The Weber Spirit II E-210 is a smaller, two-burner version of our top pick; the materials and build are identical. The E-210 is 4 inches narrower, and its cooking area is 15% smaller, but it still provides enough space to snugly fit a cut-up whole chicken or six to eight burger patties. Choose dedicated smokers if you want tender meat weber traveler falling off the bone, packed with the flavor of whatever smoking chips you choose to cook with. While smokers reward patient cooking, the flavorful meals are well worth the wait. Look for options with built-in lid thermometers and silicone temperature grommets to help ensure your meats are cooked properly from start to finish.
We looked for flare-ups, excessive charring, or patties that were still unacceptably raw. The Weber Genesis E-325s is a whole foot longer than the company’s Spirit II E-310, with 20% more cooking area. It also puts out more heat per square inch than our top pick, thanks to a fourth burner—placed between the middle and right-side burners—that creates what Weber dubs the Sear Zone. The Genesis E-325s also has roomier side tables, including one big enough to fit a half sheet pan. This grill’s overall compact size suits almost any patio or deck, yet its three-burner grilling surface is big enough to cook a complete meal for a family or a dozen burgers for a party.
The Weber Spirit II E-310 excelled at every test, producing the best hamburgers—deeply seared, evenly cooked—among all the grills we tested. And it outdid or equaled the competition in grilling barbecue chicken and whole roasted chickens with crispy golden skin. To help you keep the good vibes (and good food) going, we cooked burgers, barbecue, and chicken on seven top-rated grills—and researched dozens more—to find the best.
This indicates grill temperature when only one or two of the burners are on, to represent a cooking task where the food is placed between or alongside the direct flame. Expandable top cooking grate creates a large second level of grilling capacity so that you can execute an entire meal at one time. But after more rigorous testing, the grill proved to have some serious weaknesses.
She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd. We grilled a grate full of chicken pieces on a 90-degree afternoon in July, and the Genesis E-325s did an excellent job at maintaining a steady medium-low heat from beginning to end. The Genesis E-325s also has a foldable upper rack that extends the length of the main cooking grate and expands to be 11 inches deep. During the first 45 minutes, with each grill’s lid down, we occasionally checked for charring and redistributed pieces as needed. Then we flipped the chicken parts, slathered on a coating of barbecue sauce, and closed the lid for another 15 minutes.
Thermometers built into the lid of a grill aren’t fully reliable. They’re usually positioned several inches above the cooking grate, and as a result they don’t accurately report its temperature. Consider getting an inexpensive infrared thermometer to gauge the temperature of your cooking surface. Two-burner grills like our budget weber traveler pick can save you a little space and a little money—as long as you are prepared to cook your food in smaller batches and don’t plan on much indirect cooking. Versatile and increasingly popular, a Weber pellet grill can reach temperatures high enough to grill, sear, smoke and even bake to give you more cooking options.
For that reason, Weber offers generous warranties; years for the cookbox on almost all their full-sized models. Other grill parts, like the knobs, grates, and burner tubes have slightly shorter warranties, ranging from three to 10 years. We’ve long recommended Weber’s charcoal kettle grill to anyone looking for a phenomenal cooker at a reasonable price point. But our recent gas grill testing proved Weber is a powerhouse in that department, too (four out of six of our winners in our gas grill test were Webers). If you’re looking to buy on a budget, and/or favor a smoky flavor and scent while grilling, consider Weber’s charcoal grill options. If efficiency is on your list of grilling must-haves, consider a gas grill, which takes less time to heat up.