Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd. This is not a comprehensive list of all the models we’ve considered. Finally, we enlisted fresh bratwurst links to gauge each grill’s ability to handle a grate full of fatty meat.
We were impressed with the high-heat grilling performance of the Weber Go Anywhere Charcoal Grill. But when the firebox got hot, the side vents that regulated airflow stuck in place, rendering us unable to control the temperature—critical for slow-cooking things like chicken and sausages. We started by loading the grates of each with 6-ounce burger patties (without crowding, of course) and assessed the evenness of the heat, the temperature control, the searing performance, and any flare-ups. Cooking the food was very much like cooking on my other Weber at home. I fit a full 10 pack of burgers that took minutes to get to medium-rare. Due to the amount of cooking space, I also managed to char about 6 hot dogs and 4 turkey burgers at the same time.
Charcoal is also smokier than gas, a possible issue for smaller, fenced-in spaces.
It’s not as good as our Weber picks at searing food, but it heats evenly and is easy to use. The cast-aluminum firebox evenly distributes heat across a grilling grate big enough to fit six large burgers or a whole cut-up chicken. The spacious dome lid has a built-in thermometer that lets you know when the grill is hot.
There’s a red release lever that you have to pull to be able to unfold the legs. Also, a red plastic safety latch that has to be undone, otherwise pulling the release lever is useless. We had to travel about 50 yards in the unkempt grass to reach where we wanted to settle in and the huge plastic wheels made pulling the grill effortless.
We rated the grills on ease of cleaning, including dumping any ash and unused charcoal for applicable models. After rating the grills’ overall performances in these areas, we looked at those scores and weighed them against their retail prices. Rating each area on a scale of one to five, we averaged the category scores to arrive at the final score for each grill. Porcelain-enameled, cast-iron cooking grates provide even heat distribution across the entire grilling surface and superior heat retention. Char-Broil covers the Grill2Go X200’s lid, firebox, and burner for five years and everything else for one year.
It’s made for use with a small propane tank (and does not come with an adapter for larger tanks), which can be stored underneath the firebox when packed up. One tester noted that the cast iron grates produced enviably golden-brown sear on weber charcoal grill a steak, although the surface of the grill did not produce consistent heat, which resulted in burning in some places. If you’re not the camping, beachgoing, or apartment-dwelling type, you may see little value in a portable gas grill.
In our tests, the Q 1200’s heavy-duty cast-aluminum firebox was the best at evenly absorbing and reflecting heat. That, along with the U-shaped burner, provided the most consistent grilling of all the portables we tested, with the fewest hot spots. Then we grilled bone-in chicken to test for flare-ups and how well the gas and charcoal grills could sustain a medium-low cooking temperature over 45 minutes. Portable gas grills work with 1-pound liquid-propane canisters that are small, packable, and available at most hardware stores. When you’re done cooking, the grill cools quickly, and you don’t have to worry about dumping out ashes.
Even though the Jumbo Joe isn’t the smallest or most compact charcoal grill we tested, it is lightweight (about 18 pounds) and easy to carry. A swiveling metal arm holds the grill together for transport and doubles as a lid holder while you’re weber charcoal grill grilling. The comfortable plastic handle allows you to lift the grill with one hand, while a heat shield keeps it cool to the touch during grilling. The Weber Q 1200 Gas Grill is the best of the portable propane models we’ve tested.