Bang for your buck 

This grill is cheaper than most of the other portable grills on the market right now, but you get what you pay for…meaning the quality of what it produces is also less than the other grills we’ve tested. This Char-broil model is from 2018 so not only is the grill cheap, but if something goes wrong they are no longer making any parts for replacements. 

Packaging 

The grill was packaged well coming in a smaller more compact box than most other portable grills, but this is also because it comes in many different pieces that you are responsible for putting together. 

The Char-broil grill parts and pieces tend to come slightly greasy. I have put together some of their larger grills in the past and have had this same issue. 

Set up

Setting up this grill is no small task. It comes with many different parts and pieces and a full instruction manual on how to put it together. 

When checking to make sure we had all the pieces before getting started we noticed that their checklist of items was slightly confusing since it named off a few pieces that were already put together like the temperature gauge on the hood. 

Putting in nuts and bolts was not all that challenging, but hooking up the ignition was something that I wish they would have done prior to shipping the grill. The pieces are small and difficult to fit perfectly together, and the instructions were not incredibly clear on how you were meant to do so. 

The setup took about 30 minutes, and that was with no hiccups since thankfully it did ignite on our first try. 

The gas value hookup is very loose, and while it does connect using a dimple that you then turn to ensure it doesn’t just fall out, it feels very flimsy and unsafe. 

Size 

The size of this grill is relatively small, but it’s comparable to other portable grills. It has 240 sq inches of cooking surface which would fit 6-8 burgers well. The difference between this grill and others is that it only has one burner so even though the cooking surface is the same, the grill does not heat evenly. 

The grill is also shallow so the meat is very close to the heat source. 

Grilling / Usage 

I was not a huge fan of how this grill actually cooked. It took a minute for it to heat up, and although it does get very hot because it only has one burner it cools down VERY fast when you open the lid. 

The heat source is very close to the grates so we have read other reviews saying you need to move your meats around a lot to keep them from burning, but our grilling experience with a very lean piece of meat that was not dripping fat was that it didn’t get any of the char-grill marks we typically like to see. 

The grill definitely needs oil before putting anything on it since the grates are not cast iron or seasoned so our Dusted Seasoning was starting to stick to the grill even though the steak itself was oiled. 

By the time you would actually get grill marks on the steak, the meat would end up being overcooked so you are not going to get any sort of crust on the meats that you are cooking, just light lines and a cook on your meat that almost mirrors a cook that it would receive in an oven. 

The grill is made of metal so the lid gets incredibly hot and with the flimsy gas connection, you really don’t want to move it at all while using it. I did not like these features at all. There is one handle where you can lift the lid up and down and you have to be careful that is the only thing you are touching. 

Even though the grill grates themselves never get all that hot to char your meat, it does seem to suck through the propane fast. I also didn’t like how skinny the grill grates are. It felt like the meat that we had gotten to room temperature was sinking through the grates causing splitting in the steak vs. getting a nice outside crust. 

In the end, our steak was cooking to a nice medium / medium-rare because we took it off knowing how long it had been on the heat even though the outside of the steak was not cooked to our satisfaction. 

Cleaning 

The grill grate does lift right out of here and is incredibly light so that part is easy to clean once it has been cooled down, but because the grill is so close to the flames it does cause a lot of dropping on meats that are not lean, and the splatter seems to come out of nowhere. We have seen many others putting tin foil on the bottom of this grill to make for easier cleanup since the grease goes everywhere instead of flowing down toward the drip pan. 

Overall

You get what you pay for. Even at the lower price, I would highly recommend looking into other portable grills for just a little bit more money that will give you better results. 

While this is a lightweight portable grill that you can use outside, it would be difficult to move from one place to another if you were grilling at a campsite and then jumping back in your car to go somewhere else because the grill needs ample time to cool down before you can touch it. Also, the gas valve is so loose it feels unsafe, and I would worry about losing it while traveling. 

With only one burner the results of the final cook are not what we look for in a BBQ grill, it gives less char marks than some of the electric grills we have tested.