The Monument Denali 605 Pro Smart Gas Grill Gives You A Lot For the Money—But Is It Worth It?

A big 6-burner gasser that’s reasonably priced and loaded with features

At first glance, the most impressive thing about the Monument Denali 605 is its size. With 6 burners under the hood, it’s got 640 square inches of cooking space and another 255 square inches on the multi-use warming/indirect cooking rack. Plus there’s an external sear burner—a super-useful feature for making the most of the reverse-sear technique. Technically, with that external sear burner, this is a 7-burner grill.

Extras

The Denali 605 is like a big brother to Monument’s Clearview 4-Burner Gas Grill. It’s got the same viewing window in the hood, and the same external sear burner. What’s different on the Denali is another two burners inside, and one of those is ALSO a sear burner. Yes, this grill has two ceramic sear burners, one internal and one external. That gives the Denali a total of 78,000 BTUs. And Monument throws in a rotisserie kit, grill cover, and 2 meat probes that attach to the Bluetooth-enabled control panel.

The panel also features a USB-C slot, but not for charging your phone. It’s to charge the battery-powered control panel itself with a mobile powerbank if necessary.

With all those burners, whether you’re cooking a boatload of burgers and dogs for a soccer team party, or grilling steaks, chicken, salmon, corn, and zucchini all at the same time for a big July 4^th bash, this grill’s got the space to get it done. And you can monitor temp levels from the comfort of your smartphone.

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The spacious built-in cart also features a slide-out caddy for propane, simplifying tank swaps.

Another plus: the burner knobs glow in three different colors, white when the burners are Off; orange when they’re on Medium; and red when on High. Let’s say you’re six beers deep into your backyard barbecue and forgot where you put your phone: the LEDs give you an easy visual on your burner temps.

Denali comes standard with cast-iron cooking grates. The two grates on the right interlock with a 12-inch round, removable grate in the center. That round grate is situated directly over the internal sear burner, and it can be replaced on the fly with an upgraded diamond-pattern cast-iron grate, a round cast iron griddle, and/or a cordierite pizza stone (sold separately).

You can also get stainless steel grill grates for the entire cook surface if you prefer, as well as things like a wood chip smoker box and a rectangular cast iron griddle to fit over the external sear burner. I tested the smoker box on a few cooks. If size is the most impressive thing about Denali, the included features and optional extras are the next best thing.

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Heat tests

Looks and features are one thing, but how does this grill perform? After the initial burn-off, I ran a few heat tests. The built-in “Digitemp” display was set to Celsius, so I held the “Set” button for 2 seconds to switch it to Fahrenheit. Then I attached two of my own temperature probes to the grill: one on the far right 1 inch above the grates and one on the far left. Note: Denali’s internal temp probe is set 1 inch below the grill grates in the front of the grill.

I set up my Fireboard to monitor temp readings and did a low-temp test first. The goal: find out what is the lowest temp the Monument Denali 605 Pro gas grill could hold with the interior burners set to Low. For this test, I left the internal sear burner off, because obviously that burner isn’t meant to hold low temps. After 15 minutes with the five burners on Low and the grill lid down, Denali’s built-in temp probe read 385°F and Fireboard read 285° on the right and 325°F on the left. The discrepancies make sense. With the built-in probe set below the grates closer to the burners, it reads a slightly higher temp. The Fireboard probes set 1 inch above the grates read slightly lower temps, but that probe placement is closer to where the food will actually be sitting so those seem more useful to me. What about the right and left discrepancy? Remember, I kept the sear burner off. Only 2 burners on the right were lit, reaching 285°F on that side, while 3 burners on the left were lit, reaching 325°F.

Next up: a high-temp test. Under the same conditions, I cranked all the burners (except the sear burner) to High and dropped the lid. Fifteen minutes later, Denali’s built-in probe was at 666°F—Ozzy Osbourne’s favorite temperature! The Fireboard probes were at 514° on the right and 594°F on the left.

