Masterbuilt 205 Stainless Steel Gas Grill, Tabletop (Old Version)

I bought this unit to replace a well-used aged cast aluminum cooker mounted on a nice aluminum cart with wheels and a convenient shelf for the tank and a small table to hold plates, tools and a glass including ice. The cooking innards finally collapsed into a pile of corrosion and rust and so I went shopping at my usual place and saw a cooker that was almost a copy of my evolved mental design of a perfect outdoor, last a lifetime, super-fast response, efficient, controllable, and I should add: handsome, Cooker! The well written sales info was almost a copy of my checklist of desirable features and so I did my usual 1 click thing and a few days later a box arrived concurrent with a visit from my son who sees much better than I and doesn't shake at all.Using my tools, the ones that haven't gravitated to his house, and a little direction, he is teachable. The cast aluminum cooker was removed from the surviving cart and deposited in the recycle bin. After a little clean-up and some stove black spray paint the cart looked youthful and 'smart'!The bits and pieces of the new cooker that they allow you to add were soon assembled, he works faster than I direct, and we both marveled at the workmanship, subtle design features like the U tube 10K burner protected by a deflecting and reflecting SS shield, and located to provide quick, uniform heating of the cooking area. All of those reflecting and directing SS surfaces also provide infra- red energy to increase cooking efficiency.We decided that it was close enough to dinner time to do a 'test flight'! The rib eyes were anxious and dressed and the 'Bakers smelled right and so we launched: WOW! One word: QUICK! ... The olive oil on the new grill was smoking in no time and the thermo, actually readable at my age...thank you...was at 400 deg and moving fast....throttle to low idle and we hustled up the meat and talked about changing our cooking ways.. The low thermal mass of this unit and the big burner, along with all the reflecting inner surfaces, will require some cooking adjustment. We quickly learned that with the lid open, it's a patio heater: with lid closed, a super efficient cooker which you can actually control with the 'throttle’ (more later on the regulator). Anyway, with both of us directing and controlling, the outcome was outstanding, meat wise, and the cooking time was about half.. The placid plow horse has become a KY contender.The functional old/new cart now has a shining SS cooker bolted in place of the aluminum heat sink that took forever to heat and used gas like a school bus (note the cost of propane lately?) and was painted black to increase emissivity and so on. The attachment required drilling 4 new holes and some junk hardware to secure the new to the old with a quick release, if desired.It looks professional and... GOOD... as a patio cooker that will do medium rare rib -eyes in half the time it used to take and do as many at once, as the old unit, because the effective cooking area is about the same! Nearly uniform temp to within an inch of the housing. A little thermal redesign of the grill mounting could improve that. That was last September and a lot of cooking and careless overcooking has occurred since.A month or so ago the nice big thermo went TU (dead, defunct, deceased to the illiterate) and I called the seller phone # from the well written manual that tells how to assemble and use the cooker and has lots of warnings about touching hot surfaces and blowing up your patio. (For fun, the measured warning stuff is about 8% of the linear inch of printing) and talked to a very nice lady in Customer Service who clicked a few keys and identified me as a willing customer and said she would find me a new thermo and mail it to me. This was a new experience for me in dealing with CS! A few days later I got a package with a new thermo, but.... the wrong one, very small. Another phone call to the same nice lady and she apologized and said the larger unit was in short supply and she would find me one somewhere and send it on. (The smaller unit would have worked just fine but I couldn't read it.)The Larger unit came carefully wrapped in a nice box and it is now installed and I don’t have to estimate the temperature now. I made one more call to that number but she was absent and I told her supervisor (?) how much I appreciated the... Customer Service I had received.How would I improve this device:Regulator: These controls always seem backwards to me and the temp stability and quick response of the cooker, with the lid closed, needs more control resolution which you could get by adding a larger diameter back plate to the regulator behind the knob and replace the knob markings with a simple arrowhead. I did this with my unit, a crude mockup that works, and the knob still turns CCW to increase the temperature. The marked lock/unlock area and a graduated width scale or reference numbers on the back plate, like my kitchen stove and oven, simplifies control. There is about 70 deg of Off/Lock on the regulator and almost 180 deg of Temperature Adjustment available. The reference numbers or other markings would improve control and relate temperature gage to favorable cooking conditions for various items like steaks, ‘dogs and other favorites.Grill size: Give me the 2 inches used for the clicker box and another inch in width for increased grill area and it's no longer just a ‘portable’ cooker. It can then do as many ‘T Bones’ as the conventional sized units and do them much quicker and with less lid lifting and if Fat Flares bother you, buy better meat and trim well and Steak burger is better for you too! This cooker is not bothered and cleaning is a minute or so of full throttle!The clicker could be moved, or eliminated, (mine usually last about a season) and combined with the revised gas control panel that would also accommodate a bottle for portability and..………....I got carried away... I really like this unit!

