Features:

  • Includes Sense-Mate, a thermal sensor which constantly monitors grill temperature
  • Portable, Folded Legs Double as Handles
  • 110V or 12V with adaptors for 3 Power Options
  • Ultimate Tailgating Grill
Well worth the price, no regrets

We use it almost daily at home and have taken it camping and to the beach. Its just the right size for the two of us and super simple to use. During a power outage we used it for most of our meals for cooking and heating. The ability to run on 12 volts meant it was just a matter of bringing my trolling motor battery up to the deck for power. After going through many bags of pellets, we have had no problems or concerns. Be advised you should clean out the pellet burn pot after consuming a bag to keep the heat control accurate. Since there is zero insulation, we are considering buying the optional thermal blanket kit since using it in the winter means lots of the heat is lost to the air meaning more pellet consumption. For the few times we wanted a larger we are also thinking of purchasing the optional second rack. It will allow for an additional rack of ribs or two. We were initially hesitant of the cost, but after lots of use, its well worth it. We will update as time goes by. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ We have been using multiple times a week since the initial review and it still is working great. The only thing that has gone wrong is the meat probe quit working about a month ago. Have not bothered ordering a replacement since the kitchen instant read is handy. Have learned that the trick to cleaning the grill is to wait until it fails to light the first time. At that point I try again and when it lights, run the temperature to maximum, 550 degrees and let it soak there until it quits smoking. The smoke is all of the accumulated grease burning away. After it quits smoking I wait about 15 min and then push the off button. When its cool, I remove the grill and plates and go after them with a wire brush until the built up carbon is gone. Then I remove the fire pot box and go after the interior with a shop vac. Make sure you clean out the fire pot but be careful of the heating rod inside. After all the accumulated ash, grease and debris are gone, I probe down the grease tube with a small piece of wire to clean out any chunks of carbon that would stop the outflow of grease. The final step is to put a handful of fresh pellets in the fire pot as a prime. Fill to just cover the heating rod. Now just reassemble and start cooking.

Highly recommended!!!

Holy sheep-shit Batman!!! LOVE this smoker. Just got it a few days ago and tonight did our first smoking. Pork Ribs: Marinaded for 4 hours; soy sauce, Cowboy Rib Rub, brown suger. Smoked @ 190 for 3 hours Cooked @ 225 for 2 hours (170 internal temp) The corn (cheap frozen and put on the grill frozen with BBQ sauce on it) and onion was placed on top of ribs with an hour and a half left to cook. This is one of the smallest smokers, so if you are stupid and think you’ll be able to buy this and smoke enough for a 20 person party in just a few hours, you will be sadly disappointed and we’ll have to read your crappy review about how this smoker sucks. This smoker is great for and meant for smoking and cooking for 2 to 6 people relatively easily. The best part is the Bluetooth feature that allows for seeing what the grill is doing and it allows for automatically changing the temp and time as needed if you are using a preset profile. For instance, smoke at 190 for 3 hours, then automatically change to 225 degrees until the meat internal temp is 170.

The first two times the meat came out fine even though the temperature seemed to run a little ...

This product malfunctioned on the third use. The first two times the meat came out fine even though the temperature seemed to run a little high. On the third run, the temperature setting went haywire and incinerated my $65 roast less than 2 hours into a 6 hour smoke even though it displayed the right temperature setting. Good luck to you if you choose this product. But do you really want to trust your expensive holiday roast to luck? Follow Up: I received a call from the manufacturer who was rightly concerned about my issue. They assured me that with tens of thousands of these units in operation that my problem was unique. They wanted to get my smoker back for evaluation to see what went wrong and sent me another brand new grill and a return shipping label. As far as I'm concerned, they handled my problem in the right manner. I am more than comfortable recommending this grill to anyone now that I know there is a manufacturer standing behind it who will do the right thing. And by the way, the new grill is functioning just fine! Joe

Great little set it and forget it smoker/grill.

