Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've had this grill for a few weeks now and have used it ten times. I love it. But there are a few things that might be helpful to know: 1. I'm a grill newbie and debated for a LONG time about whether to get gas or charcoal. I wanted something hassle free so that I would use it frequently (I'm lazy) and all my friends said I needed a gas grill. But I couldn't resist the charcoal grill flavor and bought this instead. Wow, it is easy to use and easy to clean! I don't regret not getting a gas grill at all. 2. That said, gas is definitely easier if you don't want to think about grilling. To use charcoal I got online and studied two stage heating and where to place coals etc. This is pretty interesting and I enjoyed learning about cooking with charcoal. Note that although this grill makes it easy to cook with charcoal, learning to cook properly takes some studying to do it right and have amazing steaks (and once you learn the basics it becomes second nature). If you just want to fire up a grill for some burgers and steak without watching a bunch of YouTube videos and reading BBQ blogs, gas is the way to go. 3. The Weber propane lighting system isn't as good as I expected. Some reviews talk about how big the flame is and whatnot, but I disagree. The charcoal holder is an oblong shape and the flame only covers the center of the holders. Thus, the middle charcoal is ready to go very quickly and the coals on the edge aren't even hot yet. After about ten minutes I find myself using the tongs to move the charcoals around a bit so that I can put the edge pieces on top of the hot ones. I was expecting the flame to cook all the coals while I was in the kitchen prepping the food and not having to play with coals half way through, but that isn't the case. Weber should make the flame much longer to heat all the coals in the basket evenly (or use two flames spread apart). I read on another website that it's better to get a Weber charcoal chimney and place that over the flame. The chimney keeps all the charcoals stacked on top of each other and they all heat at the same rate with no cold coals afterward. I'll probably buy a chimney this weekend and try it out. Of course, if you need a chimney why spend the extra money to buy the propane starter on this grill? Not much reason, but I already bought it. It should make lighting the chimney with propane super simple and faster since I don't have to deal with tearing up newspaper and pouring vegetable oil on it every time. Like I said, I'm lazy. :-) UPDATE: Right after writing this review I've since bought a chimney and use it with the propane starter. The combination of the chimney and propane starter is a winner. Check out the comment thread for this review to see more discussion about it. It's awesome. Update 2: Last night I ran out of propane (it lasted a little over 2 months now?) so I decided to try lighting the chimney with paper instead of replacing the propane just to compare the two methods of lighting it and see how much better the propane tank is. I took two pieces of newspaper, splashed some vegetable oil on them (I'll use olive oil next time since it's always sitting right next to my grill. LOL) and put it under the chimney. Within minutes that dang chimney was smoking like crazy and after 15 minutes it was an inferno. Just as good as using the propane tanks, but newspaper is free. :-) It was so simple and effective to use newspaper that I really don't see the reason to get the propane lighter now. Either way you light the chimney, it is soooo much better than the two trays they give you to light the charcoal. Just light it and forget it. No fussing with coals to make sure the outside coals get as hot as the inside coals. I still use the oblong charcoal holders once the coals are lit in the chimney - they make positioning the coals in the grill a cinch for a various types of grilling and they make for easy cleanup of discarded coals simple. I just don't use them for starting the charcoal. 4. The push button igniter was unreliable at first. Sometimes it would click and light the fire and other times not. Turns out that the cheap battery that comes with the grill should be thrown away immediately. I replaced it with a brand name battery (Energizer) and the button works every time now. Must be that the cheapo battery doesn't have a very good connector on the ends? Don't know. Update: The push button is still unreliable. The new batteries seemed to help at first, but that was a fluke. It's back to its old ways again. I push in on the starter really hard sometimes to get it to spark. I'm tempted to call warranty service to see if they could send me a new one that is more reliable... Update 2: The push button works pretty well now. I'd say it starts 4/5 times and when it doesn't start I just push it in again a little harder. I don't pay much attention to it anymore. 5. The clock that sits in that plastic holder keeps falling out. There is is VERY SMALL plastic tab inside the holder that is supposed to hold the timer in, but it was poorly designed and my timer is always falling on the ground. I finally just put it on top of the shelf and leave it there now. Different BBQ sites bash on it being a cheap $1 timer, but what do you need from a timer? It does the job and after all the times it has fallen out of the holder without breaking, it is actually pretty rugged. I like it. 6. There is a long hole on the backside of the grill that is used to hold the top grate while you mess with the charcoal. I've been putting my grate on the ground to get it out of the way until I saw a picture on the internet that showed how the grate handle fits into that hole in the back. Nice. 7. The side table is really convenient, but now that I'm cooking a lot I could use more counter space. I'm looking into a modification to make a small shelf above it to hold extra oven mitts, cooking spray, paper towel roll, thermometers and stuff that I need to have close by but I don't want them on the table when I'm moving hot food around and have to move quickly (I knock things on the ground a lot when I have something hot coming off the grill). It's amazing how much stuff I need to have on hand while I'm grilling and the table fills up fast. It would be pretty awesome if Weber or a third-party sold an add-on table that gives you a 2nd level that you can pop on/off. 8. When putting the grill together, everything was pretty simple and I finished in just under an hour. But one thing that totally confused me was how to attach the ash catcher to the bottom of the grill. The