Camp Chef XXL WiFi Vertical Pellet Smoker - PGVXXLC

MY HUSBAND IS ENJOYING HIS CAMP CHEF SMOKER. TOMORROW IS A PORK BUTT.

My wife ordered this smoker for my upcoming birthday. Knowing I have always wanted a Kpellet smoker for Brisket, Ribs, Trout, etc. Plus a penchant for wanting to make sausages. So far, I have had it a week and cooked Chicken, Steak, Pork Belly, and Cheese on it. Everything has come out amazing and darn near perfect, best steak I have ever made. The only Con is the WiFi controller is week and if I close the garage door, I lose connectivity to it. I will be adding an extender into my garage, or in the room above it to help out.

I recently got the xxl wifi vertical and it has been great as a smoker, no complaints with the performance. The reason i'm giving it two stars is the poor construction quality. Upon my initial burn, the paint peeled in three different places. I reached out to Camp Chef because one of the reasons I bought this was the great warranty I'd heard about and the quality of customer service. Unfortunately, Camp Chef told me to sand it and paint it with high temp bbq paint. Well, if I bought a car and as soon as I drove it off the lot the paint fell off because of nothing that I did, I'd expect more from the dealer than to say sand it and paint it yourself. These smokers aren't cheap and I just expected more.

4 of 5 found this review helpful

Only used it twice now so still in the learning steps. Lot different than the old propane wood chunk smoker I have used in the past. Warms up fast and is ready to cook a bit faster than the old one. Did some ribs and I think they cooked too fast, will have to drop temp way back from what I have done in the past. Doing some jerky as I write this, real low heat and getting good smoke, looks good so far, I might be getting a grip on this thing. This is for Camp chef, Something I would like to see and be capable of doing is check if I have it in low smoke or high smoke while running, and be able to change if needed. I can see the numbers 1-10 and change those. I think this could be added with a software update maybe. The WiFi is nice, I can check temperatures from in the house. Notifications on temperature of the probes are convenient. Overall I like it and with more usage I'm sure I'll like better.

The smoker cooks fine but the tempature rises about 10 degres more than what I set it on and the can't get the wfii to work my phone does not have 13 ops it just has 12.8. I like the smoke range I can put on the smoke form 1 to 10 my wife only likes me to put it on 1 and that puts good smoke to the meat. I put the tempature on 215 when I want to cook my meat at 225 and it works fine so I just subtract 10 from what I want to cook on.

Was a pain to put together but well worth the wait. Used over weekend and with some practice and lots of trial and errors, still eat and try again;0

I would not suggest purchasing this smoker and will be beginning the process of returning it after some consideration last night. First the Good: The Craftsmanship of the unit is terrific. it is solidly made with plenty of racks and features. It looks beautiful, and is much larger than I thought. Now the Bad: The controller unit itself which is essentially everything in a pellet grill has major flaws. Let's start with the non smart issues (wifi/bluetooth features). Upon setup I followed Manufacturer's recommendation of doing a Burn in on the unit at 350 to burn off any oils. While doing this the unit got so hot that it actually flaked the paint off of the front of the lower part of the grill where the firebox is (see Pictures below) I should have taken this as a sign of bad things to come. When starting the device and setting it at High Smoke ( which is 220 Smoke 3) The grill will actually take over an hour to actually reach that temp blowing thru about 2-3lbs of pellets in the process and reaching temps of up to 300 degrees in the process. On top of this, even when it does eventually get down to temp, it will sporadically spike as high as 30 degrees higher. This is not so much of a big issue so long as the temp comes back down but I have found this to not be the case. This makes this unit not a set it and forget it type of smoker and ruined an $70 15lb brisket cooking thru the night in the process. As for Smart Features, The controller and its wifi/bluetooth capability is horrendous likely due to the the cheap wifi antenna that is on the back of the controller placed inside the metal container which limits its signal distance. The App it connects to is equally as bad on both apple and android (which I tested and tried to use both) No matter how hard I tried I could not get the thing to connect via wifi consistently unless I was connected to a hotspot on my phone with phone sitting on top of the hopper lid which is very impractical. It is not a home wifi signal issue as I am connected on my phone (google Pixel 4) standing next to the grill with full bars. To be fair to Camp chef has been very responsive to these issues, and I received a warranted replacement controller to find that the issue is actually worse with the new controller including the temp issues. I could live with the wifi/bluetooth problems until they figure out a solution, but I fear this is a systemic issue with this specific controller, or something with their cloud backend that is affecting all of the wifi controllers which scares me. As much as I wanted this to be my smoker, I will be looking into my options for a refund as I am not happy at all with this smoker outside of it's beautiful exterior appearance and this product is something I would consider the quality I would expect from a normally great brand .

1 user found this review helpful

Great wood pellet vertical smoker! This is my first wood pellet smoker and this is as good as advertised. I had a traditional horizontal smokers in the past, but was on the fence about the wood pellet smoker. However the camp chef wood pellet smoker is awesome! The smoker hopper is easy to control and clean. The best part is how you can control the smoke setting and temperature all on your phone. Also the dual meat thermometer is really nice as well. I love this smoker, and glad I crossed over to the wood pellet. Also BBQ guys has fantastic customer service with any issues! I'm not a paid reviewer, I just appreciate quality and good customer service, and that seems hard to find both these days. Highly recommend!

I had been looking at pellet smokers for a while deciding on which one I was going to purchase. Camp Chef came out with this XXL and I knew immediately that was the one I wanted. I read the reviews and they were all good, there was only one recommendation and that was to get door sealer, good advice but not necessarily. I love this thing and am excited to make different items. You can put the Camp Chef app on your phone and monitor it from anywhere, very helpful when you are entertaining so as not to be stuck at the unit. This thing is big enough that I don't believe you will ever run out of room, tons of space for all your favorites.

I debated between this smoker and a pellet grill. I am beyond happy with my choice. First, Camp Chef is amazing. The quality and customer service they provide is beyond amazing. The smoker performs beyond my expectations, the wifi controls took some time to get used to even though I am less than 10 smokes in I am excited to see what this smoker can do. The flavor of the meat that's comes off this thing is nothing short of amazing. With my old propane grill, I cooked to cook, with the XXL I cook for the love of smoking! I cannot wait until the next smoke!