The 4 Best Charcoal Smokers for 2024, According to Our Tests

Our Favorite Charcoal Smoker

The Dyna-Glo Signature Series Vertical Offset Charcoal Smoker remains our favorite for its ease of use for all levels of experience without compromising results. For those with more heat-management experience, the Pit Barrel Cooker Classic Package is an equally good option and offers more portability.

How We Tested Charcoal Smokers

Our testing mimicked the consumer experience as much as possible by working through the steps the average person would take upon buying the product. First, we removed the product from the box and worked through the assembly process, noting the ease or difficulty of the task and the time required to complete the assembly.

Next, we performed the initial burn-in steps, if required by the manufacturer. After the burn-in, we re-lit the smoker, noting the time it took to come to temperature and stabilize for cooking. As smoking is time-consuming, many people smoke more than one food item at a time, so in our next phase, we smoked ribs and chicken wings, noting the smoker’s capacity, the time to complete the process, and overall impressions of appearance, texture, and flavor. 

Finally, we rated the smokers on how easy or difficult they were to clean, noting any difficulty in dispensing spent ash, cleaning the grates, and the like. We rated each category on a scale of one to five, then averaged them with setup carrying 15%, design, ease of use, and performance, each counting for 25% of the score, and cleaning accounting for the remaining 10%. We then took the final weighted average scores to determine our top-rated models. 

Factors to Consider

Type of Smoker

As with charcoal grills and other outdoor cooking equipment, within the realm of charcoal smokers, there’s considerable variation in design and type. A barrel smoker can be horizontal or vertical. A horizontal (drum) smoker typically has a flip-up lid to access the smoke chamber, whereas a vertical is most often top-loading, requiring you to reach inside the smoker to access the cooking space. A cabinet smoker is often vertical and has a door to access the cooking area. Any top-loading model will require you to reach inside to load or remove your food, which is not a con, just worth considering.

Build 

There are a few categories that fall under build. The first is the construction. Consider how heavy it is, how easy it is to move, and how well it retains heat. When looking at a metal smoker, the gauge of that metal is typically (but increasingly not always) a good indicator of the smoker’s heat-retaining capacity. Also consider the number and placement of dampers, which are the heat-controlling pieces of the smoker.

Equally important is how easily you can access the smoker's charcoal tray or charcoal-holding portion. Most designs place the charcoal tray at the bottom of the smoker because heat rises. Where they differ is in how you access that tray. An offset design sits low to the side of the smoke chamber and typically allows you to open the firebox to access the charcoal. Some vertical smokers have doors or panels that give you the same access, and others require you to top-load the charcoal, which also involves removing the food and the drip tray to refuel your smoker. 

Capacity

Smoking food is a time commitment. Many people figure that if they fire up the smoker, they might as well put multiple items inside to make it worth their while. You may or may not see things in the same way. So, consider what you’ll typically smoke and how much of it, and judge your capacity needs based on that.

Temperature Control

This is one of the most significant considerations for a charcoal smoker. Ideally, you want a smoker that can quickly achieve your target temperature without overshooting it, and maintain it within 5 or 10 degrees for hours. Cooking too hot or cold will result in poorly rendered fat, oddly textured exteriors, and dry meat, to varying degrees. 

To address this need, most charcoal smokers have baffles, typically at the top and bottom, that you manipulate to create convection, drawing cool air into the bottom, which heats as it passes your coals and before it rises across the food. The design and responsiveness of these baffles are key to keeping your temperature in line, and any smoker worth considering has an effective design for this.

Other Charcoal Smokers We Tested

Strong Contenders

Char-Broil Bullet Charcoal Smoker, 20-Inch ($325 at Amazon)
The Char-Broil Bullet came close to making our Top Picks list, but got edged out due to the difficulty of adding more charcoal while cooking and the need to tweak the temperature via the dampers more frequently than other models.

Oklahoma Joe’s Bandera Vertical Offset Smoker and Grill ($650 at Ace Hardware)
Consider the Bandera an opportunity to develop your smoking style, not a smoker for beginners. It’s a heavy consumer of fuel, which requires adding significantly more than the amount recommended by the manufacturer, creating some temperature fluctuations that require management and fine-tuning. Those issues aside, it’s a good-performing, high-capacity smoker.

Broil King 28-Inch Vertical Charcoal Smoker ($649 at Home Depot)
The Broil King was easy to use but wasn’t what one would consider fuel efficient, and the results of our smoking tests had a pronounced acrid flavor.

Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker 18-Inch Charcoal Smoker ($381 at Amazon)
The Smokey Mountain Cooker is, in essence, a buoy-shaped version of Weber’s classic kettle grill. Still, something didn’t translate, to our disappointment. Compared to other models tested, the thinner construction didn’t retain heat as effectively, requiring us to add more fuel than expected during the cooking process, and the cooking results were a mixed bag of good and not-so-good.

What Didn't Make the List

Not every smoker we tested could be a winner, and some had notable shortcomings. Some suffered from a problematic assembly process and heat-management issues, like the Cuisinart Vertical 18-Inch Charcoal Smoker ($150 at Amazon). The stainless steel Meco Americana Charcoal Vertical Water Smoker ($205 at Lowe’s) required constant monitoring and tweaking to reach and maintain temperature and required creativity to add more fuel without lowering the already struggling temperature. The Orion Cooker Large Bullet Smoker ($300 at Orion) also suffered from heat management problems, with the lid not forming a complete seal and possibly warping during the test, requiring constantly tweaking the baffles while the meat still cooked too quickly.

We’d summarize testing the Realcook Vertical 20-Inch Steel Charcoal Smoker ($170 at Amazon) as a battle from start to finish, again, because of heat management issues. Oklahoma Joe’s Bronco Drum Smoker ($449 at Amazon) had airflow issues, which were problematic in getting all the charcoal to ignite, and the cooking tests yielded very unappealing results.

Our Expertise

Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and food writer with four decades of experience in the food industry. His written work appears in Food & Wine, Food Republic, Serious Eats, Tasting Table, and other publications.