Z Grills Review: I Tested the 1000D4E After 9 Years on Charcoal

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Updated November 3, 2026

Are Z Grills any good? After four cooks on my Z Grills pellet smoker, the 1000D4E Wi-Fi, my answer is yes. I built it alone in about 90 minutes, it held the temperature I set on every cook and the app never dropped the connection, though the smoke is lighter than charcoal. That last part matters, because this Z Grills review comes from nine years of smoking our Thanksgiving turkey on a charcoal Weber Smoky Mountain, as well as countless smoked briskets, wings, salmon and ribs. This review will give you what you need to know when deciding on which Z Grill, whether to switch from charcoal and whether a Z Grill is worth it.

In my turkey brine guide I wrote that I had been considering a pellet grill for the convenience, but that the WSM’s flavor kept me on charcoal. When Z Grills offered to send me the 1000D4E, I finally made the switch, with my bias stated up front: I don’t mind managing charcoal and I was a little suspicious of pellet smoke. Everything below comes from salmon, ribs, wings and a spatchcock chicken on my own patio, not a spec sheet.

Because it is so much easier to start, I already use it a lot more than I ever used the WSM, which was the whole point of the experiment.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Why I Tested a Pellet Grill After 9 Years on Charcoal

The case for charcoal is flavor and control. The case for pellets is that you set a number and walk away.

On the WSM, a long smoke means managing a charcoal ring, watching vents and accepting that weather changes your day. I have gotten good at it. I also know exactly how many hours of my life that has cost me, and there are cooks I skipped because I did not want to babysit the smoker for hours on a random Tuesday.

That was the trade off I wanted to measure. Not whether a pellet grill is easier, it obviously is, but whether what is given up in smoke flavor is small enough that I would use a smoker more often. A smoker I use weekly beats a smoker I use four times a year, even if the four cooks taste slightly better. After four cooks the answer is yes on frequency and a qualified yes on flavor, which I get into below.

You can watch my full unboxing, solo assembly and first cook on YouTube below. If it helps, please subscribe and like while you’re there.

Are Z Grills Any Good? My Verdict After Four Cooks

Yes. On the evidence of my own 1000D4E, Z Grills makes a good pellet grill for the money. It did what a pellet grill is supposed to do on every cook: it lit, came up to temperature fast, held the number I set and stayed connected to my phone. I had no error codes and no flameouts. The only call I made to customer service was a first startup question, and the answer was to not fill the hopper all the way on that first run.

Where it is slightly less polished is everything around the cooking. The assembly instructions have two unlabeled parts that slowed me down, the smoke flavor is lighter than charcoal and the 450°F ceiling means this model is a smoker and roaster rather than a searing grill. None of that changed my overall verdict, but it is why I landed at 4.5 rather than 5.

One limit on all of this: it is one grill, one owner and four cooks in mild to hot weather. I can speak to the 1000D4E, not to every model Z Grills sells and I will add cold weather results and longer term notes as they come in.

My First Four Cooks: Salmon, Ribs, Wings and Chicken

Across four separate cooks I smoked salmon, ribs, wings and a spatchcock chicken, the longest a six hour rib cook. These are the numbers from the cooks I logged.

Temperature and the app. On every cook the grill held the temperature I set on the controller, and the Z Grills app stayed connected from start to finish. On the salmon I watched the probe climb on my phone from inside the house and only went back down when it hit 145°F, which is the part a charcoal smoker never lets me do. These readings come from the grill’s own temperature probe and the included meat probes, not from a separate thermometer at the grate.

Smoke flavor. The smoke is lighter than what I get from my WSM. That is the trade most people expect from a pellet grill and it matched my experience. If heavy smoke is the main reason you smoke, charcoal still wins.

Pellet use. I used apple pellets, and after four cooks, six hours of ribs included, I still had pellets left in the same bag. Z Grills does not publish a burn rate and I did not weigh the bag, so I cannot give you pounds per hour. What I can say is that at 225 to 250°F in warm weather, this grill is not a heavy pellet eater.

