7 Best Charcoal Grills of 2026, Tested and Reviewed
From simple kettles to high-tech options with digital control, these charcoal grills will give you that craveable, char-grilled flavor every single time.
Kamron Sanders
Tested by Kamron Sanders
Grilling on a charcoal grill is the only way to impart the signature smoky flavor that people crave when they think of grilled food. Sure, gas grills are highly convenient and turn out a tasty product with great consistency, but when you want grilled flavor, you can't beat a charcoal grill.
While charcoal grills have simple origins, shopping for a modern charcoal grill presents a nearly endless list of options, accessories, sizes and more, each with a vastly different price point. You can snag a basic charcoal grill for as little as just a couple hundred bucks, or splurge on high-tech models topping the $1,000 range.
To help you narrow down the vast assortment of charcoal grills on the market, we've put 15 popular models to the test and determined which charcoal grills are worth buying and which are all smoke.
Our Top Charcoal Grill Picks
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$999 at BBQGuys
Best Digitally Controlled
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1050 Digital Charcoal Grill + Smoker
How We Tested
To identify the best charcoal grills, we started by researching popular models across various brands like Weber, Oklahoma Joe's, Kamado Joe, Char-Griller and more, looking for capable grills at a variety of price points. We settled on 15 different models, then put each through a rigorous testing process comprised of the following tests:
Setup and Assembly: Each grill arrived unassembled, so we started by assembling each model according to the manufacturer's instructions, noting how long the assembly process took, how difficult it was, whether it required more than one person, and anything else we felt added to or detracted from the overall user experience.
Charcoal Loading and Lighting: Once all of the grills were assembled, we loaded them with charcoal per the user manuals, then lit them up. We noted how long it took before we were ready to cook, as well as how easy or difficult it was to load the charcoal and light each grill.
Burger Test (Direct Heat): For the first cook test, we arranged the charcoal and grates for searing burgers, then cooked two identical burger patties on each grill. We noted how well the grills seared, how easy they were to control, and whether or not the grates could create deep, visible sear marks. If a grill had inadequate heat production or the charcoal was simply too far from the grate for searing, we noted it.
Kamron Sanders
Bone-In Chicken Test (Indirect Heat): To test each grill's capacity for indirect cooking, we arranged the charcoal in a two-zone cooking fashion and attempted to cook bone-in chicken thighs evenly with no scorching of the skin. We noted how easily this was accomplished and whether a grill's shape or design made it easier or more difficult. Once the chicken was up to temp, we examined the results and ranked the different models.
Kamron Sanders
Temperature Control: During the cooking tests, we manipulated any temperature control devices available on each grill, noting how functional they were, how effective they were and whether they easily controlled the grill's temperature. We also assessed how easy it was to control flare-ups, should they occur.
Kamron Sanders
Overall Performance: Once it was all said and done, we scored each grill's overall performance from start to finish, including prep, lighting, cooking and everything in between. Once they were cool, we cleaned the grill and removed the ash, noting how easy or difficult it was on each model.
Kamron Sanders
Grilling Tips From Our Experts
- Durable porcelain-enameled finish
- Great warranty
- Handy accessories
- Readily available replacement parts
- No side tables
- Manual operation
- Limited size
At first look, the Weber Master-Touch Charcoal Kettle Grill may seem like a basic Weber kettle grill with a few accessories and a higher price point. And, honestly, that's exactly what it is. However, after using the original Weber kettle for the better part of a decade, we can confidently say that these upgrades are worth spending a few extra bucks on.
Among the most useful additions is the tuck-away lid holder, which circumvents the whole ordeal of finding a spot to stash the bulky lid every time you cook over the open grill, or having to hold it every time you need to tend to the grill. While the cooking function remains generally the same as the standard Weber kettle, little additions like these greatly enhance the user experience.
Another helpful design feature is the height boost, which holds the Master-Touch two inches higher than the standard Weber kettle. While not everyone may appreciate this, we found it made tending to the grill much more comfortable and reduced back strain. The Master-Touch also includes helpful features like a warming rack, char-basket fuel holders for organizing charcoal and a hinged grate compatible with Weber's Gourmet BBQ System.
Accessories aside, the Weber Master-Touch Charcoal Kettle Grill offers a solid cooking experience. In our burger test, it produced effortless, even searing with no flare-up issues. Additionally, indirect cooking was a breeze, as you can easily bank the charcoal to one side with plenty of room for food on the opposite side of the grate. We found the top and bottom vents easy to manipulate for temperature control and enjoyed the one-touch ash cleaning system for effortless ash removal.