I have a fairly good amount of cooking experience for a non-professional. I used to build sous vide machines back when you couldn’t just buy them for a reasonable price, and I’ve been using low-temp cooking methods for several years. I’ve got Modernist Cuisine and The Food Lab and have digested much of them. I’ve owned grills and smokers of all sorts. Propane, charcoal, electric. In the last few years books like Franklin BBQ and Meathead have helped me get my outdoor cooking game on point. Pellet grills appealed to me because they combine the ease of use of a sous vide machine (accurate temperature control) with the flavor of a wood-fired smoker, and my brother and I are considering jumping into catering and buying (or building) a professional unit. I’d used electric smokers (meh), good old charcoal grills (bit better) and the big propane smokers (easiest to use but not 100% there on the flavor) but thought I’d give the pellets a try because if we’re going to get a pull-behind smoker, we’re going with wood or charcoal of some sort. The Davy Crockett was my first foray. I chose it because if its relatively low price, portability, and its wi-fi connectivity. My first impressions were that it was small but well-designed. It can fit easily enough to make a main course for a family. For my first cook I put six chicken thighs and 3 ears of corn in. For my second, an 8.5 lb. packer brisket in with room to spare. I’m not sure how big of one you could fit, but I would think even a fat 12 pounder or so would work. I don’t know if you’ll be able to do one of those 16 pound beasts you sometimes come across It’s a 12v unit, that comes with a 12v to cigarette lighter-style female plug in the back. They give you three things for the electric. A male to male lighter plug, so you could plug directly into a cigarette lighter in a car, RV, boat, etc. (That’s actually nice because lots of pickups and RVs have those on the exterior.) That can also plug into the two other included items, a 110v male to 12v female lighter plug converter, or a 12v female lighter plug to alligator clips for hooking directly to a standard 12v battery. The grill doesn’t draw a lot of power, so if you were wanting to use it at a park, even a small 12v battery would be more than enough to get it going. It only uses 60w average to run, so that’s about 5 amps, meaning a 10 amp hour battery could get you through about 2 hours, more than enough to grill some burgers or steaks. If you’re wanting to smoke something for a long time you’re probably going to have to go with shore power or an outlet on a vehicle you can idle. A small car battery wouldn’t want to run this bad boy for more than a couple hours without using your alternator, so don’t plug it into your civic and try to smoke a brisket. I’m only a few cooks in but so far I love it, with a few minor caveats. First the good: it pretty much works how you’d hope it works. You fill the hopper with pellets, set the temperature, and it takes it from there. You don’t have to spend any time managing temperature. I feel confident tossing in a brisket and leaving. It’s about 60 lbs. so you can move it quite easily with two people. I can move it myself, but your average woman probably couldn’t. The legs fold up and become a handle, which is nice. Assembly was pretty easy. It took maybe a half hour, and they include nice tools to get it done. The included temperature probe is a nice touch. You can see your food’s internal temp without opening the lid, and it’ll even notify you when done. It’s like a built in Bluetooth probe. That’s good because the wireless probe I