Weber Pulse 1000 review
Test score
Key features
- Electric
verdict: Small, but mighty
If a lack of space is stopping you from buying a larger barbecue, the Weber Pulse 1000 is worth considering. It will fit neatly on a balcony or in a small garden, and removable components make it easy to clean. Also, perhaps surprisingly, it is a very good grill; the food we cooked on it was delicious and well done, with an attractive caramelised exterior and juicy insides.
- Great cooking ability
- Good caramelisation on meats
- Portable
- Stable
- Simple to set up
- Easy to use
- Nothing that we know of
Big Green Egg MiniMax BBQ with ConvEGGtor review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: An excellent barbecue
If you’re looking for a compact charcoal barbecue that can easily outperform its full-size counterparts, look no further than the Big Green Egg MiniMax. It’s a beautifully well-made model that produces delicious, succulent food and is very easy to use. It’s an extremely well-deserved Best Buy.
- Cooks delicious barbecue food
- Heats up quickly
- Easy to clean
- Good-quality materials
- Compact size
- Heavy to move around
Weber Spirit E210 Classic gas review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: Brilliant gas barbecue for beginners
This Best Buy barbecue is an excellent choice for inexperienced barbecue chefs because it’s easy to get good results from. It has a high-quality finish and cooks tasty barbecue food. It’s powerful enough to grill and roast food quickly and evenly, and its top-spec features make extremely simple to use.
- Cooks tasty barbecue food
- Heats up quickly
- Very easy to clean
- Cooks food evenly
- Generates powerful heat levels
- Very well-built and stable
- Useful features
- Small warming rack
- Difficult to move around
- No utensil hanging hooks
Heston Blumenthal Everdure Force 2-Burner Gas BBQ review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: Excellent
For perfect barbecued food look no further; this well-built and well-designed gas grill is very easy to use and cooks brilliantly. All of our food was succulent and evenly cooked, with a wonderful smoky flavour. Add the fact that it’s also very easy to clean and it’s clear why we’ve given this high-scoring barbecue our Best Buy logo.
- Cooks quickly and evenly
- Deliciously charred food
- Very easy to use
- Good build quality
- Sturdy
- Cumbersome and awkward to move
Heston Blumenthal Everdure Cube HBCUBESGB review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
- Portable
verdict: Stylish and effective
The Cube really impressed us with its ability to grill food well. Both of our barbecue chefs noted that the food cooked on it had the characteristic flavours and tenderness that you’d expect to find on any great charcoal barbecue. It’s easy to use and very portable, so we had no problems making it a Best Buy.
- Easy to use
- Cooks delicious food
- Has handy accessories
- Simple to clean
- Need to use two hands to carry
Weber Master-Touch 57cm charcoal review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: Excellent charcoal barbecue with great features
With its porcelain-coated lid and body, insulated handles, adjustable air-vent, temperature gauge and removable ash collector, the Weber Master-Touch certainly makes barbecuing easier and there’s no mistaking its high-quality finish. Its cooking performance is great and it produces delicious barbecue food.
- Cooks tasty barbecue food
- Heats up quickly
- Easy to clean
- Cooks food evenly and quickly
- Low flare-up
- Good-quality materials
- Useful features
- No separate warming rack
- No dedicated utensil hanging hooks
- Shelf isn’t useful for storage
Kamado Joe Jr review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: Small but perfectly formed
This great-looking grill delivers perfect barbecued food, and our expert chef gave it top marks in our taste tests. It’s made from high-quality materials, is easy to use, and simple to clean. It may be pricey but it ticks all the right boxes, so it’s a worthy Best Buy.
- Food is cooked evenly and it tastes delicious and looks very appetising
- Easy to cook on
- High-quality construction
- Great for slow cooking
- Easy to clean
- Pricey
- Small capacity
- Slow to heat up initially
Napoleon TravelQ PRO285E-BK-GB review
Test score
Key features
- Electric
- Portable
verdict: An excellent choice
This Napoleon is a well-designed portable barbecue that couldn’t really be any easier to use, though bear in mind you can only use it where there’s a power socket nearby, so it’s not one for camping or trips to the beach. It’s a little on the chunky side but still very easy to move around, plus it produces deliciously cooked food regardless of whether you’re a meat-eater or a vegetarian. A worthy investment.