This thing ROCKS!!! We use it all the time on our little terrace and its super easy to put together (SUPER EASY, eyes closed easy) the ignite button works perfectly, looks really nice, cleans extremely easily (the top grate does - I mean its a grill so its going to get nasty inside with drippings ect. but remains beautiful outside and doesn't leak as theres tray that you can empty out if you need to) and small enough perfectly stow away in a 27 gallon outside storage container (fits nearly perfectly in there with the grill utensils and we place in on top when in use) when not in use. We were sick of the electric grill and craving the charbroiled taste this thing has given us exactly that! We usually cook for two and there's plenty of area to do so. We've even cooked for four and it done the trick! Absolutely vouch for this grill it's simply perfect and very affordable from the research I've done. Also, we just use the 16oz propane tank with it because we don't have the room for a big tank (and its not exactly permitted where we live) but if you decide to just do the 16oz tanks FYI they're only $4.95 at Target. I got ripped off on Amazon and bought 2 for $20 before stumbling across them in Target and we get about 3 cooks maybe 4 with the 16oz disposable tank.

This will be one of those reviews where I wish I could do a half star. If I could, I would probably put this unit at the 3.5 range in the early going. I bought this about 6 months ago. After a couple "test meals" I have used it on one half-week camping trip and a few more times when too lazy to light the coals on my big grill. When feasible I will always go to charcoal for grilling but I have occasion to try to travel light for camping/fishing trips and a unit like this comes in pretty handy for the portability and convenience, but I digress! My take:Build quality: Quite decent for the price range. I compared it side to side with a unit my father-in-law paid triple the cost for. The 300 dollar unit had nicer stainless steel and was somewhat beefier but I don't see it lasting NEAR 3 times as long as this unit will.Overall design: The unit is well thought out for the most part The legs fold under nicely and the lid latches down well. In this position it is fairly comfortable to carry, to the extend you ever will. If I have a gripe here it is that the drip pan doesn't latch closed and it can slid around on you when carrying the unit.Functionality: I have had some successes and some failures with the unit. I am not overly thrilled with the temperature range. All the way from high to low seems to be about 100 degrees of range, which will naturally be affected by ambient temp. I attempted to do a tri-tip roast on it on the Oregon Coast in rainy weather and I basically ruined a good piece of meat because it got away from me too quickly. However, I've had great success with burgers, pork chops, and chicken breasts, which is more like what you SHOULD be doing on a unit like this anyway. After about 12-15 meals that I've done to date, the piezo igniter failed, which, in my experience, is what piezo igniters do, which brings me to....Customer service: I called the company on Monday about the failed igniter. A lady who's FIRST language is English answered the telephone in a voice I could understand and without me having to press any additional buttons and listen to any MUZAK. It took me about 5 minutes to explain my problem, give her the purchase date, and have a new igniter on the way. Today is Thursday and I just finished installing the new igniter. Therefore, I put customer service at a FAT A+, hence the half star over rather than under! :)