- Cooking Area 363 square inches
- Weight 28.7 pounds
- Dimensions 29.5 x 24 x 42 inches
- Warranty 10-year warranty on bowl and lid, 5-year warranty on one-touch cleaning system and plastic, 2-year warranty on all other parts
- Durable porcelain-enameled finish
- Inexpensive
- Great warranty
- Readily available replacement parts
- No side tables
- Manual operation
- Limited size
If you want to save a few bucks over our "Best Overall" pick, you can't beat the value of the Weber Original Kettle Premium. With some color options as low as $219, you get a lot of grill for your money.
While this classic Weber kettle doesn't include some of the helpful features we enjoyed on the Master-Touch model, it offered all the same cooking capability, passing both the burger and chicken test with flying colors. Plus, you still get helpful features like a hinged grate for easily adding charcoal, a one-touch ash cleaning system and a lid-integrated thermometer.
With a porcelain-enameled finish and an extensive list of readily available parts for maintenance, you can be sure this grill will stand the test of time if properly cared for.
- Cooking Area 363 square inches
- Weight 32.3 pounds
- Dimensions 38.5 x 22.5 x 27 inches
- Warranty 10-year warranty on bowl and lid, 5-year warranty on one-touch cleaning system and plastic, 2-year warranty on all other parts
- Easy-to-use digital controls
- Huge cooking surface
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth monitoring
- Great for smoking, grilling, searing, roasting and baking
- Requires electricity for digital controls
- Lengthy assembly process
- Expensive
- Heavy
While we love a classic charcoal grill for its no-fuss simplicity, we weren't so sure that love would translate to something like a digitally controlled smart charcoal grill with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth monitoring, which we assumed might be a little gimmicky. Alas, we were wrong. The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1050 came to compete.
The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1050 Digital Charcoal Grill + Smoker is a versatile grill that doubles as a highly capable smoker, with 1,050 square inches of cooking surface to smoke an assortment of meats at once. With a vertical, gravity-fed hopper that can hold a staggering 16 pounds of charcoal briquettes, you can cook for an impressive length of time before refilling it.
We thought the digital controls would detract from the hands-on grilling nature that makes us love cooking over charcoal, but it really didn't. It was a truly enjoyable grilling experience. User experience aside, it turned out to be an amazing product in both of our grilling tests, producing some of the most evenly cooked chicken and some of the most impressive sear marks among all the grills.
- Cooking Area 1,050 square inches
- Weight 231 pounds
- Dimensions 61 x 52 x 33 inches
- Warranty One year warranty
- Incredible heat retention
- Durable finish
- Premium build quality
- Easy assembly
- Great warranty
- Heavy
- Expensive
- Limited cooking surface
- Can crack if dropped
The Kamado Joe Classic Joe Ceramic Charcoal Grill and Smoker is a legendary charcoal grill, and for good reason: It's seriously impressive. First off, you can immediately tell it is a high-quality product built to last (as long as you don't drop it and crack it). Secondly, there really is no other grill that holds heat even remotely close to as well as the Kamado Joe. We're talking several hours of temperature holding with just a standard chimney starter worth of charcoal. It holds temperature extremely well and burns ridiculously efficiently.
However, in testing, we quickly learned there's an art to cooking with this style of grill, as we incidentally let the temperature climb to 700 degrees, which was then difficult to reduce due to the grill's impressive heat retention. Once we got the temperature under control, we lowered the grates to sear the burgers, then installed the heat deflectors for indirect cooking.
As mentioned above, the grill is capable of immense heat production, so searing isn't challenging, but the charcoal bed is still far beneath the grates even when they're in the low position. Beginners may find that this takes some getting used to, as good fire management is crucial. The upper grate position and included heat deflectors made the Kamado Joe a great option for indirect cooking, and our chicken cooked evenly, with no burning of the skin. The next step? Ordering the Kamado Joe pizza stone, so we can really put the high-heat cooking capability to the test.
- Cooking Area 250 square inches
- Weight 188 pounds
- Dimensions 18 x 18.11 x 48 inches
- Warranty Limited lifetime warranty on ceramic parts, 5-year warranty on metal parts, 3-year warranty on heat deflector
- Inexpensive
- Highly fuel efficient
- Integrated storage
- Less fragile than other kamado grills
- Lighter than similar models
- Great warranty
- Easy to overshoot temperature, then difficult to drop temperature
- Less premium build quality than other kamado grills
- Can eventually rust
We get it, not everyone is ready to drop over $1,000 on a Kamado Joe, but you can get very close to the same cooking experience for less than half the price with the Char-Griller AKORN Kamado Charcoal Grill. Full transparency, the AKORN is not as nice as the Kamado Joe; it doesn't feel as high-quality, and it doesn't retain heat as well. However, it's shockingly similar given the vast price difference.
