HALO Prime1500 Outdoor Pellet Grill- HS-1004-XNA

I first purchased the Elite 4B griddle and aboustly love it. I then decided to get the Prime 1100 since my griddle was so impressive. I have to say this Pellet grill has the same great quality as my griddle. The 1100 cooks up some great food and is easy to use. I love the app for watching my cooks and being able to use WiFi I can be away from the house and still know what's going on. I would definitely recommend this grill for sure.

Ive used pellet grills from Pit Boss, Z Grills, Oklahoma joe, and Lone Star. After using my Halo Pime1500 for the past 6 months I can safely say that this Pellet Grill lays down that thin blue smoke almost as good as the Lone Star and light years ahead of the others mentioned. I mean, that in itself is pretty amazing considering the Lone Star cost twice as much! Needless to say, I love this pellet grill and am so looking forward to many more cooks.

Pros: 1. Originally I thought the middle sear plate was a no go for me, but it is very fuctional, but limited. That thing is like a blow torch when the sear plate is opened all the way. Its center placement gives even heat distribution throughout the grill, whereas some smokers will have the hottest section on the side. FYI. I'll admit it does give a great sear, but due to its size, if you wanted to sear a large piece of meat like a tamahawk steak, thats where its flaws begin to show. It is hotter in the center, but the grill is large enough to place meats on the sides. However, for larger meats like briskets, I would suggest placing on the top rack to avoid the direct heat. 2. I love the mobility of this. It pushes around very smoothly. The stand and unit is very sturdy. No paint chipping or warped parts when delivered. When you get the box, it's huge. A LOT of packaging. Its really just putting together the stand, which is easy. I mounted the grill by myself by tilting the grill and stand sideways. Then tilted it from its side. Its way too wide and heavy to lift alone.The installation takes about 20-30 minutes to put together. You will spend an hour throwing away trash. Again, lots of packaging. 3. The display reads about 2-5 degrees off from a professionally calibrated rtd temperature probe and fluke multimeter. I would say thats a win. I do recommend before doing the first season when setting it at 350, to set it to a lower temp like 225 to watch how it heats up. This will help you plan better and not become impatient during your first cook. You'll have a better unstanding of how it reaches the set temperature. I was a bit frustrated on how long it took which I discuss below. 4. Easy cleanup. The pan and grease catcher is very convenient. Its the same style as the Elite series. The ash catch tray is also nice, just ensure it is pushed in before. However, I noticed some ash in the main grill compartment under the heat shield. This might be normal. I also like the cleanout mode to add new pellets. Cleaning out the hopper is easy if you have a decent sized bucket. Cons: 1. The app detects the grill, but does not fully connect. Received an error on both my phone and tablet that a bug was detected and continuously starts and stops. I thought it was my phone, so I used my tablet to eliminate that as a cause. The app just needs an update and thats to be expected with something that is released early. Hopefully it gets fixed soon. 2. I cannot connect to my Wifi network because the app does not accept passwords longer than 20 characters when initiating the grill to the network. This is a special case for me, but i'm not going to change all my devices in my home just to connect the grill to my network. I contacted Halo about this issue and they seem to be trying to fix it. If your wifi password is short, this will not effect you at all. 3. For my unit, the internal temperature takes 1 hour to stabilize and my backyard was windy. It supppose to take 20-30 minutes.This is noted in the manual on page 20. This is with the lid closed the entire time. For something that is running on battery, it should be more efficient at reducing the heat to the preset temp. The reason why this takes so long because if you set it to 225, it will overshoot to +300 degrees and takes a long time to reduce. A way to fix this is to just open the lid until it reduces to the set temperature. Once it reaches the set temperature, you will see a climb of 5 degrees when the auger feeds in pellets to the burning pot throughout the cook. I see this as natural. 4. It doesn't smoke enough for me for shorter cooks. The first meat I cooked was a tri-tip and i didn't get that deep smoke ring that I preferred. So I tried another tri-tip, but I then decided to prime more smoke pellets into the burn pot for added flavor. That worked, but it requires extra effort. I had to select "prime" and hold it every 10 minutes for 15-20 seconds. I wish there was a setting in the app that gives you the option to set a scheduled "pellet prime" to control the pace of the auger so the meats can get a smokier flavor. This may even be in the app, but I wouldn't know since I can't connect to it yet. 5. When the unit is turned off and in a stand-by mode, the battery drains pretty quickly. I left the battery in overnight and it lost around 30% of its charge. I wouldn't recommend leaving the battery in unless it is connected to the power cable. I highly recommend buying the docking station with the battery if you plan to purchase. I'm giving this 4/5 stars because of the battery draining at night and not being able to connect to Wifi or use the Halo connect app. Its 5 star worthy, but these are things that affect me directly. But like I said before, avoidable or fixable. The slow battery drain at night is a minor issue for me because it will only affect me when I go camping and someone who is unfamilar with grill forgets to pull out the battery, then we lost a nice amount of cooking time. I purchased extra to avoid this. The Halo connect app will obviously improve. However, it is disappointing that I cannot use one of the main highlights of the grill until it it gets corrected. I camp a lot and thought this would be nice to take along with cooking for a large group. The grill has some flaws, but it works for what I need it for. I hope this review helps.

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