Kamado's new Konnected Joe is the BBQ I'll buy when I win the lottery

Kamado Joe's new digitally connected ceramic grill is the first of its kind

Kamado Joe Konnected Joe
(Image credit: Middleby Outdoor)

If you're serious about getting the best BBQ, you'll know the difference between gas grills and charcoal ones, between kettle BBQs and more kitchen-y cookers. And most of all, you'll know the difference between a standard BBQ and a Kamado. For those in the know, the latest Kamado Joe could be its best grill yet.

A kamado is an egg-shaped BBQ based on a Japanese design, and while it's perfectly capable of doing all the typical BBQ stuff it also enables you to do even more. Its thick ceramic body retains heat brilliantly, offering very precise temperature control and long cooking times. If you like your BBQ low and slow, kamados are brilliant things.

The new Konnected Joe takes everything that's great about kamados and adds a dash of digital goodies to make your cooking even better. 

What's Konnected about this kamado?

The new Konnected Kamado Joe is designed to address two of the downsides of standard kamado grills: lighting them and keeping them at the right temperature. It's designed to go as low as 200ºF (93ºC) and as high as 700ºF (371ºC) with app-controlled accuracy.

The new automatic ignition means an end to faffing around with lighters and gets your grill ready to go in 15 minutes, and the combination of digital controls, a built-in fan and a controllable top vent makes it even easier to get and maintain the perfect temperature for even the longest grills. And you can monitor what's going on with up to three meat probes simultaneously.

Also, it looks a bit like a Dalek.

That's the good news. The bad is that it's quite expensive – it's $1,699 – and it isn't on sale just yet. It'll launch in the US in June 2023, but it's likely to take a bit longer to reach the UK. Hopefully by the time it does I'll be able to afford one.

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com).