Traeger Texas Grill Pellet Smoker Review

The Texas Grill is one of Traeger’s largest residential pellet smokers. With 646 square inches of primary cook surface. Although it has a digital controller, it uses an old style digital dial control like those made by Ortech. Not bad, but once you get into this price range some competitors, like REC TEC, feature more advanced touchpad controls that work better and include additional features beyond ignition and set points.

Nonetheless owners of the Texas Grill are generally pleased and deals on these cookers are sometimes available. For example, Traeger has been doing promos at Costco and Sam’s Club where members can save a couple hundred bucks.

Digital, thermostatically controlled pellet smokers are a dream come true. They are often more accurate than your kitchen range and allow you to load up your smoker at 11 pm, set it to 225 F, then go to bed and sleep soundly, knowing you’ll wake up to a BBQ feast of delicious meat that’s been slow cooking for hours at a steady and accurate temperature.

Traeger pioneered and popularized the pellet smoker and remains the best known brand since it is in wide distribution. In fact about 85% of pellet smokers in the USA are Traeger. The consensus is they are reasonably well built, but some buyers complain that since manufacturing moved to China quality has dropped, especially on entry level models. Of course we hear more complaints as well as praise about Traeger since 8 out 10 pellet smoker owners have one.

All Traegers are black powder coated steel with porcelain enamel steel cooking grates.