I want to provide a fair comparison tool for both my love of pellet grills but also for kamado-style ceramic egg barbecue grills. My brother and I recently did a full analysis. Both of these are amazing barbecuing grilling and smoking tools.
Yes I know this is a pellet grill website primarily, and I started it because of my love for pellet grills. But I do quite often get the opportunity to cook on my brother’s kamado which he recently got. And before he actually went through with buying one.
He came to me since he knows I’m mad crazy about meat curing, smoking meat, curing and fermenting, and pretty much any form of cooking outdoors.
And as much as I really wanted to just tell him to get a pellet grill, I had to weigh up his criteria and give some impartial advice. Then there was the approval process and consent needed from his other half.
Now before and after he made the decision between a pellet grill and a kamado. I had spent many hours inside various barbecue stores in various countries where I have lived. In a lot of these shops, it was before pellet grills got more worldwide (there was just Traeger in years, until 2006 approx). And let me just say, many of the barbecue and grill store owners or managers primarily had a kamado ceramic grill smoker.
But some of these memories are over 10 years old now, maybe the kamados were freebies to store bosses who knows. Now pellet grills are building up strong followership, I see that through this blog, but in this day and age when convenience is such an important factor, the pellet grill sits up there very evenly with a kamado – on I will breakdown why below.
I want to set up a framework so the comparison between pellet grill vs. kamado grill smoker so this has some structure and isn’t just comparing specs.
Since kamados are generally at a higher price point I will make the assumption that it’s being compared to a Wi-Fi enabled pellet grill that can get up to say around 550°F (something like mid range Traeger, Green Mountain Grill or RecTec).
If you just came for a quickfire answer here it is.
Pellet Grill vs Kamado Ceramic Grill
Pellet grills are an effective thermostat-controlled wood fire smoker. They can grill effectively with some heat retention added. In contrast, the Kamado does low-temperature smoking, with minor adjustments during cooking. Kamado can achieve high temperatures also.
Now onto some detail, so the full framework is listed below that I compared these hybrid smoker/grills with.
I have had a bunch of smokers including charcoals, gas and portable for fishing and camping trips.
Principles are pretty similar once you’ve done it for a while, so I hope this will help if you are weighing up the same decision.
Criteria for Comparing Pellet Grill vs Kamado Grill
- Performance as a Smoker – Indirect heat
- Performance as a Grill – Direct Heat
- Holding Temperatures
- Convenience Factor
- Cleaning
- Cooking Area
- Versatility
- Aesthetics
- Longevity
Performance as a Smoker – Indirect heat
After the first 6 or so times I used a kamado, it was a really good contrast to the low and slow smoking on the pellet grill. Because I’d heard from all these barbecue shop owners about kamado and how good it was at heat retention, but this was the first time I attended an action.
With a pellet grill, you can definitely get away with a lot more poking and opening up the lid for a look.
But with a Kamado, the insulation and airflow control means you really want to keep it closed. The gasket around the middle of the kamado keeps that airflow really tight.
I only lit a small amount of the charcoal also, which is a trick I heard about before, once you get the heat deflector and everything in, you should be able to hold a kamado temperature for 8-12 hours depending. So the arrangement of smoking wood is key also.
Compare this to a pellet grill is, of course, fully automatic in terms of heat control and also good clean perfect smoke aka thin blue smoke.
We got that charcoal wood smoked chicken the first time, super juicy too and a bit of crisp skin.
You can get charcoal pellets nowadays for a pellet grill, so you can create that same flavor with a pellet grill.
There is a touch more convenience factor with a pellet grill since you don’t have to fiddle with bottom and top airflow vents. It’s just a push of the button, so it’s a close call but pellet grills win this round for me anyway.
Performance as a Grill – Direct Heat
When you look at the kamado without any modifications straight out of the box. I think you will have a more effective searing & grilling machine.
Normally most kamado’s I’ve seen have a choice of different levels for the grill and plates. So you can put a grill plate closer to the fuel source, whether it’s charcoal or wood.
And you can get some serious searing when you have a 700°F plus direct heat with a kamado ceramic grill.