have can’t work through the smoker, which I guess is probably like one big faraday cage. The grill has a fan in it that it uses to control the fire, and the way the unit is designed (heat from below, smokestack at the top) seems to encourage good air flow. The air circulation cooks your meat faster than a traditional smoker, much like a convection oven cooks your food faster than a regular one. I planned on 10 hours for my first brisket and it got done in 8. Other cooks got similar results. I’d say it takes something 10% off of your cook time generally, though that’s just a guess. The grill gets up to 550, which seems to be enough to call it self-cleaning. I ran it at that temp and pretty quickly everything inside was burned to ash. That’s really nice, as cleaning smokers can sometimes be a real pain in the ass. I think with a shop-vac and a half hour of mostly unattended cooking, you could get it clean. Food gets just the right amount of wood flavor. It isn’t over or undersmoked. You don’t have to think about how much wood you’re adding. You just put the pellets in (with refills every few hours) and walk away, and you get great food. So as I give my list of minor gripes, don’t forget that at the end of the day I love this grill. It’s like the ease of use of a convection oven with the great flavor of a wood-fired smoker. It’s really just set it and forget it for great tasting food. It’s quite impressive. Now on to the minor gripes. First, I wish it had a bigger hopper. The pellets ran out in a few hours, and the process of getting it going sucks a little bit in the middle of a cook. It’s awkward at any time, and could probably have been designed a bit better, but it’s manageable. On the plus side, you don’t ever have to do it if you just don’t run out of pellets. I’ve debated making some sort of removable pellet hopper extender for long cooks. Wi-Fi functionality could be a bit better. I have a hard time connecting with it, and it comes in and out. It’s in a spot that my phone shows being about 50%. If anything the grill should probably have an easier time reaching wi-fi than my phone, since it has a giant antenna and a dedicated power supply. Even when it’s connected to wi-fi, I can’t manage it remotely if I leave the house. It’d be nice to just see the temperature even when I’m not there. The app’s a little clunky but I’m an app-designer so I’m particular about UI/UX, and it does get the job done when you keep connected. I’m not a real big fan of the two-piece oil pan thing. I’d prefer a disposable foil one or something. It looks like they sell them for the bigger models. If fat gets through it drips through the grill below, and I’m debating using high heat silicone to seal it and then coating the bottom in foil, just in case. It burns through pellets pretty fast and they aren’t cheap. It went through a hopper (which is about 9 lbs) in 4 hours on my first cook and that was at 70 degrees outside. I don’t know if that’s really a complaint about this unit; it’s probably like that for any un-insulated smoker. I purchased the optional thermal blanket which the manufacturer claims will cut pellet use in half. That’d be really nice if true, and I’m sure I’ll leave a review there. So a few minor improvements that could be made, but overall I’d rate this unit a 4.5 stars if Amazon let me because at the end of the day it was relatively low-priced for a pellet grill, feels solidly built, and is really easy to get good results from. I'm going to round up to 5 though because if I knew then what I know now, I'd purchase it (with the thermal blanket from day one) again.