How often I smoke now. This is the change that matters most to me. On the WSM a long cook starts with building the charcoal ring, lighting it and settling the vents, then checking on it for hours. On the Z Grills I fill the hopper, press start and set a number. Because getting started is that simple, I use it a lot more than I ever used my charcoal smoker, which is exactly the outcome I was hoping for when I started this test.

Z Grills 1000D4E Specs and What They Mean

These come from the Z Grills product listing and the owner’s manual for this model, with notes from my own cooks where I have them.

One note on the numbers. Z Grills lists several 1000 series models with similar but not identical cooking areas, and I have seen 1,056, 1,068 and 1,080 square inches quoted across different pages for different models in the range. The figure on the 1000D4E product listing is 1,056 square inches. If you are cross-shopping the series, check the model number carefully rather than the series name.

The Upgrade Program: Four Grills for One Purchase

This is the part of buying a Z Grills that has no equivalent at Traeger or Weber, and it is barely covered in other reviews. The 1000D4E is sold under what Z Grills calls the Upgrade Program, shown on the product page as “Buy 1 Get 3 Pellet Grills”: one grill now and up to three more later.

If you have seen this called “Buy 1 Get 10,” that was an earlier version. Z Grills launched Buy 1 Get 10 in June 2024: one grill at $777, then a new one every five years for 50 years. As of November 3, 2026, the Buy 1 Get 10 page on zgrills.com shows Buy 1 Get 3 instead, with future grills at years 5, 10 and 15. I cannot tell you how Z Grills handles people who joined the older offer, so if that is you, check your status with Z Grills directly.

The structure is this. You buy one grill today and at year 5, year 10 and year 15 you are eligible for a brand new one. Choose the same or an equivalent model and the grill is free, you pay shipping. Choose a higher tier model and you pay the difference between its retail price and what you originally paid, plus shipping. You do not send the old grill back. Verification is photographs and you keep the original or get rid of it as you like.

Now the skeptical read, because a fifteen year promise deserves one. The terms include a reservation of rights letting Z Grills modify, update or terminate the promotion at its discretion. That is standard contract language and it is also the whole risk: the value of years 10 and 15 depends on the company still being here and still running the program. Z Grills points to a five year cash back program it launched in 2018 as evidence that it delivers, which is a fair thing to cite and more than most brands can show.

There is also a warranty question, since Z Grills publishes two different numbers. The printed owner’s manual that ships in the box states a three year limited warranty covering defects in materials and workmanship, and it excludes paint, the firepot, the grill cover and corrosion damage. The Upgrade Program states a five year limited warranty on both the original grill and every upgrade grill.

Read the five year component list closely and something stands out. It covers the main grill body, grill lids, fan, cabinet, casters, power cord, meat probes, grates and warming racks, chimney stack and hopper lid. Those are almost all structural parts. The controller, the auger drive motor, the hot rod igniter and the RTD temperature probe are not on that list, and on a pellet grill those are the components most likely to fail, because they are the ones that move, heat and compute. The manual’s own troubleshooting section is largely devoted to exactly those four parts.

I am not calling that a gotcha, since a five year structural warranty is still better than a three year one. But if you are buying partly for the warranty, know that the longer term covers the metal rather than the electronics. Ask Z Grills to confirm which warranty applies to your order and what it covers before you rely on it. Keep this in mind when comparing other smoker brands too, or any warranty for that matter: read it thoroughly so you know what it covers.

How I would treat it: buy the grill on whether it is worth the current price to you today. If the year five upgrade arrives, that is a real bonus and something no other grill company I’ve seen offers.

Who Makes Z Grills and Is It a Legit Brand?

