Char Chimney

Reviews & Comparisons

One product at a time, or two side by side. The pages for the moment you've narrowed it down and want somebody to tell you honestly whether it's the right gift.

A roundup answers “which of these six?”. These pages answer the two questions that come after it: “is this specific thing any good?” and “this one or that one?”. They are the last stop before you spend, so they are written to talk you out of a purchase as readily as into one.

What a review here is, and what it is not

It is not a test. We do not own these products, we have not cooked with them, and we will never tell you we have. What we do instead is read the published specification and the listing carefully, look at what the design can and cannot physically do, and judge the thing as a gift — who it delights, who quietly leaves it in a drawer, and what it costs beyond the purchase price in effort or upkeep. The whole method is set out on how we pick, including why you will never see a star rating or a score out of ten here.

Every review carries a “skip it if” list as well as a “give it if” list. That is a structural rule rather than an editorial preference: a review page with no honest reason to walk away is an advertisement, and this site is built so that one cannot be published.

Start with the comparison, not the review

If you already know roughly what you want, a head-to-head is usually the faster read. Most grilling gift decisions come down to a fork in the road rather than a shortlist: a pocket thermometer or a wireless one, a charcoal grill or a flat-top griddle, four good tools or twenty-six cheaper ones, neoprene gloves or silicone, or a pellet tube or a smoker box. Each one lays the two options side by side in a table, then says plainly which recipient each suits.

The same goes for the big purchases. For a pellet grill the fork is usually a brand — Traeger or Pit Boss. For charcoal it is a design — a kamado or a kettle. And for a smart thermometer it is a model: the MEATER Plus, Pro or Pro Duo, where only some are rated for open flame.

Four more forks cover the decisions people arrive here having half-made. If the fuel is still open, pellet grill vs gas grill puts two of each side by side; if they have decided on smoke, offset smoker vs pellet grill is the difference between a hobby and an appliance. For a griddle the question is size rather than brand — Blackstone 22 vs 28 works through what the extra plate buys. And for the kettle this site is built around, Weber kettle vs Master-Touch sets out exactly what each step up in price adds, and who will actually use it.

The single-product reviews

The six long reviews cover the products people research hardest before spending: the Weber kettle and the Blackstone griddle at the big-ticket end, the MEATER Plusin the middle, and the everyday three — a starter tool set, a pair of heat gloves, and the chimney starter this site is named after.

The newest of them covers the product we recommend more often than anything else on the site, and the only one whose brand name changed underneath it: the TempPro TP19H — the thermometer most people still search for as the ThermoPro TP19H. It goes through the published accuracy, the IP65 rating, the three-year warranty nobody registers, two places where the maker’s spec page and its own listing disagree, and the three kinds of cook who should buy something else instead.

They deliberately span the price range rather than clustering at the expensive end. The most useful thing we can tell most buyers is that the cheap pick is the right one — a fifteen-dollar thermometer improves a beginner’s food more than a two-hundred-dollar anything, and saying so is the point of publishing reviews at all.

How prices work on these pages

Every price you see is fetched live and stamped with the date it was read. We never store a price in the page text, because a stored price is a price that goes stale and misleads you. If a live price is unavailable, the button says “check price” instead of guessing.

When you are ready to shop the wider category rather than one product, the gear guides compare every option we recommend, the budget guides sort the same products by what you want to spend, and the how-to guides explain the cooking these tools are for.

New in October 2026: two comparisons that answer the question people actually type. Weber Spirit vs Genesis puts the two Weber gas lines side by side on Weber’s own published grate areas, outputs and warranties, and says plainly which household needs the bigger one. Lump charcoal vs briquettes does the same for fuel, with five bags matched to five kinds of cook — and prints the places where the makers publish nothing, or contradict themselves.

The newest single-product review covers the grill we point at more often than any other: the Weber Spirit E-325. It works through Weber’s published output, grate area, footprint and ten-year warranty, why the third burner rather than the extra BTU is what you are paying for, the trap of buying the two-burner E-210 to save space when it uses the same 48-inch cabinet, and the six kinds of buyer who should walk away.

Added 17 October: four more head-to-heads, all of them decisions people reach before they reach a model. Electric smoker vs pellet grill weighs a cheap insulated cabinet capped at 275°F against a machine that smokes, roasts and grills. Charcoal vs pellet grill is the fire against the thermostat, with Kingsford’s own fuel figures. Masterbuilt vs Pit Boss compares the two brands that own the electric-cabinet category on chip loaders, probes and warranty length — including the places Pit Boss’s own documents disagree. And Weber Traveler vs Coleman RoadTrip 285 sets cast-iron grates and one burner against three independently controlled ones.

Three smaller reviews are worth knowing about if you are shopping the everyday end: the GRILLART bristle-free brush, the OXO locking tongs most kitchens end up owning, and Weber vs Kingsford chimney starter, which is the cheapest decision on this hub and the one that changes how somebody’s food tastes.

Added 22 October: chimney starter vs lighter fluid, the decision this site is named after and the first one any charcoal griller makes. It sets a steel tube you buy once against a bottle you rebuy forever, using Kingsford’s own instructions — including the two places Kingsford’s figures for how much fluid to use disagree with each other, and the one rule it prints in plain language: never add fluid to hot coals.

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