Kamado Joe vs Traeger Grills
Grills are a great addition to your kitchen, and they come in different shapes and sizes. The Kamado Joe and the Traeger Grills are two different grills that pack the same ease of use for you.
If you like cooking on a rectangular grill with a lot of space for a variety of food cooking at the same time, then the Traeger Grills will surely be a hit.
The Kamado Joe grills got their names from an ancient Chinese cooking style that has been around for thousands of years and is now becoming more and more popular.
Both are amazing ways to cook, and these are the perfect grills for making the best steak, smoked rack of ribs, or whatever it is you are cooking.
The Kamado Joe grills are made with ceramics to keep the powerful heat they produce inside the grill. They are great for smoking and give that amazing smoke flavor to your food.
The Traeger Grill, on the other hand, has a lot of features, and we will get into discussing them later on. These grills combine power and ease of use with the help of technology.
TRAEGER is a unique grill that you control with your mobile phone. Yes, you read that right; they can function even if you are far from them.
Traeger Grill
So since the Kamado Joe and the Traeger Grills are very different from each other, it is only right that we compare them and see which one is better.
This comparison will discuss these two grills’ features these two grills’ features and see which one is better by judging them through performance and features included with the grills.
Setting up the Grills
First, we start setting up the grills since there are proper ways, areas, and techniques to set up these grills. The first advice in setting them up is to get an extra hand.
The grills are very heavy, with the Kamado Joe made with ceramics and the Traeger Grills with many accessories that add to the grill’s weight.
The Kamado Joe grills weigh over a hundred pounds, so unless you are a heavy weightlifter, it is next to impossible to carry these grills on your own.
You can remove the Kamado Joe’s multi-piece firebox to make them lighter when lifted and bring the parts one by one to the area where you will set it up.
The Traeger grills may not weigh that much, but they are large, so you will still need a helping hand to set them up easily.
Another thing that you should consider is the electric outlet for the Traeger Grills. See, since they use technology, you will need to plug the grill into an electric socket for it to function properly.
The electricity will also power up the grill for it to get started, and since you cannot set them up inside, you will need an electric port outside with an extension.
However, you will also need to set up the Traeger Grill near your WiFi source, so unless you have a router on your patio, you will need to set it up where the WiFi signal reaches it.
Now let’s get to the Features.
Main Difference
Since these two grills are different, we will point out the obvious and say that these two are nothing alike at first glance.
The Kamado Joe is an egg-shaped grill made mostly of ceramic on the inside and smooth stainless steel outside with red paint for protection.
The Traeger Grills are regular rectangular grills with a large rectangular cooking space and a large lid.
There are still many differences, and we are about to get through the most important ones one by one.
Kamado Joe’s Heavy Lid
Most Kamado-style grills have lids made out of ceramic, so it is safe to assume that they weigh a lot and need at least two hands to lift them.
However, if you are cooking, you will always need your other hand to either hold a spatula or tongs to work efficiently instead of using your hands to hold the lid up.
That is why Kamado Joe made an innovative design for you to lift the lid with ease. They installed an Air-Lift Hinge to help pull the lid up.
This is a spring-loaded hinge that reduces the weight of the lid of the grill by up to 96%, meaning you can lift the lid with a single hand and close it as well.
The Air-Lift Hinge is so strong that unless you push the lid down, it would not close entirely and have a little bit of opening, so you will need to push it down and latch it.
Pellet Hoppers
The Traeger Grill does not need much attention once you fired it up. The pellet hopper feeds the grill with fuel if it runs out.
The newest addition to the Traeger Grills has an automatic feeder where an auger design slips the pellets into the grill when it runs out of fuel.
The pellet hopper is on the grill’s side, and the auger mechanism runs at the bottom of the grill. All you need to do is fill it up and fire the grill.
You will rarely need to refuel, and even if you do, you do not need to lean forward on the grill and take in the heat. The pellet hopper is there to do the job.
Vents
The Kamado Joe grills have amazing airflow features, and they are worth talking about. There are two ways for the air to pass inside the Kamado Joe grills.
The vent on the bottom of the grill controls the grill’s airflow, the vent on top of the grill controls the temperature.
The vents of the Kamado Joe Classic 3 and the Big Joe 3 limit the temperature inside with the grill.