Z Grills is a manufacturer, not a reseller with a logo. According to its About page, the brand was founded in 2016, the company was originally a manufacturer of pellet grills for several top brands and it claims more than 30 years of experience in the industry. Its store description on Rakuten goes further and names Traeger as one of those brands, for seven years. That is the company’s own claim, and I have not seen Traeger confirm it.

The About page does not say where the grills are made, so I am not going to guess. What I can confirm is the US side. Z Grills runs a customer call center in Salt Lake City and offers free warehouse pickup in Ontario, California or Hoschton, Georgia. Its grills are sold direct on zgrills.com as well as through Home Depot and Walmart.

Legit in the way that matters to a buyer means someone answers when something goes wrong. My one call to Z Grills customer service, a first startup question, reached a person who gave me a clear answer, and the product page promises lifetime customer support.

What Other Z Grills Owners Report

Four cooks on one grill is one data point, so I also read what other owners say. On Trustpilot, Z Grills holds a 4.4 out of 5 from 753 reviews as of November 3, 2026. The split is lopsided rather than average: 68 percent five-star and 18 percent one-star, with little in between.

The praise is consistent: steady temperature, ease of use, value for the money and a support team that often sends replacement parts, sometimes outside the warranty. The complaints cluster just as clearly. Owners report failed temperature probes, controllers and augers, plus grills damaged in shipping and frustrating assembly. Z Grills replies to most of the negative reviews.

Those failure points line up with the warranty finding above. The controller and auger motor are not on the 5 year Upgrade Program list, and neither is the grill’s RTD temperature probe, although the meat probes are. I have had no failures in four cooks, which is far too early to say anything about durability. If you buy, keep your order confirmation, and know that Z Grills sells replacement parts, including controllers, on zgrills.com.

Is the 1000D4E the Right Z Grills Model for You?

This is worth asking, because the 1000D4E is not the only large grill Z Grills sells and the closest sibling is a hundred dollars cheaper. Prices below are from zgrills.com as of November 3, 2026.

The 10502B looks like the value pick on the two headline numbers, since it gives you 24 more square inches and a 500°F ceiling for a hundred dollars less. Read the rest of the rows and the picture changes. The 10502B is the more bare bones grill: a smaller 21 pound hopper, a heavy-duty steel lid rather than stainless, a bottom shelf rather than an enclosed cabinet and no view window or side shelf.

So the extra hundred dollars buys seven more pounds of hopper, the stainless lid, somewhere dry to keep pellets and a side shelf to work on. For someone smoking regularly rather than occasionally, that is a reasonable trade.

The 450°F ceiling is the trade I would think hardest about, because every other current model reaches 500°F. If searing is a regular part of how you cook, that gap matters more than 24 square inches. If you smoke low and slow and finish steaks in a cast iron pan indoors the way I do, it is close to irrelevant. Every cook I logged ran at 250°F or below. You can compare the current lineup and pricing on the Z Grills site.

The Z Grills App, Wi-Fi and PID Control in Practice

These two features are a big reason a pellet grill costs what it does, and they are what made this grill so easy for me to use.

PID control stands for proportional integral derivative, a control loop most people meet in a thermostat or a cruise control. Instead of switching the auger fully on when the grill drops below target and fully off when it goes above, a PID controller makes small continuous adjustments based on how far off target it is, how long it has been off target and how fast it is moving. In practice that means tighter temperature and fewer swings, especially in wind or cold.

This is the single biggest functional difference from my WSM. On charcoal I am the control loop. I am reading a dome thermometer or my ThermoWorks RFX wireless probe, adjusting a vent, waiting to see what happens and correcting again. On the Z Grills I set the number and it held it on every cook.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connect the grill to the Z Grills app, which lets you set and change temperature, watch both meat probes and shut the grill down from inside the house. For a six hour cook that is meaningful, and mine stayed connected through every cook.

One setup tip from my first day. My phone would not find the grill at first because it was also connected to the Wi-Fi of the camera I was filming with. Once I dropped that connection, the grill paired right away. If your phone will not see the grill, check what else it is connected to before you assume the grill is the problem.

