The Best Smokers Less Than $500

The Weber Smokey Mountain, or WSM, has been around for 40 years, and for good reason: It’s a durable, well-designed charcoal smoker that makes great-tasting, competition-worthy barbecue. Like most charcoal models, this cylindrical bullet smoker does have a learning curve: You’ll need to monitor the temperature inside and periodically adjust the air intake vents in order to get the heat level you want. (A port built into the side of the smoker makes it especially easy to insert a probe for monitoring those temperatures, and a large water pan helps keep those temperatures steady once you’ve achieved them.) A generously sized charcoal basket lets you smoke for long periods without having to replenish your fuel or wood—we were able to cook for 10 hours easily. If you do need to add briquettes or wood, the process is simple: Just open a door in the body of the smoker and chuck them in. We wish the door sealed more tightly, as smoke and heat escaped easily around its edges, making us burn through briquettes and wood faster. While disposing of charcoal is messy, the smoker separates into three parts to make it easier to access those ashes for disposal. The WSM comes in three sizes. The 22-inch model we tested is the largest. With two grates arranged one over the other, it can smoke multiple racks of ribs, many pork butts, and at least two spatchcocked turkeys at a time. It’s easy to assemble and comes with a warranty that covers different parts for two to 10 years.

The Pit Barrel Cooker, or PBC, is a cult favorite among barbecue enthusiasts. It’s an incredibly simple smoker—essentially a metal barrel—and can be used pretty much right out of the box, no assembly required. Relatively compact, it holds an impressive amount of food: You can either use the standard cooking grate or hang food from two rods, a configuration that gives you a lot of vertical space for, say, a large turkey or eight racks of ribs. Important to note: There’s no way to control or adjust the heat once the charcoal is lit, and the temperature runs a bit hotter than ideal—between 250 and 300 degrees with higher spikes. As a result, the food we made consistently cooked faster than in other models and sometimes turned out a bit drier. Still, some tasters preferred the food made in it to the food made in our winner, finding it to have a more charred, “grilled” flavor, likely because fats and juice from meat drip directly onto the hot briquettes, creating an additional source of smoke. To some, the lack of temperature control is an advantage: You just add the food and walk away, no fussing possible. A few small quibbles: The charcoal sits at the bottom of the barrel. If you need to add briquettes during cooking, there’s no way to do this without taking out all the food on top first. And once you’re done cooking, you’ll have to invert the whole unit to pour out the ashes—a task that can be unwieldy since the smoker weighs about 40 pounds empty. (Some users vacuum up the ashes or buy the company’s ash pan, available separately, to avoid this.) It comes with just a one-year warranty, though we’ve heard that the customer service is generally very responsive.

It took us about an hour and a half to put this gas smoker together, but we were glad we did. It’s very easy to use: Just turn on the gas and select your temperature. A clearly marked dial lets you set specific temperatures with a fair degree of accuracy. We rarely needed to make adjustments to keep the temperature in range, even during long cooking times. Four slide-out racks were easy to load with food and gave us plenty of room for smoking lots of food at a time—the unit is big enough to accommodate a 15-pound turkey or four racks of ribs. Two doors latch tightly to keep heat and smoke in: A big glass door lets you see the food as it’s cooking, and a smaller one lets you access the wood chip chamber without letting out too much heat from the main cooking area. The wood chip chamber itself is a little small, so you’ll need to use wood chips or small wood chunks and replenish them periodically. Generally, the chamber held enough chips to provide an hour's worth of smoke. Because this smoker was great at maintaining lower temperatures, it produced exceptionally moist, tender barbecue. The food itself was more lightly smoked and less complex than food made in the charcoal models, but it was still tasty. Be aware that this gas smoker has more parts that need to be cleaned or washed after use, but the racks and water and drip pans can all go in the dishwasher. (You’ll still need to scrub off any grease that collects in the bottom of the unit, though.)

This compact cabinet-style electric smoker promised an effortless barbecue experience. It was easy to set up, and electricity provides an unlimited source of fuel. An automated system continuously feeds wood “bisquettes” (compressed wood disks) through the smoker, so you’ll never have to replenish your wood supply during cooking, as you do with other models. (You will have to empty the water pan that collects the bisquettes every hour, though, and the bisquettes themselves aren’t cheap—at about $0.67 per bisquette, you can spend about $12.00 for a 6-hour cooking time.) But there were a few catches. Our unit shorted out and had to be turned back on every 20 minutes. Its temperature dial lacks any temperature settings, so you’ll have to experiment to figure out how hot each position is. As with most electric smokers, it excelled at maintaining low temperatures, so food cooked in it was always moist and tender. But because its heating element didn't actually get the wood hot enough to burn outright, that food had little to no smoke flavor and no smoke ring, despite the constant flow of bisquettes. If you are determined to buy a smoker but live somewhere where you can’t use gas or charcoal, this electric smoker is a decent, compact option—just know that because it's small, you’ll have to cut racks of ribs in half to fit them on two shelves. Turkey is not an option.