Its time for me to get a new grill and Im torn between the Weber EX-315 – $559 at Costco – and the Char-Broil Commercial Series Grill and Griddle Combo Stainless Steel 4-Burner – $599 at Lowes.
Price is the same so not an issue
I assume assembly with be a PITA with both so no issue. Hapy to be wrong if one is better than the other.
Understand the Weber is a different category of quality as far actual grill goes but I am also planning to move in 5 years and the grill will be left behind so thats kinda a push but I also dont want something falling apart.
The big attraction for the Char-Broil for me is the "no flare ups" claim. I will be sharing this grill with my SO. She has a long history of being…..lets go with inattentive……when grilling resulting in multiple grilling disasters where food was ruined by out of control grease fires. And no, the solution is not more active monitoring while grilling. Im told.
I like the IDEA of the Weber electronic monitoring of tank fill but a lot of the reviews of the Weber talk about failures of the electronic system and I dont want to pay for facy electronics that dont work.
Any recomendations are greatly appreciated.
by ksuwildkat
2 Comments
Weber all day. I actually just replaced my 6-7 year old charbroil with that same model of Weber. The quality difference is night and day, and I absolutely love the digital thermometer. I have also had no issues with flare ups. Assembly was simple, and took a few hours at most.
The char broil was showing some minor exterior rust by then and the grates were needing to be replaced. I also had issues with bolts coming loose to the point that I disassembled a lot of it and re-did it with loctite on the threads.
My charbroil didn’t have those fancy grates like the one you are looking at but my parents use a charbroil with similar if the grates as those. You end up sacrificing a lot of the heat and sear power to avoid those flare ups. Not a good trade off IMO.
i think the charbroil plates are a variant of the old infra red system where the gas burner heats up perforated steel plates which emit infrared red heat to grill the food. this works very well indeed in my older ‘tru infrared’ char broil grill and i prefer it in many ways to trad gas grills – also the meat juices evaporate closer to the meat returning more flavour. but i never get cooking out doors with a griddle so i wouldn’t choose that model.