Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This pellet smoker tray works pretty good and is generally as described, but in my experience there are some things you should know if you are thinking about buying it. First, I used it for the first time recently to smoke St. Louis style ribs in a Masterbuilt electric 30" smoker. I used the 3-2-1 method and the pellets I used were from smokingpellets.com and ordered through Amazon. I noticed several reviews before purchasing that stated it was difficult or impossible to keep the pellets lit, and several people were dissatisfied. There were a bigger majority that stated the pellets stayed lit just fine. I can tell you that on the first try I had no trouble keeping my pellets lit. In my opinion the people who are having their pellets die out are not following the directions correctly. You HAVE to use a torch to light the pellets, and hold the flame on them for a minute or so until they catch fire, then let it burn for a few minutes and get a cherry smolder before you blow out the flame. If you do this, as the directions clearly state, you will have no problem. The A-Maze-n pellet smoker claims to provide 10-12 hours of smoke, but I did not get close to that. I got about five and a half hours out of mine. This could be because of the brand of pellets I am using, or it could be my pellets were too dry, or for whatever reason. All I can tell you is that I was surprised it burned through so quickly, especially since I only burned it from one end. Your experience may vary, and I see plenty of reviews saying others are getting more smoke time, but I am not sure how they are getting twice the smoke time I got the other day. At the end of the day, this is still a pretty great thing to have for someone who wants to enjoy their life a little while still enjoying the art of smoking meats. The fun of smoking wears off pretty quickly when you have to keep looking at your watch and running outside every 30-45 minutes to see if you need to chuck some more chips into the smoker to keep it smoking good. Using this pretty much allowed me to get through my entire rib smoke with no additional worries about the smoke. I went out about every hour and it was still smoking just fine. In fact it seemed to get thicker as it went through the cycle. It started to choke out about thirty minutes before my ribs were ready, so I opened it up and tossed a handful of pellets back on top of the coals that were left in the tray, and that is all that was needed to stoke the smoke back up quickly. Despite the shorter smoking time than I expected, and wanted, I am still relatively happy with this item. I can still throw a big pork but in the smoker at 0300 hrs and then go back to bed instead of having to sit up and keep throwing wood chips in and losing every bit of decent sleep just because I want some pulled pork. And maybe the best benefit is since you aren't out there every 30-45 minutes, you won't smell nearly as smokey when you get done. Sometimes the smoke is just too much after a long day around the smoker, at least for me. So I give this four stars, and would give it five if it really lasted 10-12 hours, or anything close to that. I may try a different type of pellet eventually to see if it makes a difference, but for now I have a giant bag of these others and the taste from them was just fine. I think if you are waffling back and forth between a tube pellet smoker and the maze tray, the maze tray is the way to go if you can fit it in your smoker, because if I can only get 5-6 hours from my maze tray, you may only get 2-3 from a tube smoker. I wouldn't take the chance. Again, it may depend on your pellets or smoker setup. Good luck to you in your smoking, and don't hesitate to buy this product. I will use it on all my smokes from here on out.