VitaminH
New member
- Messages
- 2
- Grill(s) owned
- Bull
A short re-telling of my pellet grill journey...
I started this past March and bought a Camp Chef off of Amazon. Big mistake, it might have gotten damaged in shipping, but the lid was a little warped, combined with I was very new to all of this, led to a bunch of frustration and stuff not cooking like it should. Once I stuck temp probes on the grate and realized it was running at only about 180-190 when it was set to 220 "High Smoke" part of the problem was realized. The sheer amount of smoke coming out of...everywhere from the thing was crazy. Amazon was good about it and let me ship it back to them. Shipping back was difficult to disassemble the whole thing, re-pack it and tape up the box, then get it to a UPS store, but it was a relief when I got it done.
I started shopping around looking at different brands and heard some good things about Green Mountain Grills from a co-worker. There was a local dealer (guy who just sells them out of his garage actually) nearby. I met up with him one evening and let him talk me into one of the new Prime WiFi Danial Boone models. Was plagued with problems, the same problems that I see repeated over and over in other forums and their facebook group. My fan was DOA, had to be replaced. My power supply died after about 90 days of 1-3x/week use (I had always brought it inside with me when done cooking). Paint started peeling off the front of the cook box and both the side and front shelf rusted through, despite keeping it covered, and if the weather looked like rain I erected a canopy over it to keep rain off it while I cooked. The most irritating part was the side shelf was held up by a bar, that more or less just rested under the side shelf with nothing to hold it in place - (it looked like maybe it was supposed to snap into something but it did not fit on mine) so the slightest shake or vibration, or any upward lift on the side shelf, the support bar fell down and the side shelf which was hinged to the side of the grill crashed down, usually knocking the grease bucket which would only just barely hang on the grease chute off and spilling grease everywhere.
My wife, who is amazing, and probably tired of listening to my frustrations about the GMG for 4 months (and tired of the growing number of grease stains on our deck) bought me a RT-700 for my birthday this week. I came home Friday to a pallet in the garage with it on it. So far I'm blown away, build quality noticeably better, so many QOL improvements like a CLIP that holds the grease bucket in place... No heat deflector calibration needed (I spent hours getting my GMG to have semi-even heat on both sides by sliding their deflector 1/8" one way or another). Did 2 lbs of bacon yesterday to season after the burn in and doing 4 racks of ribs right now, with some Mac and Cheese ready to go on in a bit for a small get together tonight.
This thing holds temps like 300 Persians held Thermoplae.
Maybe it's just a Honeymoon period but I don't think it is. Color me one happy customer.
TL;DR, had tons of problems with first a Camp Chef, then a GMG grill before getting a RT-700. Very happy. Thanks for reading.
I started this past March and bought a Camp Chef off of Amazon. Big mistake, it might have gotten damaged in shipping, but the lid was a little warped, combined with I was very new to all of this, led to a bunch of frustration and stuff not cooking like it should. Once I stuck temp probes on the grate and realized it was running at only about 180-190 when it was set to 220 "High Smoke" part of the problem was realized. The sheer amount of smoke coming out of...everywhere from the thing was crazy. Amazon was good about it and let me ship it back to them. Shipping back was difficult to disassemble the whole thing, re-pack it and tape up the box, then get it to a UPS store, but it was a relief when I got it done.
I started shopping around looking at different brands and heard some good things about Green Mountain Grills from a co-worker. There was a local dealer (guy who just sells them out of his garage actually) nearby. I met up with him one evening and let him talk me into one of the new Prime WiFi Danial Boone models. Was plagued with problems, the same problems that I see repeated over and over in other forums and their facebook group. My fan was DOA, had to be replaced. My power supply died after about 90 days of 1-3x/week use (I had always brought it inside with me when done cooking). Paint started peeling off the front of the cook box and both the side and front shelf rusted through, despite keeping it covered, and if the weather looked like rain I erected a canopy over it to keep rain off it while I cooked. The most irritating part was the side shelf was held up by a bar, that more or less just rested under the side shelf with nothing to hold it in place - (it looked like maybe it was supposed to snap into something but it did not fit on mine) so the slightest shake or vibration, or any upward lift on the side shelf, the support bar fell down and the side shelf which was hinged to the side of the grill crashed down, usually knocking the grease bucket which would only just barely hang on the grease chute off and spilling grease everywhere.
My wife, who is amazing, and probably tired of listening to my frustrations about the GMG for 4 months (and tired of the growing number of grease stains on our deck) bought me a RT-700 for my birthday this week. I came home Friday to a pallet in the garage with it on it. So far I'm blown away, build quality noticeably better, so many QOL improvements like a CLIP that holds the grease bucket in place... No heat deflector calibration needed (I spent hours getting my GMG to have semi-even heat on both sides by sliding their deflector 1/8" one way or another). Did 2 lbs of bacon yesterday to season after the burn in and doing 4 racks of ribs right now, with some Mac and Cheese ready to go on in a bit for a small get together tonight.
This thing holds temps like 300 Persians held Thermoplae.
Maybe it's just a Honeymoon period but I don't think it is. Color me one happy customer.
TL;DR, had tons of problems with first a Camp Chef, then a GMG grill before getting a RT-700. Very happy. Thanks for reading.