The caveat is that grill apps are frequently the weakest part of the product, and connection drops or an app that stops working after a firmware update are exactly the things that only show up over months. Wireless thermometers I’ve owned over the years have varied in their reliability, so I will keep reporting on this one.

Delivery and Assembly: 90 Minutes on My Own

It comes in two cartons, not one, and both are labeled with their own weights and dimensions.

This is a 171 pound delivery in total and the heavy carton alone is 127 pounds. Z Grills prints a team lift icon on the bottom of that box, and the owner’s manual states that at least two people should assemble the grill. Moving that carton is a two person job: my sons carried it down for me and I dragged it out to the patio from there. Decide where the grill is going before it lands. Once assembled it rolls on locking casters, so moving it around on the patio is not the problem. Getting it to the patio is.

The building itself I did alone, and it took me about 90 minutes against the 30 to 45 minutes Z Grills quotes. A few things the instructions could make clearer slowed me down, and knowing them in advance should save you time:

• Check every box before you recycle it. The magnet fixing plate, one of the first parts you need, is small and was stuck to the side of a box I had already set aside.
• Take the magnets off the cross piece first. The instructions do not say so, but you cannot get the screws in with the magnets in place.
• The hopper handle and the ash tray handle are the same part. The parts list names them separately and neither is numbered, which cost me time hunting for a second part that does not exist.
• Install the grease pan support when the hopper goes on. It is in the instructions and easy to miss, and I had to go back and add it.
• A screwdriver, a wrench and assembly gloves come in the box and they are enough. A socket wrench makes the hopper and chimney nuts a lot faster.
• The awkward steps for one person were holding the hopper in place while starting the nuts and keeping the felt chimney gasket from slipping. Lifting the barrel onto the frame was easier than I expected, because it sits inside the frame rather than on top of it.

The owner’s manual also spells out two first-use steps that people skip and then regret. Priming the auger: on first startup it takes roughly eight minutes for pellets to travel through the auger tube before they start dropping into the fire pot. If your Z Grills auger is not turning on that first startup, give it a minute before you worry: it turns slowly and not continuously, and on mine it took a couple of minutes before I saw it move at all. Z Grills customer service also told me not to fill the hopper all the way on that first run. The burn-off: before cooking any food, run the grill at its highest setting of 450°F for 30 minutes to burn off the anti-rust oil applied at the factory. This is not optional: skip it and that oil ends up on your first cook.

One practical note if you are having this shipped. The two cartons can arrive separately, so check that both have landed before you set aside an afternoon to build it.

Error Codes and Things the Manual Tells You That the Website Does Not

I read the owner’s manual cover to cover before the grill arrived, which is not something I would normally do outside of a review. It contains several things worth knowing that appear nowhere in the marketing. I have not seen any of these error codes on my own grill yet.

The controller throws seven error codes. Knowing what they mean may save a support call.

Never interrupt the shutdown cycle. When you shut the grill down, the auger stops but the fan keeps running for ten minutes to burn off the pellets left in the firepot. The manual warns that cutting power during that cycle could cause a fire in the hopper chamber. Let it finish and switch off on its own. On mine you start it by holding the power button for about five seconds or from the menu, and the countdown shows on the display.

Never add pellets directly to the firepot. If you run out mid-cook and lose the fire, the manual is explicit: let the grill cool and start over with the initial firing procedure. Adding pellets by hand to a hot firepot risks an over-fire.

What makes a hopper run dry. The 28 hour figure is a best case, not a typical cook. Z Grills does not publish a pounds per hour burn rate at any temperature, and the manual is upfront that outside temperature, humidity, wind and pellet quality all change output and cooking time. A 225°F smoke on a mild day and a 400°F cook in the wind are not the same grill. The manual recommends sheltering the grill from wind because it affects temperature output, heat retention and how fast it recovers when you open the lid, and it tells you not to open the lid frequently for the same reason. Every lid opening is recovery time the auger pays for in pellets. Cold and wind are the expensive ones, which is why a January brisket is a different proposition from an August one. My own warm weather cooks barely dented one bag, and I will add a cold weather number when I have one.

