Z Grills 8 in 1 Wood Pellet Grill & Smoker with PID Controller, 572 Sq In Cooking Area, Direct Flame Access, 600D3E

UPDATE 3: Babyback ribs came out fall-off-the-bone tender and juicy. I'm smoking a 3# pork loin roast for pulled pork bbq today. I've just double checked the set temperature vs. actual, using my Polder digital thermometer that's calibrated. As you can see from the photo, I've got the grill set at 225°. The actual is 224°. After I took the photo, it went up to 225° actual. This will change depending on breeze. If I can keep it to within +/- 5°, I'm happy. In my initial review I cover how to regulate the temperature to make it more accurate.The decision to buy the Z Grills ZPG-550B2, was an excellent decision. The PID v 2.1, works very well and the smoker makes excellent food.UPDATE 2: I've made cottage hams. Technically, these aren't ham, because you use boneless pork shoulder. It's a regional thing. After curing by brining for 7 days, I used " SMOKE" level on the smoker. The shoulder was cut into 8 pieces, each ~ 1 pound prior to brining. I smoked them to an internal temp of 145°. I've vacuum packed them and they're in the freezer. We had one and they are so much better than the store bought, found in the Miami Valley region of Ohio. I've made another pizza and calzones, which turned out perfect.I just made Ribeye steaks by slow cooking at 220°. I turned it up to "HI" and it got up to 515°. I reverse seered them. They're fantastic. So you can grill at a pretty high temperature.Update 1: I made a pizza tonight. I've never made one on a grill. I've always had to par-bake the dough to get the crust done on pizza. Tonight, I made the dough, then built the pizza on a BF Bill.F acacia wood pizza peel that I bought here on Amazon. I used a 14 x 14 x 1/4" pizza steel, made by Pimica which I also bought here on Amazon. I put the steel in the smoker and preheated it on "HI" for 30 minutes. I got the pizza onto the hot steel. I cooked it for 20 minutes. It came out perfect. I never turned it around. It was evenly browned on the top and bottom. It's the best pizza I've ever made.I've never used a smoker grill. After spending $80 at a national chain for 2 bbq smoked rib meals for my husband and me (which were delicious, but $80!?), I decided to buy a pellet smoker. This was a decision over a year in the making. I did extensive research and decided that the Z Grills ZPG-550B2 would be the perfect fit for us.I had some doubts after reading about controller problems with some Z Grills. It took some doing, but I realized that the problems seemed to stem from the PID v. 2.0. They seemed to have corrected the problems with PID v. 2.1. I chose this particular unit because it met all of my criteria:1. 400-500 Sq in. Cooking area2. Hopper cleanout3. PID v. 2.14. PriceI bought the pellet grill for $377 here on Amazon. The newest 450-500 sq in. Z Grills are priced at $450+, so this was the best bang/buck. Kudos to Amazon; the grill arrived 2 days earlier than expected. This is a heavy grill. I'm a 5'8" woman. It only took about an hour to assemble. My neighbor helped me stand it upright. It came with all components and hardware, and to Z Grills credit, all tools necessary to assemble. It also came with an owners manual and a separate sheet with assembly instructions.The manual didn't detail the entire startup procedure, which is really important to complete. I went to Z Grills website and also watched a YouTube video by Z Grills Australia. This is the procedure:1. After making sure nothing is in the grill or pellet hopper, make sure the dial is on "SHUT DOWN CYCLE". Plug the grill in and press the power button to turn the grill on. Turn the dial to "SMOKE". Make sure the fan turns on and the auger is turning. It turns super slow.2. Keep the lid open, and everything out of the grill during this whole process. Fill the hopper 1/2 full of pellets.3. Turn the dial to "HI". The auger will turn, feeding the pellets into the fire box. Wait until you see pellets falling into the fire box. BE PATIENT! It took a good 10+ minutes before they started falling into the fire box.4. Turn the dial back to "SMOKE". Watch until you get a good solid roaring fire started in the fire box. Again, patience is a virtue, because there needs to be enough pellets in the box to create the roaring fire.5. Once the roaring fire is going, install (pre-cleaned) the heat baffle, grease tray. and grill racks. At this point, you can either proceed to the burn-in procedure, or shut it down.NOTE: It's important that you leave the grill plugged in and on "shutdown" whenever you're done with the grill. It controls the fire in the fire box until it's safe. Z Grills emphasizes the importance of doing this, and the host on YouTube demonstrated what happens if you don't do this. If you don't, it creates an uncontrolled burn, which can cause a back burn into the hopper, igniting the pellets in the hopper. The shutdown process takes 10 minutes. When done, the grill turns off on its own.Burn-In:1. I wanted to use the smoker the next day, so I immediately did the burn-in procedure. Turned the dial to "HI". When you see lots of smoke, close the lid. Leave it burning on "HI" for 45 minutes.2. After 45 minutes, with the lid still closed, turn the dial to "SMOKE". Leave it there for 10 minutes, so the fire can start slowing down.3. After 10 minutes, turn the dial to "SHUT DOWN CYCLE" and allow the grill to shut down completely before unplugging.My first experience was to slow smoke/cook a whole chicken that I brined overnight. This was a pretty big chicken that weighed 6 1/4 lbs. I lightly coated the grates with a paper towel and cooking