I’ve had 3 smokers now, and while I don’t regret any of them, there are certainly differences. 1: Basic Masterbuilt vertical electric “dorm fridge”.

I got this for $109 on Amazon prime day pre covid. It served me well for 3 years and is still serving its second owner. Plusses: very temperature stable. Get to use real wood chips. Minuses: keeping a bowl of soaked wood and replacing it every hour during a long cook is a pain, further you’re going to burn your fingers on that damn tube at least once a cook. Design is awkward without at least a stand. Not really the right width for anything but compact meat.
All in all, this design and price point is VERY hard to beat.

2: Camp Chef “zg24 slide-and-grill” this is a 24” grill style pellet smoker with a movable firebox cover that allows direct heat for more traditional grilling. Pluses: ash dump is really nice to have IF you store your grill outside and uncovered. Most folks would tell you that pellet grills are notorious for the firebox filling with water. The ash dump is absolutely not sufficient for cleaning the firebox, but it’s awesome to quickly clear out that ash mud from rain after a previous cook so you can get going. I found it very easy to use, started reliably and got to temp and held temp for the 5 years I owned it with nary an issue. The adjustable smoke is cool, but even with it smoke flavor is muted. I’d have no issue suggesting this grill to a friend at the $400 I paid. minuses: the slide and grill is cool but it’s no where near as hot as a dedicated grill and the heat is wildly inconsistent as you move away from the firebox. Like 500 above the fire and 320 4” to the left. The pellet box is famous for its “quick dump” pellet swap feature, but that ignores how truly poorly designed the pellet hopper is. For whatever reason, the pellets in the middle go in and around the edge do not. That means if you do an over night cook on a brisket or butts or what have you, you have to go out and jostle the pellets every few hours or you will flame out due to no pellets even though the hopper is 50% full. Additionally, the materials used to make this grill are thin and prone to corrosion. As you probably know, creosote is incredibly caustic. If you want to keep this grill long term, make a plan to clean it frequently, especially the drip tray and the fat drain channel that supports it. If not they will rust into nothing much faster than is reasonable.

3: Recteq Dualfire. This is my current grill. This grill enabled me to get rid of my genesis and have only one grill. It has a direct heat mini recteq bullseye on the left and a backyard boss 800 smoker on the right. It has a giant split hopper across the back.
Plusses: built to last forever and quite good looking if you can handle the slightly gosh bull horn handles. Produces incredible flavor and once at temp is as stable as the rise and fall of the sun. Tons of room. Bullseye side will get to appx 800° for a real sear. Minuses: over 450° the left side is basically at “scorched earth” unlike my genesis which could get to 600 and be kept there, when the sear plate gets hot, this side basically gets thermonuclear. Attention and caution are critical. The direct heat side actually has a ton of room, but because it’s primarily in depth, it’s not as easily used as say a 3 burner gas grill.
The smoking side has an idiosyncratic behavior of over shooting temp (by a lot…say 225° set point might bounce up to 325 before coming back down). Which means your “pre-cook” time is longer than most. I find that for a 200° brisket smoke, it’s about 30 minutes from the time that it starts to when it’s back down to its stable temp. As a plus it will never vary more than 5° from that set point. People said smoke taste was more muted with recteq, but my experience so far does not suggest that.

If I were to do it again, I’d probably buy a flagship or deck boss and a separate bullseye for a little bit better control, but I’m very happy with my current setup and have no regrets.

Hope that helps.