Masterbuilt MB20041320 Gravity Series 1050 Outdoor Digital Charcoal Barbecue Griddle + Grill + Smoker, Portable, Built-in Thermometer Gauge in Black

The Masterbuilt digital smoker, for me, is the next step in a long and tasty road to smoked perfection. The smoker itself is powerful, simple to use and adaptive to your needs, connecting to your phone is relatively simple and offers the comfort of keeping a close eye without having to stand outside for 10+ hours. The chamber is huge, I've smoked two racks of ribs, a 4kg pork butt, 6 chorizo sausages and a 3kg brisket and barely half filled the thing. The hopper attached gives up to (in my experience) 8-9 hours smoking, using lump wood charcoal at 225f. Note: while you can use wood chips for smoking, they burn off far to quickly, barely leaving much of a smoked flavour. My advice would be get some chunks layer some in with the lump wood and throw a couple in the Ash basket at intervals while smoking. The smoker comes with one internal probe as standard, it plugs in, fits through a slot at the side. There's space for 3 more probes to be attached. Once bluetooth is set up and the app used, the app displays current temps, you can set alarms for meat temps and control the smokers temp too. Getting the smoker lit at first seemed like it was going to be tricky but I very quickly got the hang of it. I fold up a piece of kitchen/blue roll and liberally coat in cooking oil, slide into the slot used for firelighters and light. As the oil and paper burn I keep the top of the hopper and the lower chamber door wide open. After 5 or 6 minutes, shut the doors and turn the machine on. So far I haven't had to re-light it once. The fans kick in and you'll be amazed at just how quick it heats up. I would 100% recommend this smoker. The only negative I have, and this is not the manufacturers fault is the delivery. The box had a few bumps and bends, which I would expect from such a large machine but upon opening I found due to a likely drop one of the lower parts (a metal plate that channels Ash and grease) had slightly bent and two rivets had snapped. Luckily it was easy to reshape and I replaced the rivets with stronger ones. I didn't see it worth returning as it was easy to fix, and let's be honest who wants to return something so big and wait another week or two before enjoying heavenly smoked joy.

Love this smoker… takes out all the manual effort of controlling temps on low and slow cooks, and at 700F gives a fantastic sear too, with all the great taste of charcoal or lumpwood fuel (+ any smoking wood you’d like to add)! I’ve been cooking briskets, beef ribs, lamb joints whole in the smoker as a beginner and the results are fantastic…

Great bit of kit.

Just spent an hour trying to get it working. No luck so far. It's now 8pm and I probably have to cancel on my guests that were looking forward to some smoked meats tomorrow. Thanks for ruining things Masterbullt!! What's really sad is that this is only the 6th time I'm using it. Last time it took a while but took a while to get working but this time I'm about ready to give up! Can I return this lump of metal junk? EDIT: After searching for help I found a site that mentioned faulty sensor switches. Disconnecting the hopper switch and shorting the pins brought it back to life. I then tested the switch which would only work if I pressed it hard. Unscrewing the switch to check it, the cables dropped from it immediately when I moved it. The connectors were broken on one side. After removing the heat shield to recover the cables I tried crimping the other connector side to the switch. It crumbled. 3 hours into my smoking time I finally had it re-assembled and running by shorting the hopper sensor. Questionable build quality!!

Great but of kit. Works like a dream. Hopefully the manufacturer sees this feedback because if they changed these things then it would be the finishing touches: -The insert for the firelighter is very narrow. I'm sure that it fits perfectly for the Masterbuult lighters but in reality most people are just going to use whatever they already have. Finding a lighter to fit is difficult and most of the time I end up almost crushing a firelighter that is too big to fit in the gap. -The connection to wifi is dodgy at best. I have good signal and have even gone as far as putting one of my wifi mesh outlets about 6ft away from it but it's still very poor. It disconnected and now I cannot get it to pair again which is very frustrating. -The product arrived with some banners stuck on by tape on the hood. The ones on the outside of the hood peeled off relatively easily but the ones on the inside were impossible to remove. I guess this has been sitting around for a few months through the winter, and the tape has bonded on to the galvanised surface making it impossible to remove. I tried using razors, paint scrapers, a heat gun, ethanol, and a blow torch but nothing would shift this wretched gunky tape. In the end I resorted to lighting the bbq to try and burn it off. After about 5 hours, the toxic smell was gone and I was able to clean it up to make it safe for cooking. - a bit more tinkering with the baffle plate would create a more evenly distributed heat. -The baffle plate seems to need cleaning after every use if you want to avoid a fire. It collects fat then bursts into flames if you turn the heat up. It's fine on low heat, but if you use it as a grill then I have come to expect a fire too (unless the baffle is squeaky clean) Despite these problems I absolutely love it. I hope this reaches Masterbuilt.

Very clever good food cooking storage snd excellent technical ability

This is a great bbq / smoker. It keeps temp very well and I’ve been able to smoke my ribs perfectly on it, as well as get a high temp to cook burgers, sausages and chicken. It did take a while to build, about 2-3 hours in total and you will need help assembling it due to the fact it weighs about the same as a large adult. Once it’s built and you download the app you’ll need to connect it to your wifi so it can update the software which takes about 1-2 mins. You’ll need to follow the steps to season the bbq which Masterbuilt include in the instructions. Lighting the bbq can be tricky as you’ll need to make sure you give it enough time to make sure the charcoal is fully lit. If you close everything up too early you’ll get an error and you’ll need to start this process again. Once it is up and running though it’s gets up to temp very quickly. Cleaning is very important as you need to make sure the fat is off the manifold otherwise you risk the possibility of fat fires. I purchased the manifold cover as that comes off and is easier to clean. You’ll need a good scraper and degreaser to clean it up. One issue I had is my drip tray doesn’t sit flat and the grease drops down one of the legs but I put a foil tray in the corner to catch the fat and then clean up after. It’s not a deal breaker at all. When using lumpwood charcoal you’ll need to shake the chimney a bit to that the air gap between the pieces isn’t too big otherwise there could be too much oxygen in there. The briquettes work slightly better as they’re a uniform shape. In all this is the best bbq I’ve owned (I have 5 various ones now) and will be looking to buy the 560 model to replace my other bbqs so I can cook hot searing food on one and the low and slow on the other.

After 1 year I have the following issues. 1. Cover has degraded and obviously not uv protected as they state. 2. Rust on parts even when covered up and placed in shed for winter 3. Rust and paint coming off cooking surface even after making sure all surfaces had been oiled before and after use Really disappointed clearly not as robust as advertised. Invested heavily in this product only to feel I made the wrong choice.