The Traeger Grills rarely have this, but in the Timberline 1300 model, they included a chimney for the smoke to get out.
The Smoke Flavor Enhancer
Kamado Joe is known for its amazing SloRoller Hyperbolic Insert. This device’s first purpose is to block the flames from getting to your food and burning it.
The other beneficial thing that you can get from the SloRoller is the smoky flavor injected into your food when it comes out.
The SloRoller Hyperbolic Insert is a device used with Harvard Science that allows the smoke to roll at least twice on your food to get that flavor we all want.
This is a unique feature found only in Kamado Joe grills such as the Classic 3 and the Bog Joe 3. It creates a parabola of smoke that rolls into your food before going out of the vent.
WiFi Feature
Another unique feature in a grill is the WiFi Feature. This time, the feature is on the Traeger Grills, and it is amazing.
This takes away the hardship of standing beside a hot grill while keeping an eye on your food. The WiFi feature allows the grill to connect with your WiFi router, and you can control it from afar.
Traeger Grills include a mobile app where you will find an array of controls like temperature and timer and recipes that you can click, and the grill will automatically set the right temperature and time for you.
The hard thing about this is that the grill is sometimes hard to connect, especially the first time. But if it has been connected to the WiFi source once, it will automatically connect the next time you turn it on.
Thermometer
Since the Traeger Grills have an automatic thermometer, it will display the temperature on an LCD in the control panel installed on the pellet hopper.
Some Trager Grills, such as the Traeger Timberline, have a meat probe to let you know the exact temperature of what you are cooking inside the grill.
The Kamado Joe has an accurate thermometer installed on the lid, and the thermal stick that comes with it pierces through the lid to measure the interior temperature.
Kamado Joe grills do not have a meat probe, so you will need to measure your food’s temperature with a separate handheld thermometer.
Powering the Grills
The Kamado Joe, like any other Kamado-style grills, function at best when they are using charcoal. It is one of the basic components of Kamado-style cooking.
The charcoal gives off so much heat and emits a lot of smoke for that great smoky flavor in your food. Refueling the grills is as easy as taking the grates off and then filling up the firebox again.
The Traeger Grills use wood pellets as fuel, and to be honest with you, wood pellets give off more of that smoky flavor because of real wood as fuel.
Traeger offers various wood pellets that they recommend using with their grills; the wood pellets are made out of various wood, such as apples, to give more flavor to your food.
However, the Kamado Joe grills are more powerful, with 700 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit as the maximum temperature, while the Traeger Grills can only get up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cooking INSIDE the Grills
The Kamado Joe grills might look small at first, but they have large capacities. This is because of their multi-tiered grates that can be modified.
The earlier models of Kamado Joe only had two tiers of racks to handle less food, but the new versions include another tier of the rack, making them spacious and versatile.
The Traeger Grills also flex their three-tiered racks with the Ironwood series. They are wide enough and can cook multiple foods at once.
The Kamado Joe grills’ racks can be modified and turned into half-moons. This means that you can concentrate the heat on one side while keeping something warm on the other.
When it comes to cooking, I think the Kamado Joe Grills gives out the amazing caramelization than the Traeger grill when it comes to high temperatures.
Both the grills work amazingly well, but I think I would go with the Kamado Joe when you compare it with the Traeger Pro. However, the Ironwood and the Timberline series are completely different grills.
Conclusion
The Kamado Joe grills are amazing grills that use charcoal for cooking your food. With their new and unique SloRoller feature, the Kamado Joe can be the best when it comes to putting that smoky flavor in your food.
The Traeger Grills are also impressive with their designs combining technology and power. See, you no longer need to stand beside the grills to control them.
You can control the grills with your mobile phone, so you can take the time and talk to your guests far from the scorching hot grill.
Kamado Joes are also great when making other recipes, and you can sear, smoke, or grill on these rather small but compact grills.
Since both grills have multi-tiered racks, you can vary the recipe that you are cooking and cook as much as you want with less time.
The Kamado Joe is best for high temperatures, but if you want to cook slowly and prefer leaving your steak inside the grill and controlling your grill temperature with your phone is something you want to prefer, then Traeger should be your choice.
There is not much difference between the two grills when it comes to slow cooking, but you can truly see the difference at high temperatures.