The likelier failure is not an empty hopper. It is losing the fire while the hopper is still full, and there are two common routes. The manual says excess ash in the firepot may cause the fire to go out, and that this is especially true on the SMOKE setting, which is exactly where you would be sitting during a long overnight cook. The other route is damp pellets: they swell, break apart and can jam the feed system, so the hopper reads full while nothing is reaching the firepot. Both leave you with plenty of fuel and no fire.

So yes, start a long cook with a full hopper, but that is the easy part. Clean the ash before any long smoke and keep your pellets dry, because those are the two things that put out a fire that had fuel left. This is where the enclosed cabinet earns its keep as somewhere dry to store pellets.

And no, you cannot clean the ash mid-cook. The manual is emphatic here, in capitals: make sure the fire is out and the unit is off, unplugged and cold before attempting to clean ash from the grill. The same rule runs through the whole maintenance section, and the safety pages add that you should never touch any part of the grill while it is hot. That holds even though the 1000D4E has a pull-out ash drawer, because easy cleanout means not taking the barrel apart, not doing it while still hot. A shop vac is the best tool once everything is cold.

This is the real reason the pre-cook clean matters. Ash is not something you can correct at hour six, so the cleaning you do beforehand is the only chance you get. If it does smother the fire mid-smoke, you end up in the same procedure anyway: turn off, unplug, let it cool, pull the grates, grease pan and heat baffle, clear the unburned pellets and ash out of the firepot, then restart with the initial firing steps and never hand feed the firepot.

It is not a rainy day grill. The manual says not to use it in the rain and to keep the hopper dry, because wet pellets swell, break apart and jam the auger. That sits awkwardly against marketing that talks about cooking in any weather, and it is worth knowing if you have no covered spot outside.

Other things worth knowing before cooking: the grill defaults to 275°F on startup and adjusts in 5°F steps. It needs a 120 volt grounded outlet. Preheat to the temperature you want before food goes on.

Two hopper lid rules that sound contradictory and are not. The Wi-Fi antenna has a magnetic base on a long lead and ships coiled under the hopper. The manual suggests moving it to the top of the hopper lid or a nearby wall if the signal is weak, and separately warns never to put it on any hot part of the grill. Those two instructions sit together, which tells you Z Grills does not count the hopper lid as a hot surface. That tracks, since the hopper holds pellets rather than fire. Elsewhere the safety pages say the hopper lid is not a shelf and is a tip hazard. That one is about weight, not heat: do not stack anything heavy on it. A magnetic antenna base weighs almost nothing, so that should be fine.

Z Grills vs Traeger vs My Weber Smoky Mountain

Most people shopping this grill are comparing it to a Traeger, and a smaller group are doing what I did and weighing pellets against charcoal. Those are different questions. I own the Z Grills and the WSM and have not cooked on a Traeger, so the Traeger column is based on the brand’s published features.

That last row is the one people forget. A pellet grill is an appliance with a motor, a fan and a circuit board. My WSM is a metal bowl. Nine years in, the WSM has never failed because there was nothing in it to fail. Long-term reliability is a real question for any pellet grill and four cooks cannot answer it, which is why I will keep updating this page over months rather than calling it finished.

Even so, the startup row is the one that changed my habits. I still love what charcoal does to a turkey. But for a Tuesday rack of ribs or a batch of wings, the pellet grill is the one I reach for now.

What the Research Says About Smoking Temperature

This is the part no grill review covers and the part I care about most, because it is the reason low and slow cooking is interesting beyond flavor.

When meat is cooked at high heat, two families of compounds form: heterocyclic amines, which come from reactions between amino acids and creatine in the muscle, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which come largely from fat dripping onto a heat source and depositing back onto the food as smoke. Both are studied for their genotoxic potential.