Now there are some people still out there that think a pellet grill does a poor job searing which is kind of cherry-picking I think. It can make a superb grill, and it doesn’t take much to turn a pellet grill into a very effective searing machine. The key thing is to hold the heat that’s been generated by those wood pellet.
The easiest way I’ve found to do this was just with a cast-iron pan and use this it to hold the heat. Also, some form of heavy cast-iron griddle works very well.
(Just remember should always be seasoning cast-iron especially when you first get it so it lasts a long time)
Another great option is some form of grill grates, of course, there are many different knockoffs from the original.
You’re just about always going to have more cooking real estate (cooking space) with a pellet grill so when it comes to how much grilling you’re doing on a kamado sometimes it’s a little bit limited. Though my brother’s kamado can get a 2nd tier level, it’s kinda small and is just a kind of warm area once things are cooked or for additional low & slow smoking space.
But in saying that, the pellet grill when you’re using a bit of heat retention also has a few limits to the amount of grill space you have. But you can get replacement grill grates to go over the whole pellet grill space, they have a ton of sizes. Although some brands of pellet grills to have sliding heat shields which allow you to move around the heat source a little bit externally whilst cooking.
If you want more info on searing and steak cooking on a pellet grill, I wrote about this whole heat retention thing here.
Holding Temperatures
Both the pellet grill and the kamado can hold temperatures but you can leave a pellet grill holding the temperature for as long as you still have pellets in the pellet hopper. Even the smallest pellet grills I’ve seen which around the 10-pound hoppers still equates to around 10 hours of low and slow smoking.
It’s surprising but most kamado ceramic smokers will get you around that 10 hours of smoking, some reckon 12 hours. That’s nearly enough for a decent size brisket.
So if you probably want to do more low and slow smoking, you want that hands-off easy cooking that a pellet grill does incredibly well.
When I’ve tried to hold a low temperature of around the 200 to 250°F for smoking, I’ve been pretty surprised at how long the kamado can keep that temperature without any airflow adjustments or fuel. There is a bit of a learning curve as we found out, but it definitely is formidable at holding temperature compared to offset, drum and kettle type smokers.
Again a very close call, but the pellet grill can hold heat easier, but the kamado does an excellent job at it. It will just take a bit of practice.
Convenience Factor
The pellet grill probably wins out a little bit when it comes to the convenience factor, the thermostat is the major factor.
But it’s also a lot about pellet grills being designed for easy cleaning and ease of use. Any pellet grill that I’ve used has had some form of grease bucket so you end up just emptying it out after the cook, you line the bucket and it makes it simple as.
When it comes to the ash that’s left over a shop vac is a good way to go and having a fire pot ash cleanout hole on the side of a pellet grill helps. But it’s only certain brands like Green Mountain Grill and their prime models is where I have seen them.
Most of the kamados out there have the intake air hole which is generally big enough to stick a shop vac in and suck out the ash when it’s all nice and cool.
After 3 or 4 sessions of low & slow smoking, there wasn’t much charcoal/wood left on my brother’s kamado. I presume that the kamado is burning pretty clean hence why it doesn’t leave too much ash.
Lighting the Kamado
So you still need to get the charcoal/wood going on a kamado compared to a pellet grill. Which is a push of a button and then you can go off and do some other prep work.
I don’t find it very hard to get the charcoal going either with a chimney starter or even just some eco-fire lighters. The one trick I haven’t tried is with vegetable oil-soaked paper towels, which seems to do the job on getting the charcoal going too.
But charcoal is messy so I think the convenience of the pellet grill still wins this one. Startup and shutdown cycles are programmed on any pellet grill, which means the firepot is burned of pellets.
Cleaning
You can do a pretty effective burn-off on a kamado since you can really get it up to a crazy heat. Some of the old tricks like reversing the grill plates to really burn off crude works incredibly well (Heatproof gloves are a good tool, my brother’s kamado has some grill lifting tools, which are pretty standard I think).
But basically you just got a giant egg-shaped insulated fire pit. And since there isn’t any technology to fiddle with you’ve got some simple structure to deal with when it comes to the cleaning.
When you get grease and fat dripping down, there isn’t a system so the kamado needs a pan I think, you just really have to use some form of drip tray or something.
