The Best Gas Grill for 2024

Outdoor grilling is a cherished tradition, a wonderful way to bond with family and friends, and an opportunity to showcase your culinary prowess. To do that, you need the perfect gas grill by your side, one that effortlessly turns raw ingredients into mouthwatering masterpieces.

In this guide, we'll walk you through the top gas grill options for 2024, taking into account a range of needs and preferences. We'll delve into the world of cooking capacity, fuel types, build quality, and innovative features. Whether you're a seasoned grill master or a beginner, we've got you covered.

How much should you spend on a gas grill?

You can find gas grills in places like Walmart and Home Depot for under $200. And if that is absolutely your limit in how much you can spend, then you can certainly feel free to make that purchase but just know that a grill at that price is not going to last long. They're selling it at that price because the materials used to make it were cheap. Cheap materials rust quickly.

For this reason, we are looking at gas grills at a higher price point. After all, The Barbecue Lab exists to test outdoor cooking gear so that we can help you make a good purchase that you won't regret. The gas grills we're testing, while they cost anywhere between $1,000-$2,000, will likely last for a decade or more if taken care of properly.

Best Gas Grills Under $2,000

How We Tested For The Best Gas Grill

Our philosophy when it comes to these big comparisons is to just collect all the data we can, as impartially as we can, and let the data speak for itself. Every consumer has different priorities when making a purchase like this so what seems like a huge selling point to one, may be a liability to another.

So now we present the categories that we assessed and the data collected:

Build Quality

Let's start by looking at the materials and build quality of these gas grills. While they all have stainless steel components included in the build, the Grilla Primate seems to be made entirely of all stainless steel, but we're not able to determine what grade of stainless they're using.

The Broil King Regal is made of stainless steel and cast aluminum, and what appears to be additional steel components in the cart.

The Weber and the Napoleon both seem to follow in the same vein as they have stainless steel lids and stainless shelves along with stainless doors on the cabinet. The rest of the cabinet is made of steel it appears, but the brand websites aren't very forthcoming with any of their build materials other than stainless.

Shelves and Storage

For shelves and storage, all of these gas grills have two side shelves that are very useful. From thermometers to trays of uncooked meat, it seems like there's never enough room when you need it while grilling, and these side shelves make grilling easier.

Side shelf dimensions:

The side shelves only have 1 that folds out of the bunch, and it's the right side shelf of the Napoleon. If you have space issues when you store your gas grill, this might be important to consider.

The cabinet storage under each gas grill is quite spacious, with a half shelf increasing the usable storage on the Broil King, Grilla Primate and the Weber Genesis. The Napoleon has a support rod we assume that's for structural rigidity instead of a shelf, but there's still a cavernous opening down below.

Grill Grates

The main cooking surface size varies quite a bit among these 4 gas grills.

The Weber upper rack is expandable, essentially doubling the amount of food you can keep on a second level of cooking. I haven't seen this in a gas grill before, but I like the idea. Keeping food warm or heating sides above the main cooking grate only multiplies the usefulness of the Weber Genesis propane grill.

Capacity

To show you the real usage capacity of each gas grill, we broke out some freezer-burned and past-their-prime frozen pre-formed 1/4 pound hamburgers from Gordon's to see how many would fit on each grill's main cooking surface.

It's no surprise that the Grilla Primate is able to fit the most burgers out of the bunch with the widest grates in the testing group. We were able to get 4 rows of 7 burgers each for a total capacity of 28 burgers on the Grilla Primate.

The Weber, Broil King, and Napoleon were able to give us 4 rows of 6 burgers, with a max capacity of 24 burgers at a time for each of those three gas grills.

It's worth noting that on the Grilla Primate, there's room to spare even with 28 burgers at a time, while on the other 3, it's pretty tight to fit 24 at a time.

Mobility

From a mobility standpoint, there are two schools of thought here.

First, for people who want to pull their gas grill in and out of the garage each time they cook, you want the grill to move effortlessly and lock in place. Out of this group, I think the Weber Genesis has the best wheels for continued moving around, and the wheel locks are easy to operate by foot, so I like this grill for that.

There's a second group that plans to set their gas grill on the patio or the deck, lock it down, and never move it. For that group, I heartily recommend the Broil King. This grill has wheel locks to keep it in place, but it has the added benefit of legs that you can screw down into place to hold it steady. If you're wanting it to stay put, this is a great grill made with that in mind.