During testing, the Char-Griller AKORN performed exceedingly well for both searing and indirect cooking, and we loved the addition of the swing-out warming rack, which adds another level of control that the Kamado Joe is lacking. However, we did miss the heat deflectors on the Kamado Joe, which made indirect cooking much easier. All in all, you really can't beat the AKORN for the price.
- Cooking Area 445 square inches
- Weight 90 pounds
- Dimensions 31.1 x 48.43 x 46.06 inches
- Warranty 5-year limited warranty
- Durable, thick metal construction
- Great warranty
- True offset smoking capabilities with a separate fire box
- Large cooking surface
- Suitable for charcoal, wood chunks or splits
- Big and bulky
- Leaks smoke
- Overall basic design
- Vulnerable to rust
If you want a charcoal grill that you can smoke serious BBQ on, look no further than the Oklahoma Joe's Highland Charcoal Smoker and Grill. We've been regularly using this grill for over five years now for everything from grilling burgers and kebabs to smoking brisket, ribs and pork shoulder. It's a seriously impressive smoker that is worth every penny.
What we most love about the Oklahoma Joe's Highland is its obvious high build quality and durable metal construction. While it is certainly prone to rust without adequate maintenance, it's not like many other flimsy metal grills found at the big box stores, which begin to wobble and fall apart at the first sign of rust.
Our one complaint with this grill is the process of ash removal. With no slide-out tray or ash catcher in the main grill body, you must resort to scooping it out or vacuuming it once cool. However, Oklahoma Joe's has upgraded the smoker box to include a slide-out ash tray, which wasn’t available on prior iterations.
- Cooking Area 879 square inches
- Weight 156 pounds
- Dimensions 59 × 33.5 × 52.8 inches
- Warranty Two-year limited warranty
- Highly portable
- Locking handle doubles as a lid cradle
- Durable porcelain-enameled finish
- Readily available replacement parts
- Great warranty
- Limited cooking surface size
- Inconvenient ash cleanup
- Shallow bowl
- Awkward to transport until cooled
When it came time to choose the best portable charcoal grill, the Weber Jumbo Joe was the clear winner. Essentially a shrunk-down Weber kettle, it performs nearly just as well as the full-size option. And, at just 18 pounds and under 20 inches wide, it's easy to stash in your car for tailgating, camping and more.
Although its small size made it slightly less effective for indirect cooking, we were pleasantly surprised with the size of the cooking surface on such a compact, portable grill.
While the Oklahoma Joe's Rambler was easily one of the best small charcoal grills we tested and offered a better grilling experience than the Jumbo Joe, we thought it was a stretch to call it portable, as it's bulky, heavy and much more difficult to transport than the Jumbo Joe.
- Cooking Area 240 square inches
- Weight 18 pounds
- Dimensions 19.75 x 20.5 x 19.75 inches
- Warranty 10-year warranty on bowl and lid, 5-year warranty on one-touch cleaning system and plastic, 2-year warranty on all other parts
What to Consider When Buying a Charcoal Grill
Type: From kettles to barrels to kamados and carts, there are a surprisingly large number of charcoal grill types to choose from. While you may think it's more about aesthetics or overall size, the type of charcoal grill you buy will drastically alter the performance of the grill.
Size and Cooking Area: It goes without saying that the size of the cooking area directly determines how much food you can cook at one time. However, don't forget to account for your outdoor space, as many grills are big and bulky, yet their cooking surface is nearly the same size as much smaller grills. Additionally, larger grills take more fuel. If you size your grill based on the one or two backyard parties you may throw, you'll be throwing away money when you're cooking your average weekly dinner.
Material and Durability: We don't want to oversimplify this, but it's generally true that the thinner the material, the shorter the lifespan of a charcoal grill. The reason we can't oversimplify it is that you have to also factor in the type of material, as something like a Weber Kettle uses relatively thin material, but the porcelain-enameled finish can sometimes outlast plain metal on other grills, regardless of thickness.
Features: While many cooking gadgets go overboard on features and oftentimes simpler is better, charcoal grills may be the exception. Accessories and features like side shelves, storage, extra vents, slide-out ash catchers, smart features, adjustable charcoal trays and more can dramatically affect the overall user experience and the grill's performance.
