooking a 9 pound cooking (following Traegers recipe) should take 2-3 hours, it took 9 hours. Cooking Korean Barbecued short-ribs per Traegers recipe should take less than 15 minutes, it took 3 hours. Cooking a whole chicken is about 3 hours. All these times are after adjusting the "P" settings and constantly monitoring the temperature so it doesn't under or overcook the food. The problems with the variance in temperatures caused me to constantly monitor the cooking process, adjust the temperatures on the dial, spend a lot of time with Traeger Customer Service on the phone, and miss a lot of dinner plans because it took a lot longer to cook than advertised.After 30 days of constant use and numerous calls to Traeger Customer Service, the machine was returned as it didn't cook as advertised and wouldn't hold a temperature as stated on the temperature dial.

We were sold on this grill at Costco when a sales rep started showing off this nifty grill. The sales rep was nice and answered all our questions and we felt confident in our purchase since we were buying it from Costco. We get it home and the instructions use numbers for the parts while the parts are labeled with letters, 1st hiccup. We used the grill and it works great! We are moving overseas in a few months and specifically asked the sales rep if we would be able to get the pellets for the grill while living in Japan. He promised us we would, "just order them online, they will ship them to you in Japan." he tells us. I'm online today and see that Traeger ships within the US ONLY! I contact them and get sorry but we never have shipped internationally not even to APOs. I'm not too pleased with being lied to in order to make a sale. The rep knew we would not buy the grill if we could not get the pellets overseas, we asked him multiple times before we decided to buy the grill. Outrageous! What's worse is the people at Traeger make it out to be my fault that the sales rep lied to us. Grill will be returned to Costco, Costco will be made aware of this situation and we will never do business with Traeger again! For me, customer service is a major part of a product and if it's not there to back up the product, the product is worthless to me.

Metal is pretty thin and when it arrived the chip box was bent and the hinges on top were all bent up. I am working on getting it as straight as possible. I have it got it to work......barely......what I have cooked on it has been really tasty.