Lights

When it comes to lights on the gas grill, there are two contenders here that have the ability to light things up when it's dark.

The Broil King has a light that attaches to the main cooking chamber lid that's really helpful when you're cooking at night. You can pivot the light to shine directly on your food and turn it off and on with the power switch located underneath. The Broil King also has backlighted knobs that you can turn on and off via a switch on the front.

The Napoleon really takes things up a notch with its lighted knobs. They glow blue when the burners are turned off, but ignite the burner and the burner that was lit changes to a red color. It makes it incredibly easy to find which burners are on in the night or day. Does a gas grill need to have glowing knobs to function in today's market? I don't know, but I'm really loving lighted knobs that are burner specific and color changing, so I'm in for this.

Fuel

When it comes to fuel type, all of these gas grills come with liquid propane as the fuel of choice for standard hookup. Every one of them though, can be ordered to work with a Natural Gas line as well, so no matter what fuel is your preference, each one of these grills is ready for your setup.

Burners

At the heart of every one of these gas grills is a burner system delivering the heat.

While the factory numbers are good, I think real-use data is better. We partnered with Fireboard Labs to put their Fireboard 2 Pro to work measuring the grate temperatures of each of these gas grills. The Pro model has air temperature probes that can survive over 1,200 degrees and has excellent graphing capability to show the results, so I know you're going to enjoy this.

Temperature Range

We placed 5 probes in an X pattern across the surface of each gas grill and measured their performance. For the first test, we measured the grill from turned off to as hot as they could get with the main burners firing for 30 minutes, and here's what we saw.

The highest temperature we recorded for the Napoleon grill was 716 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 380 degrees Celsius.

The Weber gave us a high temperature of 733 degrees, which is 389 Celsius.

The Broil King saw a high temperature of 892 which is 477 Celsius.

The Grilla Primate had a high of 953 degrees, which is 511 degrees Celsius.

Time to Reach 500°

Now not every cook that we do on a propane grill like this is at maximum heat, so one of the tests I wanted to run was to see how fast each grill was able to get all 5 zones that we measured up over 500 degrees, which is where I like to do most of my everyday grilling.

Here are the Fireboard Pro graphs for the Weber Genesis, and after starting the test at 11:59 am you can see that the last probe to reach the 500-degree mark got there at 12:07 pm for a total of 8 minutes to reach 500 degrees across the entire grate.

The Napoleon test started at 5:17 pm and the last probe to register 500 degrees got there at 5:27 pm for a total of 10 minutes on the Napoleon.

The Broil King test started at 2:57 pm and all zones were reading 500 degrees a few seconds after 3:04 pm, for a time of 7 and a half minutes for the Broil King.

The Grilla Primate rounds out the test with a start time of 2:10 pm, and all zones reading 500 degrees by 2:14 pm, for the fastest time in our test at just over 4 minutes to reach the 500-degree mark.

Temperature Evenness

Evenness across the cooking surface is something that we all want to know before we purchase a grill, so let's take a look at what our probes had to say about how even the heat was on each grill.

The Weber Genesis when set to high had about 100 degrees of cooking surface temperature variation across the 5 zones in a range of 620-720 degrees.

The Napoleon Prestige had about 130 degrees of difference in temperature while set to high between 580-710 degrees.

The Broil King had just under 200 degrees of cooking surface temperature variation across the grate registering between 700-890 while set to high.

The Weber Genesis when set to high had about 100 degrees of temperature variation across the 5 zones in a range of 620-720 degrees.

And the Grilla Primate saw a range of 100 degrees across all measurement points between 850-950 degrees during our test.

Cooking Hot & Fast

There are some who say that temperature evenness is impossible to test and things like the bread test and air temp probe testing don't show how a grill truly performs in real life, so for the first cooking test, everyone wants to know how a grill cooks burgers, right?

We broke out our Meat Your Maker 1 Horsepower Dual Grind Grinder and turned a whole packer brisket into ground brisket burgers. We fired each grill up to 600 degrees and planned for the propane grills to settle down to 500 degrees for the cook, after having the lid open for a minute to put the patties down.

We put eight quarter-pound burgers on the grill and set a timer for 4 minutes before we flipped them over to the second side.

The Weber is up first, and here's what the burgers looked like when we flipped them over to side two. All of the burgers have nice grill grate marks on the first side, and all of the patties look to be cooked to the same doneness, a great job by the Weber.

