But given the Weber Spirit II E-310’s higher performance and lower cost, the choice was clear. The Weber Spirit II E-310 is the best gas grill for most people, offering an unrivaled combination of top-notch grilling performance, a versatile three-burner design, durability, and an affordable price. It excelled at every test, producing the best sear of any grill on our burgers and equaling or outdoing the others on our barbecue chicken and whole roasted chickens. Its overall compact size (helped by a new fold-down side table) suits almost any patio or deck, but its grilling surface is big enough to cook a complete meal for a family, or a dozen burgers for a party.
Enjoying cooking outside and not having to heat up my kitchen. Really great to see temperature with the guage on the outside of grill. Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting on all things cooking and entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd. Finally, be aware that a few parts of a grill are consumables, so you will need to replace them occasionally.
With room for up to 18 four-ounce burgers, the Weber Genesis II E-210, $500, is in our small-grill category. This two-burner grill was slower to preheat than the top grills in our tests and might need more than 10 minutes to reach the grilling temperature you want. Once it does, our tests show that the temperature remains constant across the grates.
If you want to easily move your grill into and out of storage, you’ll also need to buy a quick-disconnect system, which can add another $150 or so. The benefits of natural gas include no more wrestling propane tanks on and off your grill, always-available fuel , and lower fuel costs . The now-discontinued Char-Broil Advantage 3-Burner Gas Grill from Lowe’s met the low expectations we set upon seeing its sub-$200 price. It cooked burgers acceptably, but to get an even cook we had to shuffle the patties around from hot spots to cool spots. Unable to keep a steady low temperature, it burned the barbecue chicken. To this grill’s credit, it made a nice indirect-roasted chicken—but then again, every tested grill did.
At 513 square inches, the Genesis II E-310’s grates offer roughly 20 percent more grilling surface versus the Spirit II E-310’s 424 square inches. That bumps you up from 12 to 15 or so burgers for a big party, or it lets you cook an ambitious, complete meal for a large family. But although the Genesis portable bbq II looks much larger than the Spirit, in reality the differences are not huge. The Genesis II is 3 inches wider overall, and its grates are 25 by 19 inches versus the Spirit’s 23 by 18 inches. Both models have a fold-down side table that reduces their width to under 45 inches, for easier storage.
The weber spirit comes with 10,000 BTU/hr output capability. This is primarily due to the two separate burners on the grill. In fact, if you’re grilling something that needs space to cook all sides then I’d recommend using multiple grills instead of just one. The weber spirit is extremely simple to use – it comes with a little side burner which you can turn on and off weber genesis 2 easily, as well as one ignition switch. I’ve never had to contact customer service for my weber spirit grill – it’s served me admirably for several years now without any significant problems. It’s not cylindrical like most grill designs – I’m beginning to think that with all their different models it’s simply hard to make any new type of shape with propane grills.
Lifting the hood, you get the by now familiar Weber porcelain enamel cast iron grates that give you those lovely thick sear marks on your food. There’s also a stainless steel warming rack, adding additional cooking space. Over the course of four days in Spring 2017, we put our weber genesis 2 gas grills through a battery of tests designed to demonstrate their qualities and highlight their differences. We cooked burgers on high heat to see how well the grills seared meat and how intense and even was the heat they could generate across the whole grate surface.