Traeger Grills are one of the most amazing grills in the market right now. Not only are they powerful, but they are also powered by technology for ease of use.
The Ironwood 650 and the Traeger Pro 780 are two of the best grills offered by Traeger.
They do have some similar features but they also have their own unique specialties.
Traeger Grills are powerful especially with the help of wood pellets as fuel.
The grills, who can be also controlled via an app on your mobile phone is what separates them from their competitors.
This means that even if you are far from the grill, you can still control it through your mobile phone so you can keep track of what is happening inside the grills.
If you love cooking in grills, then you should definitely consider getting either one of these grills. It really lightens up the job of being a pitmaster.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure for further information.
All you need is to set the grill up and then just attend to it every now and then or entirely cook a recipe without looking at it, just the controls on your phone will be enough.
See, the great thing about these grills is that they do not need much attention and they still make sure that they put out some great results unlike any other.
Of course, there are still tasks that you need to do manually but it is nice to have something to help you when you are cooking in the grills so you do not need to stay under the scorching heat that they produce.
So if you want your own Traeger Grill and you are caught between the Traeger Ironwood 650 and the Traeger Pro 780, then you can read on and see the better grill for you.
Setting Up The Grills
When you want to set up these grills all by yourself, you might want to reconsider.
The Ironwood 650 and the Pro 780 are quite heavy for a single person to lift and assemble.
See, you have various steps that you need to follow in setting up these grills and you need to make sure that you have the lifting power needed.
The recommended technique is to assemble the grills on a flat position so that the lifting would just be at the end of the process.
Once you have assembled and installed the legs of the grills, you will need to lift it the right way and you will need the help of at least one more person.
However, the rest of the assembly is easy. The small parts such as screws and nuts are easy to figure out so you can assemble them easily.
The manual and guides are pretty straightforward so if you are installing the grills by yourself, you can do it easily just by following the instructions.
After assembling all the parts properly, all you need to do is to set up the grill near an electric socket and where the range of your WiFi can still reach.
Design And Features
Both the Ironwood 650 and the Pro 780 grills, as mentioned before, use wood pellets to cook the food that you put in them.
However, you will still need electricity to power up the grills.
There is a plug at the back of the grills that you need to plug into a socket so make sure that these grills are somewhere around the power source as the plug is not long enough.
Not only do these two grills use electricity for the WiFi feature but they also ignite through electricity.
The hot rod underneath the grills is what ignites the wood pellets to get the grills started.
The two grills have a D2 Drive which is a fan whose power ranges from 0 to 100 rounds per minute. You can control this fan through the app.
What the fan does is it simply brings up the smoke from the wood pellets up to the cooking chambers to create more smoky flavor and inject it to the food that you are cooking, something which is a feature unique to both grills.
Although, the Ironwood grill has a smoke select feature which means that you can increase the smoke circulation around your food so that you get a smokier flavor with the food which is simply amazing.
This just changes the whole cooking game and is one of my favorite features in the Ironwood grill which the Traeger Pro grill lacks.
The wood pellets have their very own pellet hopper and the Ironwood can handle up to 20 pounds while the Pro can handle 18 pounds of pellets that will last for hours.
They are automatically fed into the pot when needed.
The grills use an auger screw-like mechanism to slowly feed the pellets into the burner.
The slow process is to protect the heat and make sure that the embers do not get toppled by cold pellets.
Some models of Traeger have pellet sensors to indicate whether the bin still has enough pellets.
These two grills lack those and so they are not completely hands-free.
The WiFi feature of the grills can be connected to your source and once you have connected it, it will automatically connect the next time that you turn it on.
There is a control panel on the right side of the grills where you will only find limited actions.
The real controls are in an application on your phone that automatically connects when the grill is on.
Powering The Traeger Grills
With the help of the amazing app and the wood pellets, your grill is ready to go.
All you need to do is to make sure that everything is set and then ignite the grills.
The great thing about both of these grills is that you can leave them for a long time and they can cook your food and just notify you when it is ready.
Just make sure that you have put enough wood pellets in the chamber and then press the ignite button on the grills’ control panels.
The LCD display of the grills allows you to see the set temperature and the current temperature of the cooking chamber.
You can wait until it reaches the set temperature before cooking.
You also have manual functions that you can press on the control panel before sitting down and keep track of the grill with your phone.
The control panel of the Ironwood 650 includes the Ignite, Keep Warm Menu, Timer, and Super Smoke.
The amazing Keep Warm button keeps the grill running at a very low temperature.
This allows the grill to continuously heat the food inside it without burning while you are preparing the next recipe that you want to cook in the grill.
This way, you will not need to reheat the grill fully since it has retained some of the heat from the initial cooking session and so you will need less time to get the grill going.
At the first time firing up the grills, you might want to take about 5 minutes of your time to allow the pellets to fill up the chamber before igniting. This is called priming.
You allow the pellets to go down to the burner pot before igniting so they can all heat up together and reach the desired temperature faster, and more efficiently.