The best for camping! All your fellow campers will be jealous!

I bought this for my camp trailer. Absolutely love it. I have a traeger lil-tex at home and it performs on par with that product. Difference being you can control the thermostat in the green mountain product from your iphone and monitor the temps of your meats. Runs off any voltage you have available: 12v cigarette lighter, 12V jumper cable (comes in the kit!) 110 volt converter (also included). Don't know how you could beat this product. Great for camping!! Can't tell you how many times I've had fellow RV'ers come into my camp just to ask what that was I was cooking on. The smell alone drives them wild. UDATE: I recently acquired a new RV that had a gas stove attached to a swing-arm on the rear bumper. I have since mounted the Davy Crockett in its place and it fit and works wonderfully there. Just returned from a week on the Washington coast. Had campers stopping buy asking all manner of questions about it. It is performing wonderfully and we cooked on it every day. More to come later!

Love my Treager, but this lil GMG Davy Crockett takes pellet smoking to another level!

I've owned a Treager Lil Texas Elite that I bought from Costco about 4 years ago and loved it, but I had the recent need for a tailgater size pellet smoker/grill. I've used the GMG Davy Crockett about 6-7 times since I bought it 2 months ago. I had a bit of a learning curve to overcome getting it to connect to my WiFi network in the beginning, but after a few tries, I got it to connect and haven't had an issue since. One of the things I like about the GMG grills over my Treager, is the ability to direct sear. This takes my ribeyes to another level! The flavor was awesome on the Treager, but once you taste it with the seared crust, you'll understand the "Next level" experience. The WiFi and ability to control the temp from anywhere is another game changer. This past weekend was my first experience using this lil guy in a real tailgating environment and it was the main attraction for anyone walking past our car group's tent. I initially had it running on a BEATIT TECH 600A Peak 14000mAh 12-Volt Portable Car Jump starter Booster just to see how long it would last. Since I had cleaned it and vacuumed the burn box the night before the event, it took a couple times to get the fire going which sucked quite a few amps from the start box, but after it got going it ran for a full hour at 375 before the battery died. I used my car's cig lighter for the next 3 hours of cooking with no issues. This was the first time I used the app away from home and it worked like a charm! We grilled anything from bacon wrapped chicken breast strips, to burgers, hotdogs, brauts...a couple of guys/girls even tried to make Smores. This would be the only shortfall of the day since they pretty much require a direct open flame, but hey, we tried! All in all, this lil pellet smoker performed and impressed everyone at the meet. Hell, I had 2 people from my car group place orders from Amazon right there at the meet and several others were planning to snag one as soon as they got home...wonder if I can work some kinda commission with Amazon/GMG... LOL! I'm now considering upgrading my beloved Treager with a GMG Daniel Boone for higher volume home smoking. Update: Someone asked if this grill is dual votage and some of the answers were not accurate. I've attached a picture to show the input voltage range of 100-240V.

Buy it, that's all you need to know... :)

I truly appreciate how easy this smoker works. Spent a couple of weeks camping and after showing mine, I know of four people who went out and bought one! As for power usage, I hooked up a watt meter and recorded the amount of electricity used. During startup, I was seeing a 5-6 amp draw but when the igniter stopped it dropped to 0.60 amps. Total usage on a 12 hour smoke was 4.4 amp hours. My portable jump starter worked perfectly! I would highly recommend buying this smoker. The WiFi capability is one of my favorite options!

If you wanna go from BBQ Novice to BBQ Pro in a short amount of time, this is the grill for you.

This will be updated, but.... First, I have never monitored the tracking on an order so intently as this one. (Amazon does not update nearly as fast as the Fedex tracking, by the way.) Got the grill today, and Its like a fat boy Christmas! Couldnt wait to try it, so got home at 8:30, had her fired up by 9, put a FROZEN chicken breast on at 9:30 and ate it by 10:15. HO LEE COW! Dayum! That was purty gewd, purty gewd, indeed. Pleasantly surprised given the fact that chicken was a brick. Excellent results from what I honestly figured would be a sacrificial cook. Got the wifi rollin, got the food probe in once the breast thawed enuf to do so, set the meat probe temp on the app, and pulled the breast at 165°. Verified with an instant read, and they were identical. I have rediculously high hopes for this thing now. Update. 12/10/17 I have used the grill about 30 times. The more I cook the better it gets. Did poor man's burnt ends with a Chuck roast yesterday. Programmed my own profile for the Chuck, and I don't see how it could have turned out any better! I cooked two 8 pound bone in pork shoulders, (cut in half, four 4 pound chunks.) Thirty people got two good sized sandwiches, and it was absolutely delicious, every single bite, beautiful bark, quarter inch smoke ring, my mind was blown, honestly! The texture was firm but tender, could have shredded it finely, but I left it chunky. The only thing I haven't cooked perfectly on this thing is chicken wings. I have a mission to figure that out, trying different dry brines and temps/times. The biggest secret you should know with this thing is that the heat is very uneven, no matter where you put the heat shield. I have mapped mine with infrared thermometer and high quality digital probes. Right side of the grill was 50 degrees higher than the left side. After this, I decided to add another heat deflector just for low and slow cooks. I accomplished this by purchasing a round 10 inch cast iron griddle. Cut the handle off, and just sit it on top of the stock deflector. I now have a 10 degree variance from right to left, measured at the level of the grates. (Which are awesome by the way. They clean up so easily with a wire brush.) Also, the Traeger Pellets are the best I have used. Just wish they made a peach variety. I have used probably 100#'s of pellets so far, and whether I get them locally or online, they run about $1 per pound.

