Best Kamado Grill for 2024 - CNET

Oct 17, 2024

Article updated on October 15, 2024 at 10:57 PM PDT

Ready to up your charcoal grilling game? A kamado grill is the way to go. Here’s our shortlist of the best.

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

If you’ve mastered your grill’s cooking grate and feel ready to take things up a notch, a kamado-style grill could be your next step. “Kamado” means “stove” or “cooking range” in Japanese, and that’s exactly how these grills function -- like a charcoal-fired stove. Thanks to their thick ceramic shells, kamado grills provide exceptional heat retention. But the best kamado grills are more versatile than traditional gas or charcoal grills. Using lump charcoal, they can reach scorching temperatures, perfect for baking and even cooking authentic wood-fired Neapolitan pizza.

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A kamado grill excels at searing true steakhouse-quality steaks, but it’s far from just a steak machine. Nearly anything you grill will be elevated by a kamado grill. Furthermore, kamado grills allow you to cook over a wood fire, providing a distinctive, unparalleled flavor. While there’s a steep learning curve and kamado grills can be pricier than gas grills, the superior results make them worth the investment. If you're ready to look into this new way of grilling, our experts at CNET did the research for you.

Among traditional kamado grills and smokers, the Big Green Egg is the most well-known, but competitors like Kamado Joe,NewAge, Char-Griller, Vision and Char-Broil also offer strong options in this category.

Ribs, chicken, burgers: You name it, we cooked it.

Are you tempted to add one to your outdoor kitchen arsenal and become a hardcore griller? We put the Big Green Egg and its major grilling competitors to the test to find the best kamado grill out there. After countless smoke-filled hours and cooking over 10 pounds of burgers, 20 pounds of ribs, six chickens, and a few steaks for good measure -- here’s what we found. I can confidently say which brands make the best kamado grills and which ones to avoid.

Here are our picks for the best kamado grill options for 2024. We'll update this list as new products are reviewed.

Big Green Egg, the company that started the Kamado craze, still has a winner. Of all the Kamado-style grill options in my test group, the Large BGE model had the best temperature performance, heat retention and stability. Once tuned to a low and slow temperature of 225 F, the Egg pretty much ran itself. According to our temperature gauge, the Green Egg stuck to this temperature range, with only minor and infrequent fluctuations.

The Big Green Egg also felt the most responsive. If for any reason I had to make an adjustment to either the top or bottom air vents, I saw a change quickly. I typically noticed course corrections in as little as 6 or 7 minutes.

The food I cooked in the Big Green Egg came out quite tasty as well. My BGE test unit lacked the extra heat deflector accessory, but chicken and pork ribs had a convincing barbecue flavor. It's not as delicious as what I smoked in the Kamado Joe Classic III, but food from the BGE came in a very close second. Big Green Egg does make a heat deflector accessory, called the ConvEGGtor, but it's an extra add-on.

True to its name, the Big Green Egg Kamado grill and smoker is large, giving you lots of space so you can grill, smoke and cook to your heart's desire.

That's why I recommend the Large Big Green Egg as one of the best kamado grills for just about anyone. You'll have to go through a local dealer, and unlike the Kamado Joe Konnected Joe, everything except the stand is extra.

NewAge may not be the name that pops into your mind when you think of a Kamado grill, but the brand makes a very good product that is not only very solid but looks great. From the stainless steel hardware and components to the color choices for the grill, which include Indigo, Midnight Black, and the two-tone Taupe & Iron Black, this ceramic cooker is premium.

In my testing, after getting the charcoal going using a chimney, I adjusted the top and bottom vents to get a good burn-off before the first cook. The NewAge grill pegged out the mechanical temperature gauge that tops out at 750℉. Once I closed the vents to bring the temp down, which takes some time due to the heat retention properties of the ceramic.

After dialing the cooker into the 225℉ range, it was time to put on some food. I cooked steaks, beer can chicken, and pork butt on the grill and it all turned out fantastic. Being able to lock in a temperature and all of the charcoal the grill started with is fantastic.

All the food cooked on the NewAge Platinum Kamado grill had a pleasing charcoal flavor. The grill doesn't have a digital readout or included meat probes, but there are plenty of great meat thermometers to use and this premium Kamado grill works exactly as advertised and looks fantastic while doing so.

The Kamado Joe Konnected Joe may not be all that budget-friendly, but it delivers a lot for what you're spending. While it has plenty of electronic smarts and features, this Kamado grill and smoker performs well, too. In our slow-and-low barbecue grill test, we adjust grills to 225 F (107 C) and let go of the controls to see what happens. In this trial, the Kamado Joe Konnected Joe demonstrated excellent temperature control.

