I tried the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1150 Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker, and it's ideal for summer feasting

Tom's Guide

27-05-2025

Price: $999Fuel type: CharcoalHopper capacity: 18 poundsCooking space: 1,150 square inchesDimensions: 32 x 58 x 52 inchesTemperature range: 225° to 700°F
The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1150 Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker is a big grill with a big name. It's designed for cooking a lot of food at once, with a massive, 1,150 square inch cooking area and a temperature range from 225 degrees to 700 degrees — making it useful for both low and slow smoking and high-heat searing.
In practice, the 1150 does quite well at both, though it excels as a smoker. As a grill, it's quite good too, but if you're after that flame-licked sear on your meats, it might not be the best grill for you.
Still, the 1150 is easy to use, has heaps of space for cooking, and lends a pleasant smoky flavor to your food. It's an excellent smoker that can pull double duty as a grill, as long as you're not a perfectionist about meat searing.
The 1150 costs $999 and is available for purchase now on Masterbuilt's website. It ships free, comes with a 1-year warranty.
You can also purchase the $1,150 at Home Depot online and in select retail locations.
The 1150 comes boxed in an absolutely absurd amount of non-recyclable packaging. Not great for the environment, but certainly good for protecting the unit from shipping damage. Unboxing and building the grill took over two hours.
The instructions are decent enough, though I did have to backtrack a few times to ensure I was bolting everything up properly. There's room for improvement here. And a few of the screw holes did not line up properly. There was one screw in the entire build that I was not able to get into place at all.
Once built, however, the 1150 cuts an imposing figure, with a tall coal chamber on one side and a massive cooking chamber in the middle. On the left-hand side, you'll find a prep area, and Masterbuilt includes another fold-down prep area on the front of the unit. Beneath the main chamber, you'll find a storage area with swing-out doors to protect the contents.
The GravityFed charcoal hopper is absolutely massive. You can load up to 18 pounds of charcoal in there, depending on what type you're using. Masterbuilt says you can smoke up to 15 hours, and that certainly seems believable given the sheer size of this unit. As the lower charcoal burns and the ash falls into the ash bin, the fresher charcoal above automatically falls downward and ignites.
Beneath the charcoal, you'll find an ash bin. This is also where you'll light the unit. I used Masterbuilt starters, which slide easily into the slot below the charcoal. Just light it and give it a few minutes, then turn on the grill. The built-in DigitalFan control will take care of the rest and get you up to temperature within minutes.
To make the most of your fuel, Masterbuilt uses its FuelSaver body design, which includes dual-wall insulation and porcelain-coated interior walls that help retain heat and moisture. That's part of how the 1150 can get so many hours out of your fuel.
Inside the cooking chamber, you'll find reversible cast-iron grates that are appropriate for grilling or searing. They're labeled as such, so you know which surface is best suited to your cooking style. There are also porcelain-coated warming racks above the main cooking surface, which fold out of the way when not in use.
If you really want to kit out your 1150, Masterbuilt sells additional accessories like a pizza oven, Flat Top Griddle, and Rotisserie.
Before using the 1150 to cook food, it's important to season it. You'll basically run the 1150 at a high temperature for about an hour to cook off any chemicals or byproducts from shipping. It's easy, and a very necessary step.
I bemoaned Masterbuilt's AutoIgnite grill starting methods because it was difficult to get the starter lit, and once it was lit, it often blew out. This is not the case with the 1150, since you can easily get a lighter underneath the starter in the ash bin chamber. It's a much better system, and I've had no problems at all lighting the 1150.
Once lit, you'll close the hopper doors and the 1150 will take over. Just set your target temperature and wait a few minutes. It's been foolproof every time I've used the 1150.
I grilled some thick-cut pork chops the first time I fired up the 1150 for cooking. Pork chops are tough to cook on a grill; get the grill too hot and you'll burn the outside while the inside stays undercooked. Cook it too low and you'll just have dry pork chops.
