Bang for your buck 

Currently on sale on Amazon for $145, this is one of those grills where I would say “You get what you pay for”. The list price is $199.99 which I would say is way overpriced for what you are getting. Compared to other portable grills I would take my money and use it wisely elsewhere. 

The grill comes in a red color which I am personally not a fan of, and it doesn’t appear to allow you to choose any other style. 

Packaging 

This grill was packaged nicely. It had branding on the outside of the box, along with all the highlights and benefits of the grill. What I found strange is that the featured images showed fruits and vegetables on the grill, but not a lot of meat. The images make the grill look bigger than it actually is. 

The grill comes almost completely put together and secured by Styrofoam. There are a few leg pieces at the bottom of the box along with instructions. 

Set up

On the box it says set up takes less than 5 minutes without the need for any tools. Since there are only two leg stands that need to be clicked into the leg poles, I can agree that it SHOULD take under 5 minutes, and would have if I attached them properly at first. 

For being a small portable grill, I felt it was much heavier than most other portable grills I have messed around with. It’s nice to have a sturdy high quality product, but I felt it was unrealistic for a grill that was meant to be carried by the handle in one hand. 

The leg stand pieces are meant to be attached using arrows as a guide. The arrows are supposed to line up with the leg poles, but it was hard to see the arrows and also there was no matching arrow on the poles, just the pole itself. 

Needless to say, this incredibly easy set up got a little harder for me when I realized I snapped the leg stands on backwards and had to get them out to try again. They are VERY hard to unsnap once they are in place, so I highly recommend reading the directions carefully and taking your time to ensure you have it lined up properly so you don’t make the same mistake I did. 

The lid is locked down, and with the toggle of the switch you can open up the lid and take out the craft paper protecting the grill grates that are already set in place. 

There is a 3 year warranty that comes with this grill as well. 

Size 

The grill itself feels very awkward and bulky in some ways, it’s heavy for a portable grill, and once the leg stand pieces are on it’s a bit awkward to carry. You are supposed to be able to lock the lid and hold the handle like you are carrying around a duffle bag in your hands, but unless you are a strong burly man I don’t recommend trying. I’m not weak, but I’m not trying to walk through parks carrying this thing either. 

Regardless of the weight and shape it’s actually quite small, but in all the wrong places. The grill grate is tiny. It has one burner that is incredibly close to the grilling surface, and a heavy metal lid that barely opens to the point where you are worried it will slam back down on you. The box says the grill is big enough for 4 burgers but I have a feeling those would have to be pretty tiny burgers. I cooked a big ribeye steak and it took up the entire center of the grill. I might have been able to fit two on there, but with there only being one burner, I am not sure it would’ve cooked two steaks evenly. 

The other weird thing about this grill is that it does come with legs, and those legs do extend, but even when fully extended the grill still only came up to my hips…and I’m short standing at 5'3"! I can’t imagine Michael Jordan trying to use this portable grill. While you could put it on a table or truck bed with the legs barely extended, at that point I would just opt out of the legs altogether and go for a different portable grill. Moral of the story, if you’re going to put legs on a grill, they better stand tall. 

Grilling / Usage 

Bring your gas mask to avoid the smoke, watch out for hot grease, and try not to catch on fire! No seriously this grill felt borderline dangerous. 

When I realized the drip pan was only on one side of the grill and there were many other open holes dripping hot grease I attempted to put tin foil down and my hand got burned. Grease was getting in places I didn’t expect and it made quite the mess for only grilling one piece of steak. 

The ribeye was a gorgeous cut of meat, marbled with fat throughout, but that burner being so close to the grill grate caused quite a bit of flames. Every time I attempted to move the steak flames would engulf the steak. The heat needed to be high to cook the thick steak through, but it kept catching on fire as it moved around the grill. 

That all being said, we are an activated charcoal steak seasoning company and we love a good crust on our grill. While I had to watch the steak VERY carefully while it was cooking, the grill did provide a nice char on the steak and a very nice even cook throughout. 

If I would’ve left the steak and not been paying attention it could’ve been burnt to a crisp. 

Cleaning: 

The entire grill got very hot. Even the handle was starting to get warm as we grilled. With the weight of the grill and the hot grease dripping underneath we had to wait for the grill to cool off entirely before attempting to clean up the mess it made. 

The legs are supposed to fold back into the grill so you can store it away. Just like we thought setup would be intuitive we thought folding it backup would be intuitive as well, but boy were we wrong. 

Let's just say there were three of us pushing every piece, part, and screw on this grill to get it to fold back into itself…needless to say…the grill is still in the other room standing on its legs. Until I care enough to Google the method to this madness, I think it will stay that way. HAHA 

Overall:

The grill has some good reviews online, but I unfortunately am not able to agree with any of them. I love Cuisinart as a brand. I have been buying their kitchen tools for years and they have never let me down. This is the first Cuisinart BBQ grill I have ever tried, and I’m not going to lie…they need to “stick to their day job”.

After a few injuries, many frustrations, and a big mess to clean up…even the sight of the grill makes me cringe. If I were to be at a tailgate and someone was using it I think I would back up about 5’ to protect myself.

There are a lot of great portable grills out there, this in my opinion, is not one of them.