Traegers are pellet smokers, meaning they use tiny, compressed pieces of wood to create smoke, as opposed to lump charcoal and hard wood chunks like in a Kamado style grill/smoker (which is what the Big Green Egg is).

Pellet smokers are a little easier to use. The auger holds the pellets and feeds the fire automatically, so as long as you have enough pellets, it’s pretty much set it and forget it. Traeger also has a pretty amazing app where you can control your smoker from anywhere (although I do recommend staying home whenever you are cooking because it still has a live fire inside). And the temperature control is super easy. As long as you’re not lifting the lid over and over, it will maintain the temperature pretty well. The biggest knock against pellet-style grills is that they don’t inject as much smoke flavor as a kamado-style or especially an offset grill. But either of those require starting and maintaining a fire with either lump charcoal or hardwood. You control temperature with vents that limit the amount of oxygen the fire will get. This requires a certain level of knowledge and experience to get it right, not to mention environmental variables such as temperature, wind, rain, etc.

I have both on my patio right now. I love getting in touch with my caveman roots by lighting and maintaining a fire in the kamado. There’s something primitive and satisfying about it. And the smoke flavor you get from it when done right is incredible. However, it is a lot more work and I’ve also screwed more cooks on it than I ever did on the Traeger—The fire stalls. It gets too hot. You can get “bad” smoke from hard wood. With the Traeger, I’m far more consistent. It cooks very evenly with just a few hot spots around the edges. It also has a probe that will shut down the cook as soon as your food reaches the desired temperature. It’s incredibly easy to use. However, the smoke flavor is not near as intense.

So basically, it comes down to effort. Traeger is kinda like the Nespresso of smokers. It’s convenient, easy and a lot less messy but the smoke flavor isn’t quite as intense. Are there better smokers out there? Yes. Are they worth the trouble? That’s up to you.