Wondering which is the best Bradley smoker to buy this year? Read our ultimate guide for the top recommendations.
Never underestimate the power of good food. Eating delicious food can be a life-changing experience – Shon Mehta
Growing up around grills meant that we knew more about good barbecue by the time we left elementary school than most people will learn in a lifetime.
Barbecue isn’t just about food for us, it’s a way of life and a philosophy that we were happily indoctrinated into and it’s a gospel that we love to share and spread.
It was, and still would be everything to us if, while we were cooking at one of our regular competitions, we hadn’t been exposed to the art of smoking.
In that instant, everything that we thought we knew about cooking changed, it was a lightbulb moment that transformed our lives, and right then and there, we became fully paid up members and disciples of the Church of Smoking.
A lot of people will tell you that traditional barbecue and smoking are the same things, and there’s only a hair’s breadth of difference between them.
While those people are entitled to their opinions, they are absolutely wrong. There’s a country mile wide gulf separating smoking from ordinary barbecuing, and true disciples of both will argue past moonrise that one is better than the other and vice versa.
The thing is though, and at the end of a long old day at the coal face, it’s all about taste and a whole lot of flavor. And all that taste and flavor?
That’s what converted us to the smoking side, and it’s why we’re here to try and convince you that smoking is actually good for you and your mind, body, and soul.
In order to do just that, we’ve made a list of the best Bradley smokers that you cook up a treat with because nobody makes smokers like Bradley do and if you want to smoke with the best, forget the rest and do it the Bradley way.
Let’s light the fires and kick the tires, it’s smoking time…
Best Bradley Smoker: (Our Winner after 35+ hours of research)
Bradley Smart Smoker
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Bradley Smokers Comparison Table
| Image | Product | Our Rating | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
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Bradley Smart Smoker | CHECK PRICE ON AMAZON | |
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Bradley Digital 4 Rack Smoker | CHECK PRICE ON AMAZON | |
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Bradley Electric Smoker | CHECK PRICE ON AMAZON | |
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Bradley Professional Smoker | CHECK PRICE ON BRADLEYSMOKER | |
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Bradley Realtree Original Electric Smoker | CHECK PRICE ON AMAZON |
Bradley Smokers Reviews
#1. Bradley Smart Smoker (Overall Top Pick)
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While they’ve got a long, rich, and storied history in the world of smoking, Bradley is always pushing the envelope and is constantly searching for ways to improve their smokers and the culinary lives of the people who invest their smoking faith in them.
The Smart Smoker is the next-generation machine that incorporates and exemplifies everything that makes Bradley a legendary brand in the smoking world.
This automatic, electric smoker is a simple to use smoking revelation that combines digital technology with Bluetooth innovation to let you control, and adjust, every single moment of your smoke-filled cook from the comfort of your armchair.
Designed to deliver a flavorful, rich finish, the Smart Smoker is fueled by wood chips, briquettes, and pellets that are easily loaded into its smoke-box, which it only uses as and when it needs to, according to the temperature and time parameters that you’ve set.
And when it’s fully loaded, you’ll get eight hours of uninterrupted smoking time, which is more than enough to prepare any and all the culinary delights that you have planned.
It’s six chrome-coated racks that sit comfortably inside the cabinet give you a total of seven hundred and eighty square inches of total smoking space, which means you’ll be able to whip up a whole jamboree of chicken and steak and feed any and all of the folks who decide to stop by when they follow their nostrils and are guided to your yard by the mouth-watering scent of everything you’re smoking.
Then when you’ve finished smoking all that you want to smoke, the chrome coating on the racks and the polished and insulated stainless steel interior are painless and easy to clean, and before you know it they’ll be as bright and shiny as the day they arrived and will be ready to start smoking again.
Pros
- The Bluetooth connectivity and control that’s part and parcel of the Smart Smoker’s design means that you can control every part of the smoking process as long as your smartphone or tablet is connected to it.
- With a maximum temperature of around two hundred and eighty degrees, the Smart Smoker is made to cook the long, low, and slow way and will saturate whatever you’ve loaded it with in all sorts of incredibly rich, smoke-filled flavor.
- Once you’ve filled its racks and loaded its smokebox and you’re ready to start smoking, you’ll have eight hours of smoking time before you need to reload its smokebox with more wood chips, pellets, or briquettes. Wars have been fought and lost in less time than it takes the Smart Smoker to burn through a full load of wood.