The Napoleon is up next, and here at the flip, the burgers in the back all looked to be cooked to the same level of doneness, but the burgers in the front didn't seem to cook at the same rate. On the front right, we have burgers that look pretty close to the doneness of the back, but on the front left, we're not seeing grill grate marks after 4 minutes, and they're much less done than the burgers in the back.

Now, this could be because the wind was whipping around while we were testing this grill, so I'm not ready to count out the elements here since it's November in Indiana, and we're getting some heavy winds around here.

The Broil King is up, and here when we're flipping to side two, you can tell we're working with the thickest grates of the testing group, because those grill grate marks are massive. All of the burgers look much more seared than what we've seen in the other two gas grills so far, and the burgers cooked evenly across the entire grate for the Broil King.

Last we have the Grilla Primate, and here when we're flipping the patties over, we're seeing some nice grill marks on each burger as well as even cooking across the grate.

Sear Capability

To further test each grill's ability to put on a sear, we're utilizing any of the special equipment that comes with each grill. If there's an infrared burner, we're using that. If there's a sear zone, we're using that. If there's nothing extra included, then we're cooking on the main surface.

For each of these cooks, we're using our 90-second method for New York Strip steaks. We have a video you can watch on how to get these results yourself.

Warranty

As you'd expect with a grill in this price range, there are some good warranties to back them up.

The best out of the bunch is the Napoleon bumper-to-bumper lifetime warranty. That's a standout in this group, and you can learn more on their website.

The Grilla Primate has a 4-year warranty on the grill, which isn't that complicated to understand when you compare it to the Weber and the Broil King. These two manufacturers have different warranty lengths on different components, and it's more than I want to sift through in this article. Just know that the Napoleon has a lifetime warranty, and that stands out.

Outstanding Features

There are still some features on these gas grills that we've yet to cover, and I want to call those out here.

Weber Genesis SX-335s

The Weber Genesis comes with the Weber Connect smart technology, which means that there's no analog built in thermometer in the hood of the grill. As you'd see on most wood pellet grills, the temperature reading is digital and on the right side shelf. You can not only get your temperature reading for the main cooking chamber, but you can also plug in meat probes to track the internal temperatures of your food.

There's also the Weber Crafted components, and that's the circular section underneath the right-hand side of the cooking grate. If you take the cooking grate off, you can put down a Weber wok, griddle top, or even a pizza stone to give your grill more functionality. Weber also has a grill locker on the left side of the grill where you can store the Crafted accessories or your grill grates if they're not being used.

Broil King Regal s490

The Broil King comes from the factory with a full rotisserie kit. What we'd usually see as an add-on is included with this grill, and there's even a 15,000BTU burner on the back dedicated to getting the best rotisserie results.

Napoleon Prestige 500 RSIB

The Napoleon also comes with a full rotisserie and a 18,000 BTU full rear burner. There's also an optional griddle that you can add to give your grill a flat top option, but my favorite accessory has to be the charcoal tray option.

With the charcoal tray, you can turn this grill into a charcoal grill by adding some briquettes to this tray and placing it under your cooking grate, just above the gas burners. You can use the burners to light the charcoal, and once it's lit, turn the burners off to use your propane grill as a charcoal grill. I love that they thought of this, and if I was leaning towards the Napoleon, I would pick this up as an add-on. It's very cool.

Grilla Primate

The last grill and most obvious feature is on the Grilla Primate, since in the box there's a full griddle top and a full grill top when you make your purchase. The other grills have partial griddle tops that you can purchase as an add-on to lay over your cooking grates, but with the Primate, you take the grates off the grill, lay the griddle down and you have a 34-inch flat top griddle in the same body as your gas grill.

There's also a partial griddle that you can buy to have both grilling and griddle capability at the same time in one unit, and we really love that setup. The Primate is also Outdoor Kitchen compatible, so it's the one grill out of this lineup that could be built into an outdoor kitchen setup, and Grilla has all of the modular pieces you'd need to get started.

Speaking of Outdoor Kitchens...

While we're on the topic of outdoor kitchens, we get asked all the time what gas grill we installed into our outdoor kitchen space, so here's a quick behind-the-scenes of our outdoor kitchen grill.

We installed the American Renaissance Grill from Renaissance Cooking Systems, and it's a beast of a grill.

Full 304 stainless steel construction, ceramic briquette trays across the entire cooking surface, spring-loaded lid assist lifting the massive hood, halogen interior lights, and a ton more.