instructions show some type of 3D image with a partial cutout of how it fits on the grill, but I just couldn't visualize how it is supposed to stay under the grill and not fall off without being screwed in. There are three small hollow tubes under the grill and the diameter is the same size as the metal tabs. It looks like a perfect fit. So I tried to jam the metal tabs into the hollow tubes to make it stay. But that was a really bad idea and kind of screwed up the shape of the ash catcher. I finally figured out that you just need to bend the three tabs back a half an inch and then fit them along the side of each tube and the pressure against the tubes at the same time is enough to hold it in place. I build a lot of stuff from IKEA and can follow directions really well, but this one step took me a while to figure out. 9. The small propane tank does't come with the grill. Most people probably already know this, but I've never grilled before and I when I got the grill I was really excited to start cooking immediately (I worked from home that day so I would be there when the UPS driver arrived!). I would have bought a tank before the grill was delivered and instead I had to make another trip to Home Depot after assembling it. Also, I couldn't find a specification of the tank size connector to buy. I didn't want to buy one that doesn't fit and have to make another trip. Turns out that these small propane tanks are all the same standard size (at least they are in Home Depot) and it was no problem. Oh yeah - I bought two tanks b/c they are pretty small and only cost a few dollars each. I expect that one day I'll want to fire up the grill with my friends around and find out that the tank is empty and have to go buy another in the middle of the party. Having an extra tank on hand means the party isn't spoiled. Like I said, this might be common sense to a lot of people, but this could be helpful info for people new to grilling like myself. 10. The screws that connect the thick wire that holds the grill lid in place while open uses pegs on the inside of the grill. Unfortunately, those little pegs are just big enough to get in the way of me putting the top grate on the grill when the coals are ready. I have to be careful to avoid the pegs and angle the grate to go under the pegs and then rest it on the grate ledges. If Weber would have used flush screws inside the grill then this wouldn't be a problem. There is probably something to do with the pegs giving support to the wire lid holder, but it still gets in my way when the coals are hot and I'm trying to quickly put the grate on the grill without getting burned. UPDATE: Okay, I overstated the problem here. Just put the grate in at an angle and a little lower than the screws with some grill gloves on and it's not a big deal. I was trying to put the grate down flat on top of the grill and kept hitting the screws. Just go at an angle and it's no biggie. 11. I bought the black grill b/c reviews online said that the colors online don't match the actual product. But I just saw that a friend of mine bought the same grill and got it in blue. Blue looks great and is much better than black. I wish I would have gone with blue. All in all this is a fantastic grill and I'm grilling with it all the time now. I love it and my friends are VERY impressed with it (I'm the only person who has a charcoal grill). But if anyone from Weber is reading this, you could definitely make some tweaks in the next model to make it better. Good luck with your grilling! Update May 2014: I've used this for almost a year now and it has served me well. I grill almost every week (cook steak for Sunday night dinner and throw some extras on there for lunches during the week). I've even gotten to the point where I rarely order steak at restaurants anymore b/c I'm always disappointed that a steak dinner costs so much but isn't as good as what I can grill at home. I also bought a smoker attachment and I can make amazing smoked rack of lamb. But I've had problems with the size of the grill being too small for groups. I can't really cook a great steak with a group b/c setting up the 2 zone cooking means that one side is really hot and the other side is medium hot. it takes too long to cook veggies this way and the timing is all off. Party Tip: when cooking for groups, keep it simple and just use one zone cooking with charcoal across then entire grill evenly and cook up a bunch of burgers and brats with veggies on the side. You could do thin steak that cooks faster, but don't grill a thick 1"+ steak. I just had a party this Memorial Day weekend and on a hunch I asked a friend to bring over his portable Weber Q 200 for grilling the veggies. On my Weber Performer I had the chicken and plank salmon, and on the Q I had veggie kabobs and seasoned asparagus. Man, it worked out great. Having the Q there let me move my veggies around and cook them just right without worrying about messing up the chicken and salmon. It worked so great I'm now debating whether to buy a gas grill like the Q and use it just for veggies and side dishes. Plus, this afternoon I had leftover veggies in the fridge and I grilled them up for lunch real quick without having to worry about heating up any charcoal and all that jazz. Just turn on the gas, grill the veggies, and voila I had a nice vegetarian lunch with no trouble at all. Just as a test, tonight I grilled a steak on the Q to compare it to the charcoal grill. No comparison. The Weber Platinum was sooo much better. Getting a great sear with high temps makes all the difference with steak. So I think that the Weber Platinum will be a dedicated meat/fish grill and I'll get a gas grill for the other misc stuff that needs to be grilled during larger parties or if I just need something grilled up fast (but not steak). Update 2: I just did another big cookout for a friend's birthday. We grilled for two dozen people. On the Weber Performer we had it fully loaded with a couple dozen chicken pieces, some massive flank steak from CostCo and even squeezed in a few brats along the edge. The grill didn't have an inch of open space on it. On the portable Weber Q I put on a dozen ears of corn. Since the gas grill heated up so much faster than the charcoal grill, I was able to put on the corn 20 minutes earlier than the chicken and steak. The timing was perfect and everything came off both grills at the same time and we had an awesome feast. Love it. Now I just need to decide which gas grill to buy b/c my friend wants his Q back. Hmmm... P.S. Thanks for the Like votes! It's great to see that the review is helping people.[...]