- From the moment it arrives and you start smoking with it, your smoker will be protected for a year by Bradley’s twelve-month warranty.
Cons
- We’re old school smokers and while we appreciate the application of technology, we can’t help thinking that Bluetooth has a tendency to make would-be smokers lazy and encourages them to let the smoker do all the work for them. If you want to learn how to smoke properly, switch off the Bluetooth and the WiFi.
- While it’s capable of holding up to ten racks to smoke with, the Smart Smoker only comes with six, which is a little disappointing. If you want more racks, you have to order them from Bradley, which means you have to dig deeper and give your pocketbook another beating.
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#2. Bradley Digital 4 Rack Smoker (Runner Up)
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The evolution of a smoker that we were mentioned when we were talking about the Smart Smoker?
This is the smoker that made everything that the Smart Smoker is possible and was the first Bradley smoker to embrace the digital revolution. All evolution and every revolution started somewhere, and for Bradley, it all began here.
With a hopper capable of producing up to nine hours of a smoking time when fully loaded, the Digital Four Rack houses four chrome-coated racks that provide a total smoking area of five hundred and seventy square inches.
Or as we like to say, enough to fill everyone’s plates at an overcrowded family get together.
Featuring a digital control unit that will let you precisely set the temperature and time that you want the Four Rack to smoke for, you can push a couple of buttons., step back and let Bradley do the rest.
Once you’ve programmed everything you need into the controls, and you’ve got the nine hours of downtime that the fully loaded hopper provides, you can start to think about and begin to plot, plan and formulate all sorts of crazy, smoke-infused recipes.
And no matter how weird they may seem, the Bradley Four Rack can help you to bring them to fruition.
Pros
- With a fully loaded hopper giving you nine hours to sit back and twiddle your thumbs and a digital control unit that’ll take all of the hard work out of your hands and make the smoker do it for you, you can just kick back, relax and spend some quality time with your friends and family. Who knew that smoking could be this much fun?
- Patience is a virtue and it’s one that the digital smoker will instill in you as it cooks everything at a leisurely two hundred and eighty degrees. You’ll learn to appreciate the benefits of smoking when you give your food over to this smoker and let it do what it does best.
- And you’ll have a whole year’s worth of peace of mind while you’re smoking as this digital beauty comes with Bradley’s twelve-month warranty.
Cons
- It may seem a little pedantic, but we don’t understand why you’d be happy to smoke with four racks when you can have a six rack model? More racks mean more smoking fun, because as everyone who has ever driven a Pontiac GTO knows, the bigger something is, the better it is
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#3. Bradley Electric Smoker (Runner Up)
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The Bradley story started with their original electric smoker. While they’re firm believers in not having to fix anything unless it’s broken and that perfection always speaks for itself, they’ve tweaked and updated its design to make perfection a little bit better.
This all-steel, electric smoker has four interior racks that give it a total smoking area of five hundred square inches, while it’s automatically controlled hopper, when fully loaded with briquettes, will provide up to eight hours of hassle and worry-free smoking time.
With two separately controlled elements, one for the oven and one to make smoke, the new Original has doubled up and isn’t just a smoker anymore.
It’s now an oven, a smoker, a dehydrator, and a cold smoker too. That’s a lot of smoking and cooking functionality for a machine that stands less than three feet tall and two feet wide.
As die-hard converts to the smoking cause, we’ve always been fans of the Bradley Original, and it’s always been our go-to smoker of choice, and the small improvements that they made, while minor, have made a world of difference.
They’ve dragged smoking history into the smoking present and put their original electric smoker back where it belongs. At the center of the smoking universe.
Pros
- It’s an all-steel smoker that’s been made to be durable, tough, and strong and is built to last longer than a ‘Days Of Our Lives’ marathon
- With four in one versatility (it’s a smoker, a cold smoker, an oven, and a dehydrator) and over five hundred square inches of smoking and cooking space, it’s every smoker and barbecuers dream machine.
- Thanks to its stainless steel polished interior, the Original is also easy to clean and simple to maintain. And it’s the main door is magnetic too, which means it seals tighter than a bank vault on parole day.
- And, like every other Bradley smoker, the new electric Original comes with a twelve-month guarantee that’ll give you a whole year of panic-free, happy smoking fun.
Cons
- Honestly, we can’t think of any and if there are some, we can’t find them. It’s the Mary Poppins of the smoking world and is practically perfect in every way.
