It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but we’re being totally honest, few people actually need to use side burners or fancy thermometers. If you want to grill a few burgers on a weber charcoal grill sunny afternoon, this grill will get them cooked with no fuss. Serious, dedicated hobbyists might find it a little lacking, but for almost everyone else, this grill is the benchmark.
A good gas grill should last a decade or more, provided you clean it after every use and protect it from the elements. Weber, which makes all three of the grills we recommend, guarantees all parts on its Spirit II series for 10 years. So we expect our top and budget picks to hold up for at least that long.
The grill has 529 square inches of cooking space across its enameled cast iron cooking grates, providing plenty of room for all your burgers, steaks, and veggies—we found it ample enough for a family of five. The Weber Spirit II E-310 provides the unrivaled combination of top-notch grilling performance, a versatile three-burner design, durability, and a relatively affordable price. It excelled at every test, producing the best sear on our burgers of any grill, and equaling or outdoing the others in our tests involving barbecue chicken and whole roasted chickens.
Wondering which fuel is best, how to clean a bbq or after beginner’s advice? It’s easier to build and more reliable, igniting without fuss every time. The food it makes is better, and depending on sales, it costs $200 less. It has 10,000 five-start reviews on Home Depot, so you know it’s not just me who loves this grill.
All of these extra gadgets require power, and the Genesis Smart Grill takes 10 batteries. The Wi-Fi module alone uses six D batteries, but there is an option to power that part (and only that part) with a power bank. We assume the four other batteries power the igniter, LED lights, and fuel gauge. The upper warming rack adds 90 square inches of cooking surface to the E-210, making the total grate area 450 square inches.
We also sent popular Weber grills to our expert grillers and home product testers, who tried each out with meats, including steak and burgers, vegetables, and more, to determine which grills are truly the best. Each grill was rated on setup, heat retention, heat control, size, versatility, and overall value. Our testers then offered additional insights on each grill’s strengths and weaknesses. With porcelain-enameled cast-iron grates, you’ll get excellent heat retention and easy cleanup, as we’ve seen during tests.
On top of all that, this grill is particularly easy to assemble, maintain, and use, and its finish comes in four colors (black, white, red, and blue). Next time you cook, brush the cold, soot-covered grills clean, wipe them with a wet paper towel or rag, and then proceed. That goes against the common advice to clean the grates while they’re hot.
If a burner seems to be running cool or creates patchy flames, use a thin piece of wire (many grills come with one attached to a chain) to clean out the gas ports (the little holes in the burner). There’s nothing weber gas grill inside the burners to break, so don’t feel like you have to be delicate. Even though we didn’t officially test the Spirit II E-210, we did test its predecessor, the Weber Spirit E-210 (our former top pick).
This model’s core design components—firebox, burners, control panel—are all the same as those of the Genesis II E-310, which we tested in 2017 and 2018. Knowing this, we’re confident that the new Genesis will perform at least as well as its predecessors. “I emailed the photos on Thursday, and on Saturday an incident rep called me. I got a gentle lecture on cleaning and safety, but then he said they’d be sending me a whole-new cookbox (the main bottom half of the grill)—no charge, no shipping fees.
Ariane Resnick, who also updated this article, is a special diet chef, certified nutritionist, and bestselling author. She has more than 20 years experience in the food and writing spaces and believes in a joy-filled approach to health and wellness. It’s a much better grill than the original – cheaper, more compact, and better looking. The two large plastic wheels are more maneuverable than the four small caster wheels on the original.