Ranked #4 in Best Smokeless Indoor Grills
Breville BGR820XL The Smart Grill4.2
1 sourceall derived$349.95Serious Eats named the Smart Grill her splurge pick after testing eight smokeless grills, and the reason is that it is two appliances. It opens flat into a 260 square inch grill and closes into a panini press, and she rated it equally good at kebabs and at sandwiches. Its 1800W elements sit inside the plates, and sensors catch the temperature drop when a cold steak lands. It is also 19 pounds, needs a second plate bought separately to grill both faces, and costs several times what the winners cost.
Strengths
- — The only grill in Serious Eats' eight-model test that works as both an open grill and a contact panini press, and she found it equally good at both
- — 1800W elements are embedded inside the plates rather than mounted underneath them, so heat reaches the food more directly
- — Sensors detect the temperature drop when cold food lands and drive the element back up, which Serious Eats confirmed in use
Watch-outs
- — By a wide margin the most expensive grill on this page; Serious Eats called it "pretty expensive for an indoor grill"
- — At 19.44 pounds it is more than twice the weight of the Zojirushi or Hamilton Beach, and Serious Eats found it "fairly heavy to pull in and out of the cabinet on a regular basis"
- — Ships with one grill plate and one griddle plate — grilling on both faces at once means buying a second grill plate from Breville