- High-quality build materials
- Cooks delicious food
- Easy to assemble
- Simple to keep clean
- Sturdy
- Slow to heat up
- Nowhere to keep cooked food warm
- Need to be near a power socket
Cadac Safari Chef 2 review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
- Portable
verdict: A great portable barbecue
This gas barbecue by Cadac impressed us with its great cooking results and simple-to-use design. If you’re looking for a portable barbecue that works brilliantly and is easy to carry around, we think this Best Buy model is a very good choice.
- Cooks most food very well
- Easy to assemble
- Very light
- Easy to keep clean
- Relatively small cooking area
- Flimsy plastic legs
- Struggled to cook steak
Char-Broil 210B Convective Line 2 burner review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: A sizzling gas grill
If you don’t have a lot of space, this two-burner gas grill from Char-broil is a good option. Its small and cooks really well, grilling your food to perfection. However, it does tend to flare up, so you’ll need to keep a close eye on it to make sure food doesn’t burn.
- Great to cook on
- High-quality build
- Useful features
- Lots of flare-up
- A little tricky to assemble
Cadac E Braai review
Test score
Key features
- Electric
verdict: Easy-to-use barbecue
If you’re limited on space, this compact electric barbecue by Cadac might catch your eye. It’s a very good choice for the most part, as it’s extremely easy to assemble, operate and clean, however we found that it didn’t give food that traditional smoky barbecue flavour.
- Quick and easy to assemble
- Easy to clean
- Cooks quite well
- Excellent build quality
- Food lacks smoky flavour
- Quite awkward to carry
- Lots of fat build-up during cooking
Napoleon TravelQ Pro 285 review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
- Portable
verdict: A brilliant portable barbecue
This Napoleon is an excellent portable barbecue that could compete with its larger counterparts. It’s stable, high quality and comes with more features than you’d expect. It cooks excellent-tasting barbecue food and is easy to keep clean too.
- Cooks tasty food
- Requires minimal assembly
- Made of high-quality materials
- Very sturdy
- Loses heat when lid is opened
- Small amount of flare up
Napoleon Apollo 300 Charcoal Grill review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: A great choice
This Napoleon Apollo 300 Charcoal grill is an extremely versatile model that produces beautifully cooked food with a delicious smoky flavour. It’s made with high-quality materials, too, plus for a large model it’s very easy to assemble. It only missed out on being a Best Buy as it’s a little bulky to carry around.
- Food looks and tastes delicious
- Easy to assemble
- Very sturdy
- Quite heavy
- Cooking grid doesn’t fit in the sink
Napoleon Rogue 425 3 burner gas BBQ review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: A sizzlingly good gas grill
The Napoleon Rogue 3 burner gas grill looks like a high-end piece of kit and cooks extremely well. It was top-notch at grilling, giving a lovely golden finish to the food cooked on it. The final product resembled a finish you’d get on a charcoal grill more closely than many of the gas grills we’ve tested. Its a little impractical to move it about though, and assembling it is slightly tricky.
- Great at cooking up delicious and well-cooked barbecue
- Easy to use
- Good build quality
- Sturdy
- The doors tend to fall open when moving the grill
- Assembling it is a little difficult
Napoleon PRO22K-LEG-2 review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: A grill made for barbecue lovers
When it comes to the quality of the food cooked on this grill you won’t find a charcoal barbecue that does a better job. It’s ability to expertly and adeptly cook tasty barbecue food is top notch. It has a lot of great features and, although it has some minor flaws that prevent it from being awarded a Best Buy, it is a fantastic barbecue.
- Great cooking results
- Food looks appetising and tastes great
- A bit unstable when moving
- Not for beginners
Weber Smokey Joe Premium 37cm review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
- Portable
verdict: Small but mighty
The Weber Smokey Joe Premium barbecue combines the benefits of charcoal grilling with the flexibility of being light and portable. This means you can set it up in your garden or take it with you on holiday, camping trips or picnics. It produces nicely cooked food and is easy to use and assemble too.
- Produces good barbecue food
- Easy to clean
- Sturdy and well made
- Quick assembly
- Grill is a little too high
Cadac Citi Chef 40 review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
- Portable
verdict: A good option
The Cadac Citi Chef 40 is full of features, very stable and made of high-quality materials. It’s quick and easy to build and produces well-cooked food, too – it might have been a Best Buy had it been a little easier to carry around.
