XXL Vertical Smoker

Camp Chef really knocked this one out of the park. A good strong construction and the manuel to assemble was very easy to read. This will hold alot of food. I haven't been a fan of P.I.D. controllers until now. P.I.D. controllers are normally so efficient at holding correct temps that they put out very little smoke. Camp chef thought of that and incorporared a smoke level setting that you can adjust according to how much smoke you want. Higher the smoke setting the more radical your temps swings will be. Great smoke output, the temperature swings are very minimal compared to other pellet smokers I have used. Using the smoker for the past few months I have pretty much only used the low smoke and high smoke settings. The low smoke is perfect for jerky staying at Temps between 180 and 150 depending on the weather and how much the vent on the side is open. I find having the vent closed as far as it will go keeps the low smoke at a steady pace. The high smoke has made really good pork loin and pork butts. I even used the smoker to reverse sear some steaks smoking them in the smoker and searing on the grill. The ash cleanout is a big plus as you dont have to vacuum it out after every cook just pull the lever on the side and the ashes fall out. I am very pleased with this smoker and I like it so much I am considering selling my pellet grill and getting my hands on one of those woodwind pellet grills. The trays are of good construction and are easy to clean. The Camp Chef app is awesome as I can go into town and do whatever I need to and the app still shows what temp your smoker or temp probes are at. Overall I am very pleased with the XXL and I believe if you are looking for a vertical the XXL should be your top pick.

I debated between this smoker and a pellet grill. I am beyond happy with my choice. First, Camp Chef is amazing. The quality and customer service they provide is beyond amazing. The smoker performs beyond my expectations, the wifi controls took some time to get used to even though I am less than 10 smokes in I am excited to see what this smoker can do. The flavor of the meat that's comes off this thing is nothing short of amazing. With my old propane grill, I cooked to cook, with the XXL I cook for the love of smoking! I cannot wait until the next smoke!

I would not suggest purchasing this smoker and will be beginning the process of returning it after some consideration last night. First the Good: The Craftsmanship of the unit is terrific. it is solidly made with plenty of racks and features. It looks beautiful, and is much larger than I thought. Now the Bad: The controller unit itself which is essentially everything in a pellet grill has major flaws. Let's start with the non smart issues (wifi/bluetooth features). Upon setup I followed Manufacturer's recommendation of doing a Burn in on the unit at 350 to burn off any oils. While doing this the unit got so hot that it actually flaked the paint off of the front of the lower part of the grill where the firebox is (see Pictures below) I should have taken this as a sign of bad things to come. When starting the device and setting it at High Smoke ( which is 220 Smoke 3) The grill will actually take over an hour to actually reach that temp blowing thru about 2-3lbs of pellets in the process and reaching temps of up to 300 degrees in the process. On top of this, even when it does eventually get down to temp, it will sporadically spike as high as 30 degrees higher. This is not so much of a big issue so long as the temp comes back down but I have found this to not be the case. This makes this unit not a set it and forget it type of smoker and ruined an $70 15lb brisket cooking thru the night in the process. As for Smart Features, The controller and its wifi/bluetooth capability is horrendous likely due to the the cheap wifi antenna that is on the back of the controller placed inside the metal container which limits its signal distance. The App it connects to is equally as bad on both apple and android (which I tested and tried to use both) No matter how hard I tried I could not get the thing to connect via wifi consistently unless I was connected to a hotspot on my phone with phone sitting on top of the hopper lid which is very impractical. It is not a home wifi signal issue as I am connected on my phone (google Pixel 4) standing next to the grill with full bars. To be fair to Camp chef has been very responsive to these issues, and I received a warranted replacement controller to find that the issue is actually worse with the new controller including the temp issues. I could live with the wifi/bluetooth problems until they figure out a solution, but I fear this is a systemic issue with this specific controller, or something with their cloud backend that is affecting all of the wifi controllers which scares me. As much as I wanted this to be my smoker, I will be looking into my options for a refund as I am not happy at all with this smoker outside of it's beautiful exterior appearance and this product is something I would consider the quality I would expect from a normally great brand .