So I was sure to use the included meat probe to monitor the temperature carefully. The Masterbuilt App conveniently tells you what your target temperature should be for various meats, and in this case, the app was spot-on. I inserted the probe, waited to hit the target temp, then gave the pork chops a quick sear on high heat.
They came out cooked to near perfection. I was a bit disappointed in the searing capabilities of the 1150. That's largely because the heat source is so far away from the cooking grates, as is the case with almost all pellet and charcoal-fed grills like this.
You won't get that flame-kissed char you're used to from your live-flame grill. But I was able to get some sear. It's mostly adjusting expectations here.
My first smoking experience with the 1150 went exceptionally well. I marinated some chicken thighs, and prepped some mackerel and got to smoking.
Once again, it was super easy. I set the temperature to the lowest possible setting, which is 225 degrees. I do wish it was possible to go lower; I have often smoked briskets at 180 to 190 degrees, so if you're a true low and slow cook, you may have to adjust your methods here.
I inserted a meat probe into one of the thighs, set the target temperature — once again taking the recommendation of the app — and walked away. Occasionally I mopped the chicken with barbecue sauce, but otherwise I tried to stay as hands-off as possible.
The chicken came out nearly perfect. It never reached the target internal temperature, so I left the chicken on a bit longer. That turned out to be a mistake. They would have been absolutely perfect had I removed the chicken when the timer went off. The smoky flavor was very deep and satisfying.
The mackerel too cooked up well. I always hesitate to smoke fish on the grill because it's very easy to dry it out. And I didn't insert a probe into these fillets. Still, the mackerel came out with a pleasant smoky flavor and was cooked to perfection. I largely relied on my instincts in this case to pull the fish off the grill when I felt it was done.
I like the charcoal smokiness the 1150 produces better than pellet grills. It's a richer flavor. Pellet grills often lend a softer, more measured smokiness, but I like a bit more than that. If you're really into a deep smoky flavor, the 1150 will certainly do the trick.
I bet I could put some wet chunks of apple or maple in the hopper and it would add to the flavors, too. Masterbuilt doesn't recommend this and you'd definitely have to watch out for dangerous flare-ups. And it still wouldn't compete with a wood-fired offset smoker, so this may not be worthwhile. And the 1150 is vastly easier to use than offset wood smokers, so you take your tradeoffs.
The Masterbuilt app is finicky. It tends to disconnect often, which requires restarting the app and reestablishing the connection to the grill. It's annoying, but it has reliably reconnected every time.
That said, once you're in, there are a lot of great features. You can track the temperature of the cooking chamber and see your meat probe temps. You can look up what temperatures you should set your probes to as well. I found this super handy.
I do wish you could save your data after a smoking session. Referring back to a successful smoking session would be a great way to get more consistent results over time.
Masterbuilt seems to own the gravity-fed charcoal grill space, and it's actually difficult to find an apples-to-apples comparison to the 1150. Most gravity-fed grills use wood pellets instead of charcoal.
I did find another option: Oklahoma Joe's Tahoma 1200A DLX Auto-Feed Charcoal Smoker and Grill with Wifi, which costs $899. Its temperature range is 200 to 600 degrees, and its cooking surface is just a touch larger than the 1150.
The Tahoma's advertised cooking time is 13 hours. Its overall dimensions are slightly smaller than the 1150 too, and the charcoal feeds into a hopper more directly beneath the meats you're smoking. I'd be curious to do a side-by-side test of these two units.
The 1150 is a big grill meant for making big amounts of food. It excels at low and slow smoking, and it's about as set-it-and-forget-it as it gets once it's lit and set for your specific cooking needs. It holds its own as a high-temperature grill, but if you're grilling more than smoking, you may want something with a heat source directly beneath the meat you're cooking, so the 1150 isn't ideal.
I love the smoky flavors I got from the lump charcoal in the massive chamber. And I like that I didn't have to continually monitor fuel levels. 15 hours is ample time to smoke most meats, so the massive capacity works wonders here.
Overall, this big grill delivers big flavors. I wish the app was a bit more streamlined and consistent, and searing meats leaves something to be desired. But overall, I've been pleased with my experience with the 1150 and recommend it for meat smokers who don't want to babysit a grill all day.