Portability: If you plan on moving your grill around your property or in and out of storage frequently, pay attention to the weight as well as the quality of the wheels. Additionally, if you plan to take your grill on trips or to events, we recommend something compact and lightweight, but that still offers a capable cooking experience.
Kamron Sanders
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you start a charcoal grill?
The process of starting a charcoal grill varies between models and types, but it's generally best to start the charcoal outside of the grill in a chimney starter, then pour it into the grill once it's ready. Plus, it circumvents the need for lighter fluid, which can add chemical smells and tastes to food.
How do you clean a charcoal grill?
The proper way to clean a charcoal grill depends on your specific grill, but it typically consists of brushing the grates with a grill brush, then removing and discarding the ash once it has fully cooled. Some manufacturers may specify specific cleaning techniques and occasional seasoning to preserve the metal.
Are charcoal grills better than gas grills?
Charcoal grills aren't inherently better or worse than gas grills, but they are different. Typically, people choose charcoal for taste or the grilling experience, while people choose gas for convenience, consistency or ease of use.
How do you keep a charcoal grill hot?
Put simply, you keep a charcoal grill hot by cooking with adequate fuel and supplying adequate oxygen. For longer cooks, you may need to add charcoal throughout the cooking process. The best way to do this is by starting a batch of charcoal in a chimney, then adding it once it's ready rather than throwing cold charcoal directly into the grill.
Can you smoke meat on a charcoal grill?
Yes, most charcoal grills can smoke meat, but the design of the grill will be the primary determining factor. Generally, the more space you can put between the meat and the heat source, the easier it will be to smoke. However, charcoal grills with offset fire boxes, like the Oklahoma Joe's Highland, or heat-deflecting devices, like the Kamado Joe Classic Joe, make smoking much more accessible.
Kamron Sanders
Other Charcoal Grills We Tested
There were many things to love about the Nexgrill Oakford Homestead Grill, but it just didn't feel like a grill that would hold up over time. We liked the removable ash tray, adjustable charcoal bed and the large cooking surface, but the grill seemed cheaply built.
While we were largely impressed with everything from Weber, the Weber Performer Smart Charcoal Grill simply didn't feel worth the high price tag. We found the smart controls lackluster compared to the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1050, and we ended up using the grill manually most of the time. In fact, we'd rather buy a standard Weber Kettle and use the money we saved to purchase a premium wireless meat thermometer like the TempSpike Pro.
The Oklahoma Joe's Rambler is a top-notch portable charcoal grill, but it was edged out by the ultra-portable Weber Jumbo Joe. However, if your priority is the cooking experience rather than portability, we recommend springing for the Rambler instead, as mentioned above.
The Royal Gourmet Charcoal Grill and Smoker was greatly lacking in quality compared with the other grills we tested. While the design seemed okay on paper, much like a more affordable version of the Oklahoma Joe's Highland, the grill itself is thin, wobbly and loses too much heat to ever be used for serious smoking.
The PK Grills PK300-BCX Aluminum Charcoal Grill and Smoker is a great grill, with a unique aluminum body that will never rust. However, at its steep price point, we expected it to be bigger, better or at least more special in some regard. It seemed relatively basic for $700.
Kamron Sanders
Kamron Sanders
Kamron Sanders
Why You Should Trust Our Tester
This article was written by Kamron Sanders, a freelance home improvement writer and professional product tester with experience as a cheesemonger and barista, and an ongoing passion for smoking BBQ and perfecting homemade pizza. For this list of best charcoal grills, he tested 15 models from online retailers like Amazon, The Home Depot, BBQGuys and Lowe's, exploring products ranging in size, price, accessories, design, features and more. He evaluated each grill for ease of use, durability, quality, functionality, usefulness and design, as well as price point and overall value, noting his likes and dislikes to determine the overall winners we think you'll love.
Why You Should Trust Food Network Shopping Experts
Food Network Shopping Experts believe the best method for testing products is based on how our fans are going to use them in the real world. In each of our Tested and Reviewed stories, products are tested in real home kitchens that reflect real-world use cases. Our testers follow rigorous testing rubrics designed by our expert editors and take copious notes during the testing process. When choosing the best products, our testers evaluate all of the testing data and take into consideration many factors, including ease of use, price, product availability and practicality. The products covered on FoodNetwork.com are chosen completely independently by our editors without any outside influence. Our editors do not accept products in exchange for a positive review or promised coverage.