oil. I put the grill on 225° and put the bird on. After an hour, I put a Taylor digital thermometer in the grill by the bird, to see how accurate the ambient temperature was. It was off by -25 to -30°. Then, I remembered something about the stack cover. The cover has a fine threaded screw that's 2"+ long. It was a very windy day. I figured I was losing heat through the stack. I screwed the cover down, and watched as the ambient temperature in the grill went up. I adjusted the cover so that the ambient temperature in the grill was within +/- 3-5°. The cover is approximately 3/4" from the top of the stack.Don't make my mistake!My one mistake was not opening the pellet hopper to check it. I looked at the window. I was trying not to open anything that would cause heat loss. I checked the grill just prior to running an errand, 3 hours into the cook, and to my horror, found the temp down to 115°. Immediately, I turned it up, first to 250°, then up to HI. The temp dropped further. Like an idiot (thinking that the controller had failed), I removed the chicken, and took everything out to look at the fire box. There were only remnants of burnt pellets, with none coming out from the turning auger. I opened the hopper (which I should have done first), and I found that the hopper had emptied, except for the pellets around the edges, including the window. I had only filled the hopper about 1/2 to start the chicken. I quickly refilled it, and once the pellets started coming out again, it started right up. I completed the chicken in a total of 6 hours, including my goof. I'm guessing I lost 45-60 minutes.It was by far the best tasting chicken I've ever made, and I make a mean baked chicken. I was afraid it would be dry, because I didn't base or add a water pan. It started dripping juice from the drumsticks. I put the chicken in a large cake pan to catch the juice as I cut it up. I'm a Miami Valley Ohio native living in WV. "Cottage hams" are something that don't exist in WV. I got an authentic recipe and have a big pork shouler cut into 1# pieces brining for 1 week. I'll smoke them in a few days, then vaccum pack and freeze them. The last of the ones I bought while in Cincinnati, are long gone. I plan to make a pizza tomorrow in the grill on my new pizza steel. I'm so glad I didn't compromise on the hopper cleanout. I still had 1/2 hopper full of pellets. We've had horrible storms come through the night after I made the chicken. The morning after making the chicken, I opened the cleanout and got the remaining pellets out before they could get damp from humidity. The smoker is on my large front porch, but wood readily absorbs humidity. I've bought 6 different flavors of pellets, storing them in the house, in wood pellet bags that I bought from Amazon.I will update this long review as I gain more experience.

I'm coming from a big green egg; I wanted something that was easier to do long controlled cooks and the pellet grills caught my eye. The Z-grill is a solid buy. I compared it to the Tr**ger at C***co and at first you notice the T has much thicker steel... wait a minute - its just the door that is thicker. The rest of the unit is the same gauge steel as the Z. In fact the Z has a welded frame around the door, more labor was put into the design. I compared the augers, the grills, the temp control, the construction, and I just don't see a difference in quality. The Z is considerably cheaper, of course. This 600 unit was smaller than I was expecting, but it is the perfect size for me. The packaging is genius - seriously, if you pull this out of the box you will never get it back in. Instructions could use some work. If I am working on a hinge I don't want a drawing of the entire grill. One area where the Z grills is better than the T, and all the other similarly prices big-box units is the fire pit. Most fire pits are a welded, flanged cup, and the auger feeds directly into them; there is always a risk of the fire burning up into the pellet bucket. With the Z the pellets actually drop down into a well shielded box. There is no possibility of an auger fire. It all looks better designed and more expensive than all the other grills I was interested in. This alone should put it on your list. The PID controller (yes, the 600 for sure uses PID; if it has a fan on the pellet box, it is PID) keeps the temps pretty stable and is easy and so far reliable. Amazing to tell the fire to maintain 225 and walk away all day. First cook was some pork chops, cooked for 1.5 hours with T pellets. All went well, the smoke filled the air. When I bit into them I was shocked... absolutely no smoke flavor. None. I don't know how this was possible, but the smoke profile sucked compared to my BGE. I was pretty discouraged, how could a "pellet smoker" not give any smoke flavor? Next cook was a 7 hour chuck roast. I used Bear Mountain pellets and an Amazin' Tube to maximize the smoke. This turned out INCREDIBLE. Best chuck I've ever had. The bark was fantastic, the rings were good, and the smoke flavor was as I expected. Everyone gobbled it up. Next day I made sandwiches with the chuck.. this was some of the best meat I've ever made, and we are all sad its all gone. So I am confident in writing a positive review. If you want to do slow cooking get yourself a pellet grill, and make sure you take a hard look at Z-Grills; I don't think you can find a PID unit any cheaper, and the quality is not a compromise. If you want hot and fast (ie, steaks) then get a BGE, Kamoda, Weber kettle, etc. Don't ask the pellet grill to do double duty... it is not really design to excel at that. You want chunks of wood and charcoal for the fast cooks.