Aside from the excellent heat modulation the ceramic offers, the Konnected Joe helps you dial in your desired temperature. When you program a temperature, the grill's display tells you how far to open or close the two vents, and it was pretty accurate during testing. You can use both the digital temperature gauge and the mechanical thermometer to get the best idea of the grill's temperature. When using the included meat probes, the app can notify you when your food has reached the desired temperature.

Everything I cooked on the Konnected Joe turned out great. The cooker was so good and reliable in testing that I took it with me to my latest BBQ competition and trusted it to handle a 16-hour cook on a brisket -- and the results were delicious.

The construction of the Kamado Joe Konnected Joe feels very solid; I especially like the sturdy side shelves and hooks. The grill does a great job of blending traditional low-and-slow charcoal cooking with modern technology as an assistant and not as the main focus.

The Char-Griller Akorn provides real kamado performance at a rock-bottom price. It costs less than $400, which is incredible considering typical kamado grills will set you back $800 to $1,000. The Akorn's cooking temperature and temperature control aren't as inherently stable as the more expensive kamados I used. I suspect that's because the Akorn's body is constructed from triple-walled coated steel, as opposed to a heavy ceramic cooker. The grill's fire was also harder to ignite and keep lit than the Big Green Egg's and Kamado Joe Classic III's.

When I let it burn through our low-and-slow test (adjusted to 225 F), the Akorn's fire died out within 45 minutes. After relighting, temperatures inside the cooker shot up to 370 F in a mere 15 minutes. I didn't add extra fuel either, just one paraffin fire starter. Thirty-five minutes later, heat levels inside the Akorn hit 405 degrees. Temperatures then plateaued but remained hot, not dropping below 387 F for the next 3 hours.

Things were very different when I kept an eye on the Akorn. With a starting temperature of either 225 F or 350 F, it only took a few vent adjustments for the airflow to nudge the grill back on track. Since it's built from steel and is not a ceramic kamado, the Akorn weighs less (100 pounds) than traditional kamado grill options (200 pounds or more).

The food I cooked with the Akorn wasn't bad either. Both slow-cooked baby back ribs and chicken had a pleasing charcoal flavor. They couldn't match what came out of the Kamado Joe grill thanks to its bundled heat deflector smoker system. A price this low outweighs a lot of the cons, so the Char-Griller Akorn adds up to a fantastic kamado style grill bargain.

Testing kamado grills is an intense experience for a griller. It requires playing with fire (literally) and high temperatures, although in a controlled, responsible way. The most critical element to kamado's performance is heat, specifically temperature control and how well a grill holds to one temperature. To smoke meat low and slow, that magic number is 225 F. Good smokers, kamados or otherwise, will stick to this temp for as long as 12, 15 or 20 hours. This means the temperature gauge is key and so is the ability to control airflow via air vents or dampers.

We monitor the internal temperature of the kamado grills as they go.

To capture temperature data, we put a thermocouple on each kamado grill. Essentially a sensitive temperature sensor made of a probe and a connected wire, the thermocouple hangs suspended just 1 inch above the grill grate. It's connected to a data logger and ultimately a computer that records changes in heat levels over time.

Then it's time to fire up each grill.

We try to run temperature tests on all the grills simultaneously. We also use the same weight and brand of lump charcoal (4.4 pounds or 2 kg), often from the same bag. That's true of fire starters, too (one per grill).

A stable heat level is key to good performance for a kamado smoker.

After that, we light them up, as instructed by their manuals if available. Usually, that means letting the coals catch for 15 minutes, with the lid open, then shutting the grill. At this point, vents remain wide open until the grill comes within 50 degrees of the target temp.

We carefully fiddle with the vents to get there. Lastly, we let go of the controls and observe.

We follow the same procedure for our higher-temperature test with a target of 350 F. The idea here is to simulate the heat performance required to roast chicken and other poultry.

We smoke ribs along with other food for anecdotal tests.

And speaking of food, we perform lots of "anecdotal tests" too. We smoke a rack of baby back ribs (225 F) in each grill. We butterfly (aka spatchcock) chickens and roast them too or cook them beer can-style. Sourced from the local Costco, these weigh roughly 5 pounds each. Last, we grill a set of four 8-ounce burger patties at high heat (600 F).

Burgers, anyone?

Want more options? Here are the other two kamado grill models we evaluated for this test group. They didn't make it into my picks, but you may want to take a look for comparison's sake: