What Masterbuilt publishes
More than most makers in this category, which is worth crediting: the figures below all come from Masterbuilt’s own product page rather than from a retailer bullet list.
| Specification | Masterbuilt’s published figure |
|---|
| Cooking area | 600 sq in |
| Temperature range | 225°F to 700°F |
| Time to temperature | 225°F in 7 minutes; 700°F in 10 minutes |
| Hopper capacity | Up to 12 lb lump charcoal or 18 lb briquettes |
| Burn time per load | Up to 18 hours at 225°F; up to 3 hours at 700°F |
| Meat probes | Up to 4 |
| Connectivity | App connectivity (WiFi on the current listing) |
| Build | Dual-wall insulation, porcelain interior, reversible cast iron grates, DigitalFan, removable ash bucket |
| Assembled size | 52.8 in W x 49.7 in H x 30.4 in D |
| Weight | Not published |
| Warranty | 1 year |
Two of those rows carry most of the argument. “Up to 18 hours at 225°F” means a brisket, a pork shoulder or an overnight cook happens on a single hopper load, which is the thing a traditional charcoal smoker cannot promise. And “700°F in 10 minutes” means the same machine sears, which is why people buy it instead of owning two cookers.
What the 600 does genuinely well
- It removes the one skill beginners fail at. Holding a charcoal cooker inside the 225–300°F band USDA recommends for smoking is a learned skill on a bullet or a drum. Here it is a number you type. If you have wanted charcoal flavor and been put off by vent management, this is the honest answer.
- It is two cookers. A published ceiling of 700°F puts it in a different class from every pellet grill we rank, which cluster at 450–500°F. Pellet grills heat with circulating air; this heats with a charcoal fire, and that difference is exactly why pellet grills disappoint people who want a sear.
- Real charcoal flavor. It burns lump or briquettes, so you get charcoal smoke rather than compressed sawdust smoke, and you can add wood chunks to the hopper for more.
- Four probes and an app. Monitoring a long cook from inside the house is normal on pellet grills and rare on charcoal ones.
The four honest problems
None of these is a reason not to buy it. All four are things we would want told to us first.
- A one-year warranty on the most complicated cooker in its price class. This is the row that gives us most pause. A fan, a controller, a WiFi board and a mains lead are four things a Weber Smokey Mountain does not have, and Masterbuilt covers them for twelve months. Weber, for comparison, publishes a tiered warranty on its bullet smoker that runs to ten years on the body.
- It needs power. No outlet, no cook. That rules it out for tailgating and camping, where our portable picks apply, and it means a tripped breaker mid-brisket is a real failure mode in a way it is not on a vent-controlled cooker.
- Charcoal burn at high heat is fast. Eighteen hours at 225°F is excellent. Three hours at 700°F, from the same hopper, is the other side of that coin — searing is expensive in fuel, and a long cook that finishes with a hot sear may want a hopper top-up.
- Masterbuilt publishes no weight. On a cooker measuring 52.8 by 49.7 by 30.4 inches, that is the figure you need to know whether you can move it alone. We print “Not published” rather than guess.
Gravity 600 versus a pellet grill
This is the comparison almost every buyer is really making, and we have a whole page on it: gravity smoker vs pellet smoker. The short version is that a pellet grill is easier and cheaper and makes lighter smoke, and gravity gives you charcoal flavor plus a sear at the cost of more to go wrong.
Put concretely against the pellet grill we recommend most, the Z Grills 700: that cooker publishes 180–450°F and 700 square inches, holds temperature with a PID controller, and costs meaningfully less. If your honest answer to “will I ever sear a steak on this?” is no, the pellet grill is the better buy and we would say so.
Gravity 600 versus a cheap insulated kamado
The other alternative is the one almost nobody puts on the list: an insulated steel kamado. Char-Griller publishes a 200–700°F range for the AKORN — the same ceiling as the Gravity 600 and a lower floor — along with 445 square inches total (325 primary), triple-walled insulation and a five-year warranty, at well under half the Gravity’s price.
What you give up is the thermostat. On the AKORN you set the vents and learn the cooker, which is exactly the skill the Gravity 600 exists to delete. What you gain is five years of warranty instead of one, no electronics, no mains lead, and a cooker light enough to move. If the appeal of the Gravity is “charcoal and a 700°F sear” rather than “charcoal without learning anything,” read our AKORN review before you spend the extra — and AKORN vs Weber kettle if the cooker you are really choosing between is an insulated kamado and an ordinary charcoal grill.
Who should buy the Gravity Series 600
Buy it if: you want charcoal flavor and a hands-off cook in the same machine; you want one cooker that smokes a brisket overnight and sears steaks at the weekend; you have a permanent, powered spot for it; and you are comfortable owning a cooker with a controller and a fan in it.
Do not buy it if: you want the simplest possible route to good barbecue (buy a pellet grill or an electric cabinet); you cook away from power; you are shopping at the bottom of the market, where our under $300 and under $500 rungs are honest about what the money buys; or a long warranty on a complicated machine matters to you more than convenience does.
On price: Masterbuilt’s own published list price for this model was $799.99 when we read its product page, and the live Amazon price has been sitting below that. The number next to every buy button on this page is pulled live and dated — buy it on a discount rather than at list, and see our Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals hub for which cooker types historically discount.
Setting it up and cooking on it
Two things worth knowing before the first cook. Fill the hopper properly — a gravity feed depends on the column of charcoal being able to fall, so a half-filled or badly packed hopper is the usual cause of a cooker that will not hold temperature. And treat the 225°F floor as a floor: the cooker will hold it, which puts the whole USDA smoking band in reach, but a 225°F charcoal fire still needs the chamber up to temperature before food goes in.
Beyond that it is a charcoal cooker, and the rest of this site applies without modification. Our how to use a smoker guide covers the routine, lump or briquettes is the fuel decision (this hopper takes either, and Masterbuilt publishes a different capacity for each), wood for beginners covers what to add for smoke, and the targets never change: 145°F for whole cuts of beef and pork with a three-minute rest, 165°F for poultry, and far higher for a brisket, which is about tenderness rather than safety.