- Barbecues food well
- Easy to clean
- Simple to operate
- Lots of accessories available
- Some ignition problems
- Not very easy to carry
Char-Broil Professional 3400S review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: Slow but worth the wait
The Char-Broil is big, strong and of a high quality, but it’s very heavy and difficult to assemble and move. We were very impressed with how well it performed in our cooking tests though, producing succulent, charred sausages and perfectly seared steak. It’s very close to being a Best Buy.
- Produces delicious barbecue food
- Very stable
- Large grill space
- Easy to keep clean
- Takes a long time to build
- Difficult to lift and move
- Cooks quite slowly
Char-Broil Grill2Go X200 review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
- Portable
verdict: A good portable barbecue
Its quick cooking time, lack of flare up and large grill area make this barbecue very convenient to use, and it’s relatively easy to move around too. Our chefs were also impressed with how well it cooked most foods, even if it wasn’t quite hot enough to produce a perfect steak. It’s not far off a Best Buy.
- Easy to ignite
- Quick to heat up
- Lots of grill space
- Sturdy build
- Cooks most food well
- Food lacked smoky taste
- Heavy for a portable model
- No warming rack
Char-Broil Gas2Coal 2.0 3-burner review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: Makes great-tasting food
When it comes to flavour, charcoal beats gas on this barbecue, but you’ll get tasty, well-cooked food whichever you use. It’s quick to heat up and you won’t have to worry about flare-ups, but cleaning up after a feast is a chore.
- Versatile gas and charcoal barbecue
- Food tastes fantastic with charcoal
- Good results with gas
- Cooks quickly
- Very few flare-ups
- Side burner and warming rack
- Sturdily built
- Not easy to assemble
- Difficult to clean
- Heavy to move around
Cadac Meridian 3 burner gas review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: Worth considering for larger families
This is a good-quality barbecue that cooks lovely food and should cater to four to six people. It’s easy to use too, but narrowly misses being a Best Buy because it’s very difficult to assemble and the food is tasty but a bit bland, lacking that smoky or charred character that you’d want from barbecued food.
- Easy to cook on
- Well-built and very stable. Lots of accessories for different cooking options
- Little flare-up so food doesn’t burn
- Bland-flavoured food
- Lacking a distinct barbecue taste. Difficult to assemble and challenging to move around if you need to store it. Lacks a bit of heat for grilling
- Difficult to find maximum gas level
Char-Broil Gas2Coal (charcoal) review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: Packed with flavour
Using charcoal in this Char-Broil delivers evenly cooked food that’s mouth-wateringly juicy inside, beautifully charred outside, and packed with flavour. It’s easy to ignite, and the ash collector makes it easy to clean.
- Versatile and can cook on gas
- Charcoal or both
- Plenty of flavour when cooking with charcoal
- Side burner
- Warming rack
- Very easy to clean
- A little slow to cook
- Time consuming to assemble
- Big and heavy to move around
Argos Home Table Top Oil Drum Charcoal BBQ review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
- Portable
verdict: Small, but mighty
This simple-looking barbecue proves that you don’t need complicated controls and fancy features to cook tasty food, as it delivered delicious, evenly cooked meat and veg in our barbecue tests. It’s quick to assemble and easy to move, but like many of the barbecues on test, it’s laborious to clean.
- Quick to heat up
- Cooks tasty food
- Good build quality
- Very short legs
- Small cooking area
- Difficult to clean
Weber Spirit EPX-315 GBS Smart review
Test score
Key features
- Gas
verdict: A new-generation smart barbecue
Kebabs, steak and chicken are all cooked brilliantly on this gas barbecue, and vegetarians won’t be too disappointed, either. But although it’s quick and easy to cook with, cleaning up afterwards is more of a challenge.
- Delivers great-tasting food
- Easy to cook on
- Very few flare-ups
- Heats up quickly
- High-quality construction
- Temperature probe
- Digital display and smartphone control
- Warming rack
- Difficult to move
- Tiresome to clean
Weber Master-Touch GBS Premium 57cm SE E-5775 review
Test score
Key features
- Charcoal
verdict: Easy to cook on
It’s hard to beat the flavour you get from this Weber barbecue and we found it quick and easy to use. It comes with plenty of accessories, and the ash collector and fat tray make cleaning up less of a chore than others.
- Cooks quickly and produces delicious
- Evenly cooked food
- Easy to clean
- Laborious to assemble
- Difficult to move
