Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800 Review

Countdown and Count-up timer- The controller has a timer that will count both ways, which is great if you’re someone who keeps cooking notes like me. I like to start the timer as soon as I put a piece of meat on the grill so I can make notes when I did specific things during a cook. How far into the cook did I wrap? At what points did I spritz or open the grill lid? How long did it take to hit a specific internal temperature? Not many grills have added this option, and we love that it’s a part of the Gravity Series.

Smoke/Sear Grates- We mentioned earlier that the grates are reversible, designed on one side for grilling and the other side for smoking. The smoking side resembles the top point of a triangle, making as little contact with the meat as possible and allowing smoke the opportunity to contact as much surface as possible. The grill side looks like the flat bottom side of a triangle, giving as much grate exposure as possible for those grill marks that most grillers crave. 

Probe port on cooking chamber- I can’t tell you how many grills don’t have a probe port on the side of the cooking chamber, but I’m sure glad that Masterbuilt added this. It’s annoying to constantly have to shut probe wires for thermometers in the door when you’re cooking a larger piece of meat. It wears on the cables, and kinks and thermometer cables just aren’t a good match for longevity.

Foldable Front Shelf- I love that the front shelf is foldable. It’s deep enough that I can rest a pan on it while I’m working with food on the grill, and having it fold out of the way makes for a smaller footprint to walk around on the patio when it’s not in use.

Solder connections on controller- A strange thing happened after the first cook on the 800 when I went to put it away. There’s a cable wrap on the back of the side shelf to tie the power cable around when you’re storing the grill. A nice addition, but after reading the entire manual before heading out for the first cook, I didn’t read anything about needing to disconnect the power cable before you wrapped it on the cable wrap. If you’re going to use this to store your cable, please disconnect the cable from the controller first. 

I just pulled the cable back and started winding it around the supports, put the grill away and didn’t think another thing of it. I went outside for an overnight brisket cook two days later, and the grill wouldn’t power on. I checked that the cable was plugged into power, checked that the cable was attached to the controller, all looked good, but no power. Tried multiple power outlets, still no power. It was like a cable was loose in the controller, so I pulled the controller out and took it apart. There it was. The solder joint that holds the power cable attachment to the motherboard had completely come off, separating the cable from the board. 

I’m certain that this happened because I put the cable on the cable wrap after the first use, but really? Upon further inspection, the three cables that come out of the controller are crimped in between the front and back of the controller itself inside of a rubber oval. The power cable is in the middle of these three cables, and while the outside two cables hold strong in the rubber fitting, the power cable in the middle slides in and out with barely any resistance. If you’re interested in this grill, you’ll want to put some strain relief on the power cable connection at the controller.

Strain Relief on power cable- I believe that the power cable needs to have some strain relief instead of relying on a solder joint to hold the cable up. There are a couple of ways to do this. First would be to tie something around the power cable so that it can’t move far enough to put strain on the solder joint. Another way would be to attach a hook under the side shelf so that any strain is absorbed by the cable and not the solder joint. I’m not an engineer, so if you have an idea of how to better solve this feel free to comment below. Ya’ll are really ingenious, and I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.

Smoke leaking out top of charcoal hopper- The latches are set from the factory so that the top of the charcoal hopper will close relatively tightly, but we still had quite a bit of smoke leaking from the top of the hopper. We tightened the latches down considerably, and the lid was much tighter when closed, but we still had smoke leaking out of the top of the charcoal hopper for each cook that we did. Maybe smoke is supposed to leak from the top, but I thought that it needed to be a completely closed environment to stop the chimney effect. May not be anything serious, but something to keep an eye on. None of my cooks ended up with the hopper engulfed in flames, but we were nagged by smoke coming out of the top and wondered if it was supposed to be there or not.

Dent from the factory- Like we laid out above, the charcoal hopper arrived dented from the factory. I’m sure things like this happen and get through production on any unit that is mass produced, but it’s still something to note on areas that could be improved. 

Black goo leaking from chimney seal that discolors patio- We had some liquid smoke? Black goo? Puddle of blackness? That formed at the bottom of the ash door and dripped on to our new outdoor patio that we weren’t happy about. I’m guessing it was a seal that wasn’t doing its job on the ash drawer access, but we have some cleaning to do and a grill mat to purchase for future cooks. The 800 found its way off the patio for future cooks until we could get a mat to make cleanup easier.