Check out these amazing grills and see for yourself what they can bring to your backyard barbecues and steak sessions!
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Kamado-style cooking was invented thousands of years ago in China. With the rising popular demand, Kamado has been worldwide with leading companies such as the Kamado Joe and Vision Grills.
If you are a bit unfamiliar with Kamado-style grills, then you might know them with the Big Green Egg. It is the leading company for creating Kamado grills, but they do have a lot of competition.
The Kamado Joe has incorporated a lot of features that you will only find in their products. One special feature that the Kamado Joe offers that you will never find from any other Kamado-style grills.
Kamado Joe Grills
The Vision Grills have innovative features exclusive to their products, but some users complain about the quality.
They usually say that Vision has exchanged innovations and gimmicks for quality. This post will have you cleared about these doubts and look at the benefits you can get.
There is a lot that you can do with a Kamado grill. You can smoke, sear, or grill in them with ease, and the results end up with a delicious smoky flavor.
They are also known to be fuel-efficient, so you do not have to worry about repeatedly reloading these very hot grills.
With proper insulation, they keep the heat inside and will not be affected even if the weather outside is cold.
Therefore, we give you this post that compares two of the best Kamado-style grills in the market to see which one is the better one for you.
Setting up and Assembling the Grills
Kamado grills are made out mostly of ceramics, so they weigh a hundred or more pounds. This means that the set-up process takes a long time because of the weight.
You will need a helping hand if you want to set them up quickly. These Kamado grills’ nests help transportation, but they do not do well in inclined surfaces, let alone steps.
One piece of advice is to let the delivery guys place the product near the set-up area. This will give you less space to move the grills around and will be immediately good for setting up.
Vision Grills
You can also remove some of the ceramics inside the grills to deliver them one by one to the area where you are going to set them up.
Most grills’ fireboxes can be removed, which lessens the whole grill’s weight but not by much. You will still need help carrying the other parts and the grill itself.
You can set up the Kamado Joe grills in any place in your backyard. With the nest protecting the grill and the ground itself, this grill is safe to cook anywhere outside the house.
As for the Vision Grills, depending on the model you buy, you will need a nearby plug to ignite the grill’s fuel. This is one of the features that the Vision Grills offer.
Now let us get to the Features.
The Lid
We start with one of the biggest questions with Kamado Grills. Since Kamado-style grills are made out mostly of ceramics, the lids are very heavy.
From a literal standpoint, it is nearly impossible to open the grill while holding a fork or a tong on the other hand.
That is why the companies that made the Kamado grills in the market have some mechanism to ease lifting the heavy ceramic lids.
The Vision Grills have a spring-loaded lid that helps pull the lid up when you open it. This means that you can easily open it with one hand.
The Kamado Joe Grills are more advanced with their innovative Air-Lift Hinge, which is also spring-loaded but with an additional counterbalance feature.
This amazing built-in hinge design reduces the weight of the lid by up to 96%. This means that a mere six-year-old can lift the heavy lid with one hand.
Therefore, to close it, you will need to push it down and latch it on the body.
Vision Grills
Vents
Staying on the lid, we have the vents on each grill that help control the temperature inside or select a certain cooking type.
The Kamado Joe takes the early advantage by having an innovative design on their vents. The Classic Joe 3 line has a vent that allows proper airflow and protection from rain as well.
The Vision Grills have proper airflow, but most of their grills have a vent that opens directly upward, meaning rain can easily seep in through the holes on the vents.
Vision Grills
Both of the vents from both grills have easy access and easy control. This simply means that you can control the temperature easily with the vents alone.
The Vision Grills have a very easy-to-follow vent where the indications are numbered or labeled with smoke, grill, or sear. They have a cast-iron and a cool-to-touch control handle.
As for the Kamado Joe, their innovative vent design makes sure that the heat retains, and with every turn of the vent, the temperature changes by 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
Shock Absorption
Since the lids are heavy, they have a force-stopping mechanism. However, a ceramic to ceramic contact can still cost damage if repeatedly slammed to each other.
The grills come with a feature that prevents dents and breakages on the lid and the grill’s body.
The Vision Grills have a soft cushion on the lid and on the grill made out of a soft spongy material that absorbs all the shocks.
