Cyber Week deals - Traeger or GMG?

My impression: GMG. Full disclosure: I have a bit of a bias as a Jim Bowie owner. And I love it. Well made, heavy -- and it holds temp pretty well even here in MN (with a thermal blanket).

A friend paid nearly $3k for a stainless steel Traeger in their early days. It rusted pretty badly. They would do nothing for him. When I check out a Traeger I happen to see in a store, I'm not impressed with the weight and quality.

Now that I've effectively bashed Traegers, there are a lot of people with them who are very happy.

After a lot of research (I intend to buy just one smoker in my life) I picked GMG for the combination of quality, cost, and convenience (I'm not one who will sit still all day to adjust vents and manage temperature - the over-the-net WiFi access is wonderful!). That said, pellet style doesn't give the full smoke flavor of a stick burner. The Amaz-N tubes help out what that. I got the JB instead of the DB because my friend pointed out that having that extra real estate is valuable -- and I've found he's right. The WiFi can be a bit finicky at times; it lost contact with the server half-way through my last brisket smoke, for example, and I don't know of a way to get it re-connected without re-booting the smoker.

Anyway, hopefully this helps. Good luck and don't look back!!!

Paul

>I have an Amaz-N tube for my MES 30 so am familiar
>with the difference between pellet and stick burner.

FYI, the smoke profile between a pellet grill and a tube smoker is completely different. A pellet grill produces a very light, but sweet smoke. A tube produces a much stronger, but IMO harsher smoke.

I think you made a wise choice. I have both an older Traeger, and a GMG. The Traeger controller in my unit was junk, and I had nothing but problems with it. The GMG controller is significantly better than the Traeger. To be fair, I do not know if Traeger has improved their controllers since 2009, but in order to make the Lil' Tex as good as the GMG, I had to spend another $200 on a Pellet Pro PID, which brought the total cost of the unit to a cost of twice that of the GMG.

I just went through this same debate and went with the gmg Daniel Boone. Do a google search and you will find some good info. Gmg is something like 50 lbs heavier than the comparable traeger, gmg has a pid controller, gmg uses all stainless hardware.