Cleaning the grill and the grates is painless, but having the grates seasoned properly is key to preventing all that grease and gunk from sticking to them. Simply slide the wheel end out first, lower it to the ground with the handle, grab the handle of the other end of the grill and off you go. As we’ve come to expect from Weber, The Traveler is a very intentionally built grill that checks all the boxes in terms of quality. Most of the grill, including the frame and hood were pre-assembled.
The exterior hood and body are painted porcelain-enameled steel with stainless steel accents around the lid. The lid’s handle is also stainless steel as is the burner inside the grill. The Traveler’s scissor-legged, foldable design and larger cooking surface aim to solve those issues. As you’d expect from such a powerhouse, this grill gets super hot and produced an “impeccably crispy” crust during our steak test. This could be a good starter grill for someone who wants to try grilling but doesn’t want to make a large commitment to the endeavor. Its biggest drawbacks are wobbly legs, even when ensuring that the attachment hardware is fully tightened, and visible air gaps in the lid that limit the ability to control the temperature.
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.
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 weber bbq 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.
The hottest I ever got the grill was around 500°F which took about 7 minutes. Weighing in at 47 lbs, Weber designed the grill to be light for portability. The frame weber charcoal grill which consists of the legs, tool hooks, shelf, and igniter are all plastic, but the material is thick and meant to be durable to withstand the rigors of traveling.