The Kamado Joe Grills also have this in the form of a fiberglass wire mesh that protects it from blunt forces when closing the lids.
Both the sponge and the wire mesh on the grills are airlocked, so if there is space between the lids, the heat will not escape from there.
Built-in Thermometers
Both of these grills have a built-in thermometer included on the grills. This allows you to have an accurate measurement of the amount of heat produced inside them.
The Kamado Joe grills have a thermometer that needs installation before use. The thermo-stick pierces through the lid to the interior of the grill.
This gives you the air’s accurate temperature inside the grill—the air or the convection heat cooking your food.
The Vision Grills also have an analog thermometer that comes with them when the product arrives. It is heavy-duty, so you do not have to worry about damaging it with heat.
Powering the Grills
The best fuel used in these grills is lump charcoal. This means that you have this proper amount of heat without creating too much flame.
Lump charcoal is a very great fuel since they are very efficient. Even after a long day of cooking, the charcoal would still have extra power in them that you can fire up for the next use.
This kind of fuel also produces fewer ashes for you to clean up. However, both grills have a removable dirt-catcher, so they are easier to clean.
The grills are also easy to use when it comes to refueling. All you need to do is remove the accessories above the firebox and load them with another charcoal.
However, since they are very efficient, a single full load of the fireboxes in these grills can last a whole day of smoking or grilling, so refueling will not always be necessary.
Full Power
Once the ovens fire up, it will only take somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour before they reach the maximum temperature that they can get to.
Both grills can go over 700 degrees Fahrenheit, which means that they can cook recipes such as pizza, steaks, chicken, barbecue, and more.
With the dual vents from the lid vent and the bottom vent, you can control the grills’ power by opening or closing these vents.
Both grills can sear steaks or slow-smoke a rack of ribs for the whole day. They do have the power for fast cooking, but they also produce that smoky flavor.
Flavor
Speaking of smoky flavor, the main advantage of the Kamado Joe girls is in this category, and they guarantee that you can never find this in any Kamado grill in the market right now.
See, most kamado grills like the Vision Grills have a flame blocker or a heat deflect, which reduces the risk of burning your food by blocking the flames.
This means that the hot air from the vents will cook the food. The flames get blocked, and yet the food cooks properly.
Usually, heat deflectors come in a flat ceramic plate placed between the grill grates and the firebox. Ceramics can retain heat, so the grills can still cook even without direct flames.
The Kamado Joe Classic 3 and the Big Joe 3 have this amazing sort of a heat deflector in itself that also improves the smoky flavor in your food.
These grills have the SloRoller Hyperbolic Insert. This patented design with Harvard Science allows the smoke to pass through the food at least twice.
The SloRoller Hyperbolic Insert is some kind of a parabola-shaped device that goes on top of the firebox.
What it does is it circulates the smoke from the charcoals and then rolls the smoke twice on the grates before eventually going out on the vent.
Cooking Grates
Depending on the model you order, Vision Grills offer either cast-iron grates or stainless steel cooking grates found in their Diamond Cut Kamado series.
The Vision Grills’ cooking grills are two-tiered, meaning you can fit two grates in a single grill. You can modify the grates by separating them into two halves.
Vision Grills
The Kamado Joe also has these kinds of grates. However, they feature a lot more space with their three-tiered grates that can also be modified.
You can also concentrate the heat on one side of the grate with the Kamado Joe’s firebox separator that also sets the charcoals in half or meaning you can load just one side of the firebox.
These large spaces ranging from 600 square inches for the Vision Grills and over 800 square inches on the large Kamado Joe grills allow you to cook a lot of recipes simultaneously.
Conclusion
So as you can see, the Vision Grills did not sacrifice the grill’s quality for features. It might have a lot of features, but the grills can still cook amazingly.
The Kamado Joe grills prove to be the amazing grills that they are. The newer versions of the grills have amazing smoking features that put more flavor to your food.
The Vision Grills improved their newer version with the electric starter, so you do not need to start a fire out of the grill to get it fired up.
They also both have amazing vents that allow you to cook a variety of food. They are very fuel-efficient, so you can take the grill for a whole day of cooking without reloading too often.
Either way, these grills will not disappoint you, and they are a great investment. They are a great addition for you and your family when you invite your friends over for barbecues and more.
Check out these ovens, and let us know what you think!