Test results: If we average all the temps, Denali held a low temp of about 331°F and a high of about 591°F. That’s without the internal sear burner on. And that brings up an issue with this grill: even heating. The internal sear burner is situated between two main burners on the right side of the grill, making it tricky to maintain even heat across the grill’s right side. Of course, if you want higher temps than the ones tracked in my test, you could crank up the internal sear burner as well.

Bread test

To check for even heating, I did our usually bread test. I preheated the grill, lid down, for 15 minutes with all the main burners on medium and the sear burner off. At that point, Fireboard read 463° on the right side and 488°F on the left. The bread test revealed pretty typical gas grill results: Denali has a hotspot in the center back; it’s slightly cooler at the front across the board; and it’s slightly cooler on the left and right sides.

Cook tests

OK—let’s see how this baby cooks. First up: Steakhouse Burgers. I cranked the three burners on the right, including the internal sear burner, to max heat. Over on the indirect heat side on the left, that gave me a steady temp of 250°F temp. I put some thick 8-ounce beef chuck burgers there until they reached about 135°F internal, then moved them over to the sear burner to develop the crust. They came out great. I gotta say, even though the sear burner placement is a little clunky when you’re going for even heat across the right side of the grill, it’s fantastic for sliding meat over there to reverse-sear it.

To get some smoke flavor on the beef, I tested the smoker box with this cook. It’s a nice feature and the box is situated smack dab in the middle of the grill. However, it’s a little difficult to replenish during a cook because it sits beneath some grill grates that aren’t too easy to remove. If you’re going for smoke flavor, be sure to fill up the smoker box, put the food on right when you start to see smoke, and keep the lid down!

Looking for burger and steak recipes? We’ve got them here.

Next up: steak. Let’s see how that external searing station works. It’s equipped with a stainless steel grill grate and a ceramic burner with 12,000 BTUs. I don’t have probes rated high enough for those searing temps, so I didn’t measure actual temps there. But after bringing a Prime-grade flank steak up to about 110°F internal on the main burners, then moving it to the sear station to develop the crust, I can tell you this sear station gets wicked hot! The steak came out great.

I also grilled salmon and veggies at the same time to round out the meal. With all that grill space—and an external burner—this is one of Denali’s big advantages: you can cook a lot of food at once.

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I cooked 1-inch thick center-cut pork chops next. They dry-brined for 3 hours, then I reverse seared them, starting with indirect heat in the grill. The internal sear burner did the job here and at the end of searing I sprinkled the chops with Meathead’s Pork Rub and slathered on some homemade KC-style barbecue sauce spiked with ginger. Everyone at the dinner table was super happy.

Most manufacturers charge extra for a rotisserie assembly and motor, but Monument includes it with the Denali 605 Pro. They don’t, however, include much instruction. The manual just says to use medium to low heat. I dry-brined an average size chicken (about 4 pounds), preheated the grill for 350°F, and set up the chicken on the rotisserie assembly. But when I went to install it in the motor, it wouldn’t rotate cleanly! I had to remove the grill grates, flame tamers and smoker box to keep the bird from hitting anything while rotating.

Once those parts were removed, the bird just fit. I also put a drip pan beneath the chicken to flavor some cooked farro with the drippings. I dropped the lid, and about an hour later, the bird was nicely bronzed and cooked to a safe internal temp (165°F in a thigh). Of course, I couldn’t use Denali’s wired meat probes for this cook: they would have gotten all wound up on the rotisserie. That’s another reason you may want to invest in a wireless meat thermometer at some point. Oh, and you’ll probably need an extension cord to use the rotisserie. This motor’s cord is pretty stubby at less than 2 feet long. Still, this was a winner, winner chicken dinner.

OK—can this grill make a decent pizza? The 12-inch pizza stone (sold separately) rests above the internal sear burner so you can get the stone nice and hot. But to cook a pizza properly, you not only need a lot of heat: you need even heat on the top, bottom, and all around. To saturate the entire grill with heat, I set all the burners to High, except for the internal sear burner, and preheated it with the lid down for 30 minutes. I set the sear burner to Low because my hunch was that, due to uneven heating, the pizza might burn on the bottom before the top was done. After 30 minutes with that setup, the stone registered 750°F on my infrared thermometer gun. Denali’s built-in temp gauge also read 750°F. Would the top cook at the same rate as the bottom? Probably not. Denali’s lid is pretty thin and set about 12 inches above the pizza stone, reducing the total heat energy that would radiate down to cook the top of the pizza.