The American Renaissance Grill is in a whole different class of grill compared to our 4 models today, but we are starting to see some of the features I have in my grill make their way into the under $2,000 grills. Things like lighted exterior knobs are a really nice feature. I know with my ARG grill, I turn on the knob lights anytime I turn on the grill, in case I forget to turn things off, I always have a visual reminder to check when I'm finished cooking.

I like that we're seeing this on models like the Napoleon and the Broil King. The American Renaissance has massive square stainless steel grates, and they put a mean sear on proteins, but the Broil King round bar grates at 9mm are the closest thing I've seen that could begin to compete with the cooking grates on my outdoor kitchen grill.

If you're in the grill market and don't want to spend over $1,500 to $2,000, there are some great features that are starting to trickle down into the standalone gas grill units which makes them a great value, but when you're ready to take things to another level, you gotta give this one a look.

Our final thoughts on the Best Gas Grill

So, after all the testing, cooking, cleaning and pondering, it's time for final thoughts on each grill in our test.

The Grilla Primate is proved that it isn't just a quality gas grill, but it's a true combo grill. With the full griddle coming in the box as well as the grates for a full gas grill, I was truly surprised by the value you can get for $1,099. I've even seen this grill on sale from time to time under the $1,000 price point, so you're talking about the highest BTU output grill in our test with even heat across the grill grate that also functions as a full gas griddle when you want it? I really like this grill, and Addison has claimed it as her own now that she's had a chance to work with it. When a kid says they want to keep a grill around, that really means something around here, and the Primate is a standout in this head to head.

The Weber Genesis tested to be exactly what I thought a Weber gas grill would be. Even heat across the cooking grate, new innovations that we haven't seen from things like the Weber crafted accessories, and even how the grill grate fits directly over the Weber Crafted frame without messing up the main grate. You can leave this in all the time, just take the grate off, and you're making pizza, using a griddle or searing with a wok addon. It doesn't come with a full griddle in the box like the Grilla, but if you want to customize your grilling setup with the accessories and features that you'll use, then this grill has a ton of options to make your cooking dreams a reality.

The Napoleon Prestige, I think this is the grill you buy to impress your friends, neighbors and family. The lights on the knobs are just the coolest thing to someone who hasn't seen them before. The way they're blue when off and red when lit brings guests to ask questions about the grill while you're cooking. The wavy grates are in stark comparison to straight grates you find in almost every other grill on the market, and they're a conversation starter while you're cooking and after while you're eating. The full rotisserie included in the box with a dedicated burner and the side infrared burner for searing means this grill can do a whole lot of things right out of the box. For the first Napoleon grill we've tested here at The Barbecue Lab, I'm impressed with the quality and add-ons included with this grill, and wouldn't hesitate to put this beauty on my patio for many years to come.

The Broil King Regal is a tank of a grill. From the double walled lid that helps keep the wind from messing with your heat to the extendable feet that lock your grill in place so it doesn't blow around the deck, there's a lot to love about the Regal. If you want the heaviest grill grates at this price point, an infrared side burner to get a whole steak sear and not just grill marks, with a main cooking chamber that can handle a load of burgers night or day with the included light that shines down whenever you're cooking, don't sleep on the Broil King Regal.

At the end of the day, there's really one thing that stuck out to me more than anything else. When you're buying a grill that's not at one of the "use it for two years and replace it" price points, there are some amazing grills to be had. There isn't a grill in this test that I wouldn't enjoy having on my patio for many years to come, and I think choosing between these units just comes down to the features and accessories that are the most important to you.

If you're searing steaks multiple nights a week and there's just two of you at home, then the Napoleon or Broil King has the sear burner that will delight you and handle large groups of people you're going to entertain.

If you're the type of outdoor cook that wants both a full grill and a full griddle to cook everything from burgers to hibachi, then the Grilla Primate is the horse I'd ride.

If space is limited and you just want a single unit on the patio that does it all, It's going to be very hard to beat the Grilla Primate at this price.

If you want all of the cooking options from pizza to a wok and don't mind spending a few extra hundred dollars to pick up all of the accessories, the Weber Genesis has you covered.

I don't think you can go wrong with any of these grills, but I'm sure you'll let me know in the comments what you think. What did we forget to test? What has been your experience with these brands and how have they worked out for you who own them? I look forward to continuing the discussion in the comments below in the weeks and months to come.