Pellet grills kind of have an automated grease chute to try and get all that gunk into one area. The angles grease tray means it all runs down to the bucket.
Pellet grills take a little bit of maintenance before-and-after. Definitely at the end and beginning of the grilling season in my opinion.
But you can just close off the air of the kamado, and it will die off and retain any unused charcoal for relighting it next time. We have some lazy cooking sessions and just shut off the air and went inside.
So I would say the simplicity of the kamado would probably put it ahead slightly since you can easily access all areas to clean it out if you want to.
But the automation of certain cleaning aspects with a pellet grill is also useful.
Close call but a whisker lead for the kamado on this cleaning factor.
Cooking Area
Pellet grills very a lot in size when it comes to a couple of St Louis ribs or some chunky 18-pound beef briskets – they can handle the size. Especially in the decent mid-range bracket (Check out my comparison pellet grill guide for the mid-range I’m talking about).
You can look at smoking multiple levels as well if you’re doing indirect low-temperature smoking. Pellet grills are like wood-fired convection ovens, they circulate the heat and smoke through the cooking chamber.
For a lot of pellet grills, there are official racks and there are also DIY options out there.
With the kamado you really are going to have a limit around the grilling area, it’s fine if you have a smaller family.
Although there are some accessories that give you a second level on the kamado the grilling or smoking real estate is always going to be a lot more limited I think then your average size pellet grill.
So my opinion the pellet grill, if you are planning to do big cooks for all your friends and family, wins.
The pellet burner will handle a lot more food.
Versatility
Anything you can do on a pellet grill you can do on a kamado.
However, the versatility of the pellet grill, if you want to do some form of baking can be done a lot easier.
Don’t get me wrong you can still do that baking on a kamado ceramic but getting a charcoal wood fire going is just a bit more of a mission.
Compared to pushing a button setting temperature and then sticking in whatever you want to bake.
And that’s why they like to call the pellet grills the 7 in 1 type of barbecue grill. Don’t get me wrong a kamado is a 7 in 1 as well. It’s just that it takes a bit more than just pressing a button and waiting until its heated, like a kitchen oven pretty much, but way cooler.
Cold smoking is something I do quite often whether it’s bacon or smoking some form of dry-cured salami. Cold smoking devices like a smoke generator can be retrofitted to either a pellet grill or a kamado.
Both do awesome jobs for versatility, the pellet grill needs a bit of heat retention for pizzas, the Kamado just needs a pizza stone. Check out what we produce at around 700°F – super crust and done in 2-3 minutes the family devoured them.
Aesthetics
I guess it comes down to whether you like eggs or trains it’s probably how I would describe each of these gadgets in terms of looks.
I have always had gas grills out the back, so for me, a pellet grill is just about a normal piece of outdoor furniture.
Although not all pellet grills have a choo-choo chimney to make it look train like.
My brother and his wife were probably thinking aesthetically, and for them, the big gray egg would look more pleasant out the back in the wild garden then the choo-choo train pellet grill.
You could call a kamado a piece of art, but some would say the same about pellet grills, seen the RecTec Bull with horns for handles?
Longevity
I guess from a engineering point of view (my brother is an engineer by trade) less technology less moving parts. I would expect a kamado to go a longer distance compared to a pellet grill which will eventually wear out certain components like the heat Rod, igniter etc.
Although they have designed pellet grills in a way, that when component wear out or break- they are easy for the owner to replace. Most parts can be replaced in about 10 minutes.
Whilst compared to the kamado apart from it being made from ceramic materials as long as it’s in a sturdy location and is not going to get hit by a baseball, it’s probably can have a long life.
There isn’t anything I really can think of that would need replacing regularly with a kamado.
There is a heat gasket on the lid of the kamado, so I presume eventually you’d want to be keeping that seal working effectively so that you always have tight air control.
Conclusion
So who’s the winner, both.
It really comes down to what you want.
If you are keen on a pellet grill, I would suggest checking out the Buyers Guide Comparison Tool I put together for pellet grills, if you haven’t seen it.
Here is a bit more info about 2 Kamado Grill Smokers I love, I got into a bit more detail on.