To try and reach “simultaneous pizzagasm” as Meathead calls it, I dropped all the burners from High to Medium, kept the sear burner on Low, and let the grill temp stabilize for 15 minutes. At that point, the stone was at 600°F and the grill’s ambient temp at about 500°F, which seemed like a better spot for evenly cooking a pizza in this grill.

I launched a white pizza with mushrooms and baby spinach that I’d pulled from my garden. After a full 6 minutes, the top was still a bit pale and the bottom was starting to burn, just as suspected. The pizza was probably as done as it was going to get without severe burning, so I pulled it.

The nice thing about baking pizzas for a slightly longer time at lower temps is that you get a crisper crust. This one came out nice and crispy on the bottom but somewhat burnt, roughly mirroring the shape of the sear burner below the stone. And the top was slightly underdone.

Moral of the story: don’t expect to cook a classic Neapolitan pizza at 900°F in this oven. It won’t work. But you can bake a decent 12-inch NY-style pizza with the sear burner on Low and the other burners around Medium.

Over months of testing the Monument Denali 605 Pro, I cooked more steaks, burgers, pork loin, corn, and these tofu slabs that I slathered with Thai peanut sauce (my wife is vegetarian). It handled everything with no hiccups. I’m not a huge fan of the stock cast-iron grates. They tend to leave burn marks before the crust is properly browned on most proteins. But the grates can be easily swapped if you prefer steel like I do. You can click here to learn all about the best grill grates.

App

Denali’s onboard “Digitemp” display panel has a companion Bluetooth-enabled app. The app is pretty easy to install and fairly basic. It essentially puts the display panel on your phone with the same functionality. From your phone, you can turn the temp display panel on/off, check the overall grill temperature, check the temps of meat probes 1 and 2, and set timers for each probe, at which point an alarm will sound. You can also check the grill “temperature curve,” a graph showing the grill temp over time, a handy feature for long cooks where you want to maintain a steady temperature. The app has very simple recipes for most proteins, but none for pizza. Most recipes also do not have exact amounts or cooking times.

The app’s Bluetooth range is claimed to be 115 feet in a flat, unobstructed area, or 10 feet with a wall or other obstacle. I was able to keep the connection from inside my house to the grill on the back patio, which is only about 30 feet away.

Assembly + a few nits to pick

The Monument Denali 605 Pro gas grill ships in two large boxes with lots of parts. It took me 5+ hours to assemble by myself. I needed a short stubby screwdriver for some of the tight spots. And work gloves are a must. Sharp edges are everywhere due to the thin, 430 grade steel used for the body (the burners are made with thicker, more corrosion-resistant 304 grade steel). Be careful not to drop or scrape pieces or you could easily leave a scratch or dent in what is otherwise a very good-looking grill. Oh, and Monument’s assembly video is essential for this build. The visuals in the paper manual only go so far.

Overall, the grill body is fairly lightweight. We’ll see how well it holds up over time, use, and weather. Good thing it comes with a cover. I also noticed that the grill’s plastic casters started getting chewed up after rolling around my patio pavers for a few months. And there’s no natural gas option: only liquid propane.

Windows in grill lids always seem like a good idea—especially this one, so you can keep an eye on a pizza that’s cooking with the grill lid down. But grill windows inevitably get darkened by smoke and grease buildup. Keep it clean so your food can be seen! Even so, with no interior lights, you may find Denali’s window only minimally useful at night.

I love the fact that this grill has two ceramic sear burners, one external and one internal. But the internal one’s placement between two regular burners makes it a little tricky to maintain even heat when you’re using the entire grill surface to cook for a crowd.

All the extras, including 6 tools hooks, make up for some of these shortcomings.

All in all, this is a nice gas grill. You get a lot for the money. A solid Silver medal.

Warranty

2 years on all parts except burners (8 years) and electrical components (1 year).