They do. I prefer charcoal and stick burners, but may have to find something that takes less overseeing.
I had an offset, woodfired New Braunfels for years, was actually RampHog's old one. Put out some of the best tasting, true smoke flavor, barbecue I've ever had. But man, you had to babysit that thing like none other - watch the wind, adjust dampers, monitor charcoal and wood load, cook/meat temp progress, whole bit. Was great when I was a bachelor and had all the time in the world to sit out on the deck drinking beers with buddies overnight.
After getting married and having to babysit kids I didn't have any time to babysit a smoker too, so my wife bought me a masterbuilt electric, MES30. It did the job but just minimally so, I never used chips since they only lasted about 45 minutes, had okay luck with the A-Maze-N grid but even it required a lot of balancing, monitoring, and accommodations. Overall, It produced barbecue, but was nothing other than a total compromise. Less work but minimally so, much lower quality barbecue flavor.
Bucked up about 5 years ago the heating element on the master belt started to get finicky and bought a GMG Jim Bowie, the older version of the current Prime Ledge. It's got wi-fi, cook methods, remote access, pellet alarm, and a large cooking surface. Surface area was a big selling factor for me as I go all out when I do cooks; if I'm going to spend 12 to 20 hours cooking something it's going to be fully loaded and vacuum seal if necessary. I like to Bubba Gump pulled pork tacos, pulled pork spaghetti, pulled pork enchiladas, pulled pork chili, barbecue chicken soup, barbecue chicken pot pie, barbecue chicken salad... It's like a protein version of Frank's Red Hot. No sense spending that amount of time to cook a couple chicken wings. Neighbor had gifted me a Traeger Junior, it worked okay but temp swings were wild and it just wasn't big enough. It's definitely coming from a place of entitlement, but not having Wi-Fi proved problematic when I would invariably fall asleep on the couch at 3:00 a.m. or had to make the requisite last minute trip to the store for whatever. The optional window on the lid is also awesome, I'm sure it messes with temps a little bit but it's great as you can monitor the cook without opening the chamber and also see how your smoke tubes are running, if you use them.
GMG trends more expensive than store names like Pit Boss or Traeger. I had a couple issues at the beginning but customer service was great and I've loved it overall. Paired with a ThermoWorks Signals it's great. I've got more than 200 Cooks on my GMG and it's been flawless. Any issues can be directly attributed to having a few too many drinks and/or trying to stay up too late. I did go with a downdraft attachment, and this helped with the smoke flavor.
I had looked at RecTeq for their thicker chamber walls, but found them excessively expensive for the same general performance and the rear-mounted hoppers on their larger models didn't play nice with the dimensions of my deck.
Overall, the ease of a pellet smoker is definitely a win in my book. Doesn't have the true taste of a wood fired, but decent barbecue is better than no barbecue. Nice thing about the GMG prime series is you can cold smoke, which produces fantastic cheese and salmon in the fall and winter.
If I had to do it over again, I think I might look at the ThermoWorks Signals paired with a Bellows. My neighbor got one for his Egg, and it worked amazingly well at controlling temps and providing predictable cook times and wood consumption. Gives the flavor of true wood fire but with the automation and ease of a pellet once you get it dialed in and figured out. I would look into a similar setup but the Eggs are crazy expensive and don't have the cooking area and I prefer.