Both grills can get up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit which allows them to cook amazing recipes in just a short period of time.
The observable difference between the two is the ease of temperature with the Pro 780.
It has an automatic fan and a chimney to help control the temperature easily.
This also means that the smoke from the Pro 780 passes to your food with just enough time and goes out of the chimney so you might find the smoky flavor a little lacking with the Pro 780.
In the Ironwood grill, you have the smoke feature that allows the smoke to stay inside the grill which makes the food super smoky and giving it that amazing taste that you have always wanted.
When the pellet hoppers are filled all the way up, they can last hours and the great thing about it is that you can choose from a variety of wood types to power up the grill.
You can choose between hickory, cherry, apple, maple, pecan, and more for the wood pellets that Traeger recommends and produces for their grills.
You can preheat the grills and will take about 20 minutes for them to reach 350 degrees Fahrenheit which is perfect for smoking, braising, and grilling.
If you want to go higher at 500 degrees Fahrenheit, you will have to wait 30 minutes for the grills to go up to that temperature.
Cooking Space
As their names imply, the cooking spaces for the grills are different.
The Ironwood 650 has a total of 650 square inches of cooking space while the Pro 780 has a little over that size.
The Ironwood has another variant which is around 885 inches which is a larger space (885 inches to be exact) and a grill that I would definitely get if my budget was a constraint.
See, you can also purchase a separate front rack to get more space and keep a few things at hand but I would not recommend it because it just does not stay well there and it is flimsy.
Both grills are large enough to fit different foods at the same time.
This is the main difference between the grills.
The Traeger Pro 780 can cook exactly six chickens, six slabs of ribs, and some sides or over 35 burgers all at the same time.
The Ironwood 650, on the other hand, can handle 8 chickens, 5 ribs, and 6 pork butts if you fully use the spaces.
They both have two tiers of racks which really makes them perfect for cooking many recipes at the same time.
The smaller racks can be adjusted in height to fit larger foods at the bottom rack.
If you use cookware that needs more height, you can fully remove the top racks so that whatever you put inside the grill, fits perfectly without obstructions.
Cooking Inside The Grills
Cooking with the help of the well-designed mobile app is really easy.
You can set up the grill and fire it up then wait while you are standing away from the grills.
The controls in the app are very helpful and certainly reduces the manual effort that most grills require when they are running.
The app has preset recipes that you can just click to get the grills running at the right temperature and timer.
You can also manually crank up the sounds of the grill to notify you when there is something wrong or when the food that it is cooking is ready.
The main difference between the two is the Smoke Feature of the Ironwood 650 that the Pro 780 lacks.
The Ironwood wins this category since it can bring out more smoky flavor.
You can change the speed of its fan so that it can control how much smoke gets into your food.
This is an amazing feature for the Ironwood Grill and it is worth every penny and more, if money is not a restriction then going for the Ironwood grill should be your preference.
However, if you want more cooking space, then the Traeger Pro 780 is the better grill here since it packs the same two-tier racks only with a larger capacity.
Controlling The Grills
There are manual controls on the grills to set up more accurate pellet feeding or ignition but the main thing about the controls is the ones that you can do away from the grills.
You do not need to stand beside the scorching heat of the grills just to make sure that the food is cooking perfectly.
All you need is the mobile app and you can cook even when you are sitting on a table far from the grills while talking to your guests.
The app has recipes that you can follow or just click and the temperature will adjust accordingly as well as the time.
So Which Grill Is Better?
Well, if you are looking for a grill that can cater to a lot of guests, then the Traeger Pro 780 is the better choice since it can accommodate a lot of recipes at the same time.
The Ironwood outperforms the Pro grill in every way and you are not going to regret buying the Ironwood Grill.
However, if budget is something that stops you from getting it then you should go ahead with it.
But if you want something to give more of that smoky flavor, the Ironwood 650 will be better because of its smoke feature.
There are so many additional features n the Ironwood Pro that I would say without a doubt you should go for this grill.
==> Check out the Traeger Grills
The Ironwood 650 is by far one of my favorite grills and if you are having second thoughts on which one is the better one then I would definitely recommend the Ironwood 650 grill.
As for the other features and power of the grills, they can both deliver a punch on your food that no other grills can give.
The fact that you can control both grills without standing right beside them gives you more time to bond with your family all while your food is cooking perfectly in the grills.
Let us know which grill do you like better!
If you like the post then do not forget to share it on social media!
I’ve never seen these grills until stumbling upon them today. Oftentimes in Nashville, a friend of mine has me over for dinner or lunch. He and his wife are somewhat of health nuts, though not insanely so. Many of the times I’m there, the meat is prepared in a Green Egg grill, or whatever they are actually called. I’m sure you are familiar with them. Can you tell me the difference between the Traeger products and the Egg products? I really dig the Egg grills and I’m going to get one within the next week or three. Is this a comparable product, and if so, what are the differences?