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#4. Bradley Professional Smoker (Runner Up)
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Just when we thought that Bradley couldn’t push the envelope of smoking design, versatility, and creativity any further than they already had with the Smart Smoker, they had to go and prove us wrong and up the ante even further.
The Professional is everything that we’ve ever wanted in a smoker. Effortlessly cool and incredibly functional, it’s a giant leap into the future of smoking technology.
A four rack, fully programmable smoker that’s Bluetooth enabled and can also be loaded with up to fifty readily available recipes via its USB connection, the Professional can smoke for up to ten hours and infuse everything on it’s near five hundred square inches of smoking space with incredible, dense flavor.
Capable of reaching temperatures of up to three hundred and twenty degrees, while it still follows the long and slow smoking route that Bradley originally laid down, the Professional can smoke a little faster than its forebears.
And in smoking circles, a little extra speed and power can make a whole lot of difference.
With a windowed briquette compartment and a built-in smoke generator, the Professional has elevated Bradley into the pantheon of the smoking gods and left other bands desperately attempting to follow in their wake.
It’s the all-singing, all-dancing electric smoker that, if given the opportunity, could turn the smoking world upside down and inside out.
Pros
- The Professional is the next step in the smoking evolutionary chain. Capable of smoking for up to ten hours on a single load of briquettes and reaching a temperature of three hundred and twenty degrees, the Professional has changed the face of electric smoking forever.
- And it does all of that with a twelve-month, cast-iron warranty from Bradley. The future is starting to look more and more appealing with every passing moment.
Cons
- And while we’re on the subject of the future, it’s going to be a long time before we can actually afford to own a Professional. All of the technology and ingenuity that Bradley has poured into the Professional comes with a rather large price tag, which rest assured, will break your pocketbook in two.
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#5. Bradley Realtree Original Electric Smoker (Runner Up)
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There are smokers you want, smokers you fantasize about and then there are smokers that you need to make all of your smoking dreams come true.
This is the electric smoker that we see in our mind’s eye when we close our eyes at night and the machine that we, someday, aspire to own and smoke all day and every day with.
Decorated in Realtree’s distinctive camouflage pattern, this six shelf electric smoker has all of the smoke-filled punching power and versatility of Bradley’s original electric smoker, with an increased smoking surface area of nearly nine hundred square inches.
How do you make the electric Original better than it’s ever been?
You make it bigger and you give it the sort of make-over that speaks to the hunter that lives in every smoker’s heart. And that’s exactly what Bradley did.
Pros
- It’s everything that the Original electric smoker is with looks that can kill and an increased total smoking surface area of nearly nine hundred square inches. Bradley just made their best smoker even better.
- That’s right, you guessed what’s coming next. The Realtree comes with Bradley’s standard twelve-month guarantee.
Cons
- There are none, If we were looking for a new smoker right now, the Realtree would already be winging its way across the country to us.
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Bradley Smokers Buyer’s Guide
Which Bradley Smoker Is The Right One For Me?
While we’d usually focus on the intricacies of budget limitations and attempt to ascertain your individual smoking needs and requirements and what you want your smoker for, as far as Bradley Smokers are concerned, there’s only one smoker you’ll ever need and that everyone wants.
And that’s the Realtree Original Electric Smoker.
It’s versatile, adaptable, and will smoke all the food that you could possibly want to eat and more and it has the sort of knockout, drop-dead good looks that’ll put a smile on every potential smoker’s face.
And, after all, who doesn’t want to look good while they’re smoking?
Frequently Asked Questions
Who Is Bradley?
Bradley is a family-owned brand who are pioneers in the field of home-based smoker manufacturing.
Specializing in electric smokers, they began manufacturing smokers in the late nineteen seventies after their founder did a deal with a master smoker based in the Pacific Northwest to trade freshly caught fish for his smoking knowledge.
It was a handshake deal that would change the face of home smoking and the ovens and smokers that it relied on forever.
What is a Smoker?
A smoker is a purpose-built, outdoor oven that is designed to cook food at low temperatures for a long time.
They use either charcoal or wood pellets and chips as a fuel source to make heat and create the smoke that is used to both cook food and infuse it with rich, dense smoke filled flavors.
Following a relatively recent increase in the popularity of barbecuing, smokers have become a popular way of cooking.
Often confused with, and thought to be the same as barbecuing, smoking has its own set of culinary rules and objectives, which can be learned relatively quickly but can, more often than not, take a lifetime to master.
