This affordable app-connected wood smoker is perfect for cooking meats low and slow

The Weber Smoque is the company’s new entry-level pellet smoker barbecue. This allows you to experience the pinnacle of barbecue cooking for a price less than most decent gas barbecues.

If you love barbecue meats, a wood smoker really is the best barbecue to go for. Charcoal is fine for your burgers and sausages, and a gas grill is great if you just want to cook like you would inside, but wood pellets are perfect for slower, flavourful cooking. Think beef brisket and pulled pork that's falling apart once it’s cooked. Plus, there’s all the flavour from that wood to make it taste even better.

How much is the Weber Smoque?

The Smoque is priced at £745 in the UK, $799 in the US or €799 in Europe (currently not available in Australia). It sits below the Weber Searwood and Weber Searwood XL, which won our Best Barbecue in the T3 Awards 2025.

This is the most affordable wood pellet grill that Weber offers, competing with the entry-level Traeger Pro 575, which has a similar list price, though is now slightly cheaper online. This is still a little more than the equivalent gas grill, such as one of the Weber Spirit models, but for slow cooking, particularly, it’s worth the extra spend.

For the review, I used Weber’s Grill Academy Blend wood pellets. These cost around £19 / $20 for a 9kg box. This is enough for at least one long cookout (12+ hours) at low heat. If you’re planning to leave your grill outdoors between cooks, you may also want to consider a cover. The official Weber cover for this model is around £60 / $75.

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Setting up the Smoque

Despite being smaller than the rest of Weber’s wood smoker line-up, the Smoque comes in a giant and pretty heavy box. It was delivered to me on a pallet, weighing over 63kg, so you’re not going to want to be moving it far before setting it up, and it's best done with two people.

There’s a decent amount of construction needed to put this grill together. Luckily, it comes with clear instructions and all the screws and fiddly bits are packed in a sealed cardboard-backed sheet that lets you pop them out like a battery pack.

From start to finish, the construction took me around 1.5 hours working alone. Most of the work is attaching the legs and supports, with the inner parts of the grill simply slotting into place. Once complete it needs to be plugged in and connected to your Wi-Fi, so make sure it’s close to the house.

Weber Connect

Being a connected model, the Smoque uses the Weber Connect app to connect to your phone via Wi-Fi and both control and monitor your cooking. The setup is relatively simple and detects the grill at a close range using Bluetooth. Once it’s connected, you can then add your Wi-Fi details to connect to your home network.

I wasn’t sure if my Wi-Fi would stretch to where I wanted to place the grill in the garden, so I brought it closer to the door for the set-up. Surprisingly, it stayed connected even when I moved it further away.

Once you’re into the app, you can do all of your adjustments from here. The best part though, is the selection of smart recipes. These take you through the whole cooking process, making use of the provided temperature probes and telling exactly how long to cook for, and when to take it off the heat.

Design and features

The Smoque features a 38-inch (98cm) grill, which gives you a primary cooking area of 2484 square cm (977 sq in). There’s also a warming rack that sits above it, taking the total cooking area to 3832 sq cm (1508 sq inches). That’s not huge by wood pellet grill standards, but it’s more than enough for a family feast.

The side hopper holds a full 9kg bag of pellets and features a release handle to empty it, should you wish to change the pellets before finishing. When closed, the hopper also provides you with a handy side table for prep or resting.

If you’d rather not use the app, you can control the grill using the dial and LCD screen on the device. Unlike the Searwood model, the Smoque only has one button, which rotates as a dial and presses, and the screen only offers a single display at a time. So, to view the probe temperatures, grill temperature and timer, you need to scroll through the options.

The Smoque has a temperature range of 80 to 260 degrees Celsius (180-500ªF), though is primarily designed for low and slow cooking, under 135ºC. It even has a SmokeBoost setting, which maintains an 80ºC temperature to maximise the smoke absorption.

Two provided probes plug into the grill, allowing you to get live temperature readings as your meat cooks – and can feed into the Smart recipe options in the app. Under the grill bars, the plate directs any fat run off down into a pull-out tray. This can also collect any ash, making it easy to clean the grill after cooking. This even has a disposable foil tray inside, so you can replace it easily.

How does it cook?

This is probably the easiest barbecue to start cooking on. Once it’s plugged in and the hopper filled with pellets, you simply press the big dial and set the temperature. The grill will then automatically fire itself into life, and within about 15 minutes, you’ll be up to cooking temperature.

For my first cook, I tried some slow-cooked meats, putting both a beef brisket and a pork shoulder on low and slow. Using the Smart recipes, it talked me through the preparation and assigned the meat to a probe. Both recipes suggested adding a tray of water under the grates, which it didn’t feel designed for, but a shallow foil tray just fit.

To power the grill, it’s easy enough to run an extension cable from inside the house or garage, but alternatively, you can use a power station. I made use of the EcoFlow Delta 2, as it had more than enough power to keep it running all day. Be warned, though, once running, the grill takes such little power, the power station can go into standby mode, killing the power completely. If the power supply drops from the Smoque, it needs to perform a full shutdown when you plug it back in, which can take 15 minutes – losing precious heat and lengthening cooking time.

My total cook time for my meats was close to 12 hours before resting them, and the result was delicious. The meat kept that smoky flavour from the wood pellets and fell apart after a long rest time (something that should always be given).

Cooking at such a low heat (around 135ºC) for most of the day, you don’t get big wafts of smoke that could annoy the neighbours – it all looks pretty calm. Whack up the heat, though, and you do get a little more smoke bellowing out. You do also get a kettle-like sound as the smoke is pushed into the grill.

I later cooked a duck at more regular oven temperatures, which it handled equally well. The dial control allows you to quickly adjust the temperature, which is confirmed with a beep on the grill and a notification on the app.

That’s the beauty of this grill. You can still use it at higher temperatures, as you would a gas or charcoal grill, but it also offers that extra control at lower temperatures.

Once the grill has cooled, it’s very easy to clean, thanks to most of the elements lifting straight off – including the stainless steel grills and the drip tray. These can all be washed separately and replaced. The pull-out tray, complete with its disposable inset, can also be easily cleaned.

Should I buy a Weber Smoque?

If you’re looking for an affordable wood smoker, the Weber Smoque is an excellent choice. Its combination of smart controls and clever design helps you cook meats low and slow to perfection, while also offering the ability to cook regularly at higher temperatures.

As an all-in-one solution, though, it does lack the high temperature and direct flame options of the Weber Searwood, so if that’s still something you look for in a barbecue, it’s worth spending the extra for that model. However, if slow-cooking is your main priority, the Smoque is more than enough for you.

I love the simplicity of cooking with the Weber Smoque and would happily replace all of my outdoor cooking with one of these. The only danger is that I’d always be tempted to do more of those long cooks.