When using the app, grill will turn off for no reason- We had the grill turn itself off for no reason that we could figure out two times on two different cooks. Each time this happened, we were testing out the Masterbuilt app to check temperatures on both the grill and the meat we were cooking. It happened on the rib cook, and two hours into the cook, I walked out to see how things were going, and the controller screen was backlit blue, but there was nothing else on the screen and the fans were off. Second time was during the steak cook, as I was taking a screenshot of the app to show how hot the grill had gotten and how long it took, I walked out the door 5 minutes later with a steak and the screen was blue with no information on it and the grill was cooling down. After those two experiences, we just stuck to the “walk out and see for yourself” method instead of relying on the app. That’s a shame too, because the app is so freaking cool. From the smoke video background to the immediate updates to temperature and controllability, it’s a fantastic app. If it shuts down the grill though when you haven’t asked it to, it’s not as helpful as it could be.

Thickness of the metal- It’s almost impossible to meet the build quality that most of us consumers expect in a grill these days. Let’s be honest, most of us want a grill for under $500 that boasts ¼” metal thickness over the entirety of the grill. We also want the latest electronic controllers to make things set it and forget, and we want it to be able to live outside without a cover 24/7/365 and last 20 years. It’s an impossible task to meet those expectations at the sub-$1,000 mark, yet we complain all the more that the grill companies are skimping on quality and they’re ripping us off. Here’s the deal, for the price of this unit, I’m okay with the way they’ve built it. Is it a tank that will last 20 years? Probably not. It’s a charcoal grill made out of thinner sheet metal that can go up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. The charcoal chute is double walled, which is fantastic, but it still has me wondering how long the grill can last.

Shaking the charcoal grate before lighting- The grate that the charcoal rests on at the bottom of the hopper should be shaken vigorously before you try to light any previously lit charcoal. You’ll want to knock off the ash so that the flame from your firestarter can light the coal instead of shield it from the fire. We forgot to shake the grate a couple of times, and it made getting things to light much, much harder. There are two metal strips that allow you to set your firestarter below the grate, and that’s the way to go to get a good light on this unit.

What lighters to use- There are so many different lighters that you can use when lighting charcoal, but for this purpose, we suggest going with flat, square lighter pucks like we use with our kamado. I used the Nitro firestarters from Grill Dome for each cook, and they were the perfect size for lighting up the Gravity series. I have Weber lighter cubes and Royal Oak tumbleweeds on hand, but they’re too tall to fit where the lighters need to go, so the flatter the better when it comes to getting this pit lit.

How to store the grill grates/griddle- There are two small hooks on the side of the 800 series located underneath the side shelf. You can store the grill grates here when you’re using the griddle, but we have yet to figure out how to store the griddle here when using the grill grates.

How to store the power cable- We suggest that you disconnect the power cable from the controller whenever you would like to wrap the power cable on the provided cable mount system on the back of the side shelf. If you don’t disconnect from the controller, there’s a possibility that you’ll pull the wire right off the controller circuit board and your controller won’t be able to get power without breaking out the soldering iron and re-attaching it.

Wood chunks in the charcoal hopper- One of the things that Adam taught us when we were first introduced to the Masterbuilt Gravity Series was to add wood chunks right into the charcoal hopper whenever you’re needing to add fuel. It’s recommended that you make sure to not exceed 10-15% of the hopper with wood so that charcoal is still the primary source of fuel and the controller can keep a consistent temperature. We like to add in 1 large chunk of wood every 2-3 inches of charcoal, and it keeps the smoke rolling.

Wood chunks in the ash pan- If adding wood chunks into the charcoal hopper doesn’t give you enough smoke, then adding a few chunks of smoker wood to the ash bucket will give you more. As the charcoal disintegrates during the burn, the hot ash will fall on to the smoking wood and bring more smoke to your cook. 

Lump vs. Briquettes- The Gravity Series can run on both lump and briquettes, but we find that we use briquettes most of the time. We found that the briquettes gave us a more consistent burn and allowed us to cook longer without needing to reload the hopper.