The temperature relationship is the useful bit. A lab study in Food Additives and Contaminants Part A measured both compound families in gas-grilled beef satay at 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350°C and found the lowest concentrations at 150°C, with formation of both rising as temperature climbed and benzo[a]pyrene increasing markedly at 300 and 350°C. Marination significantly reduced most of the heterocyclic amines measured, though the two compound families did not always move in the same direction with marination.

Put that in the units we cook in. My 225°F rib smoke runs at about 107°C. That sits well below the bottom of the range in that study and far below the 300 to 350°C where the sharpest increases showed up. Direct searing over a hot grate lands at the other end.

This is not a one-sided story though. A 2024 narrative review in Food Research International covers how frying, grilling, roasting and baking generate these compounds, and notes that curing and smoking change the character of meat products. Smoke deposition is itself a route for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, so a long smoke is not automatically cleaner just because the temperature is lower. And a cross-sectional study of 70 adults published in Foods found that grilled, broiled and barbecued cooking methods were among those mainly responsible for dietary intake of both compound families, though that is observational and measures intake rather than health outcomes.

Where that leaves me: low and slow at 225°F avoids the temperature range where these compounds accelerate fastest, which is a point in favor of smoking over searing. It does not make smoked meat a “health food” per se, and the smoke itself is a variable working in the other direction. Keeping fat from dripping directly onto the heat source, trimming heavy fat caps and not cooking to a heavy char are the practical levers, and they matter more than which brand of grill you own.

Where a Big Smoker Fits in a High Protein Kitchen

A thousand square inches is a lot of grill for a household of two, which is what we are. The reason I wanted that space is not always entertaining, it is batch cooking.

If you are trying to hit a real protein target, the limiting factor is almost never knowledge, it is having cooked protein in the fridge on a Wednesday when you are tired. Smoking several cuts at once solves that in a single unattended session, and the 1000D4E’s three rack levels give you room to do it. If you end up with leftover smoked fish, my smoked trout dip is one good way to use it.

That is the frame I review this grill through, and it is a different question than the one most pellet grill reviews answer. I do not need to know if it can do a competition brisket. I need to know if it makes a week of protein easier.

For sourcing, I use ButcherBox, Wild Pastures and US Wellness Meats depending on what I am cooking. A good wireless thermometer like the ThermoWorks RFX is still useful even with the built-in probes, especially if you are checking several cuts at once.

Who the 1000D4E Is For and Who Should Skip It

It is a fit if you cook for a crowd or batch cook seriously, you want long smokes without tending a fire, you value easy startup and steady temperature over maximum smoke and you have the patio space and a nearby outdoor outlet, ideally under cover if you want to use it in any weather.

Skip it if you are cooking for one or two and rarely batch, you want a hard sear as your main use since 450°F is roasting rather than searing heat, you have no outdoor power or you are the kind of cook who wants heavy smoke flavor above everything. If that last one is you, a charcoal smoker is still the answer, and I say that as someone who has been happy with one for nine years.

If a pellet smoker sounds like a fit, you can check the current price and configuration here.

What I Am Still Testing

When I first published this Z Grills review I listed seven things I could not tell you without cooking on the grill. Four cooks answered most of them: assembly time, which steps need a second person, whether the app holds a connection through a long cook and how the grill holds its set temperature are all covered above. Here is what is still open:

• How it holds temperature in wind or cold. Every cook so far was above 50°F.
• How the grill’s own readout compares with a separate thermometer at the grate
• Smoke output at the 180°F peak-smoke setting Z Grills specifies
• Pellet consumption in pounds per hour, especially in cold weather
• Anything about long-term durability

I will add each of these as I get to them. If you have specific questions you want answered, leave a comment and I will try to work them into a future cook. I would rather test what you want to know than what I assume you want to know.