Best Tailgate Wood Pellet Grill

I will compare this unit to the Traeger Junior Elite because Traeger is the most popular brand of pellet grill and the Junior Elite is very close in size and price. I used to have a Traeger Junior Elite before this and the Davy Crockett is better in almost every way except two: Traeger has a 3 year warranty, the Davy Crockett has a 2 year warranty. They are both manufactured in China and have similar build quality AFAICT. The Traeger has a larger grill area (20-25% larger) than the Davy Crockett. Both will fit three racks of babyback ribs or two racks of spare ribs but I do miss the extra space on the Traeger. The Davy Crockett has better temperature control that allows me to program much more exact temperatures (one degree adjustments possible) using their app (the control panel allows me to adjust temperatures 5 degrees at a time). It uses a PID controller [...] controller to anticipate and fine micromanage the temperature by manipulating the auger speed and the fan speed. The Traeger just uses a thermostat set to 25 degree increments to control how much wood is fed into the fire and it has trouble keeping the temperature within 25 degrees of the set temperature. The Davy Crockett can be controlled manually with the control panel or via an app that allows you to monitor and control the grill. They will be coming out with a cloud based app so you can monitor the grill from anywhere you can get an internet connection so you can run errands or watch your kid play baseball while the meat is cooking. The App also allows you to program a series of instructions so that you can smoke for 5 hours and then cook for 3 hours and then lower the temperature so that it is still warm for you whenever you are ready to eat. This level of control and monitoring is important because the hopper does not always feed the pellets into the auger correctly and the fire in the firepot can go out. With the traeger, you have no idea unless you are constantly checking the grill while the Davy Crockett will tell you that the hopper is not feeding wood pellets and that the temperature is dropping. Another problem is that occasionally the pellets inside the auger will catch fire, this is usually not a problem because the wood pellets get spit out by the auger faster than the fire can works its way back into the hopper; but sometimes the fire does work its way back into the hopper (where it seems to die for lack of oxygen) and the temperature spikes. The Davy Crockett app will tell you something is wrong while the Traeger will produce ruined meat unless you are keeping a close eye on the grill (happened to me on a 12 hour smoke of brisket). Larger units can create enough separation between the fire and the auger to prevent this but smaller units don't seem to be large enough to create this much space. The Davy Crockett comes "tailgate ready" its legs can fold into a carry handle and it comes with the accessories you need to power it from your car battery or car electrical plug/cigarette lighter. Traeger charges $70 for an inverter to connect the Traeger to your car and another $80 for folding legs (but to be fair, the Traeger folding legs are sturdier and generally better than the legs that come with the Davy Crockett). The Traeger Junior Elite has vents in the hood that let in water if it rains. The Davy Crockett has a chimney with a cover. not a big deal but outside temperature affects the Traeger a lot more than the Davy Crockett because of the vented hood. If you are thinking about getting a wood pellet grill but don't really know if you want to spend $1000 or more. Then you can start with this one for $350 (on sale from your local dealer) and if you really like it, you can drop those $$$ for a larger grill (and you'll be much better informed about wood pellet grills by then). Personally I have a gas grill for grilling a gas smoker for smoking and this one is for tailgating, small cooks and extra capacity for grilling AND smoking.

Really inexpensive to operate

Holds temperature really well. Very inexpensive to operate. Pellets cost about $1 to $1.33 per pound and I smoked a 12 pound brisket with less than 3 pounds of pellets. I smoked it for 11 hours at 160 and 3 hours at 225 to an internal temperature of 200. It takes about $20 worth of wood in my traditional wood smoker to do that. I bought 100 pounds of pellets thinking it would use them fairly quickly, but I've smoked salmon, ribs, chicken - twice, ground beef for chili, and a 12 pound brisket and I have not even used 40 pounds. The mobile app is amazing. Not only can you control your grill from anywhere, but it also allows you to create profiles with steps and instructions so you can refine and improve your smoke.

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