I’ve been messing around with backyard cookers for over a decade now, and if there’s one question I get asked more than any other, it’s some version of this: “Can I just get one grill that does everything?”
For a long time, my honest answer was “not really.” Pellet grills were great for low-and-slow smoking but couldn’t sear worth a darn. Gas grills seared beautifully but couldn’t touch a brisket the way a smoker could. You basically had to pick a lane.
That’s changed. The pellet smoker and grill combo category has quietly become one of the smartest buys in outdoor cooking, and I’ve spent a good chunk of the last two grilling seasons testing, poking at, and occasionally cursing at these units in my own backyard.
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The short version: manufacturers finally solved the searing problem. For years, “combo” grills were really just two separate cookers bolted together — a smoker on one side, a gas burner on the other, sharing a cart. That’s still a valid design, and I’ll cover it later in this guide. But the newer generation of combo units actually built direct-flame technology into the pellet chamber itself, so you can smoke a pork shoulder for 10 hours on Saturday and then sear a ribeye at 700°F on Sunday, all on the same cooker.
That’s a genuinely useful upgrade for anyone with limited patio space, a limited budget, or just limited patience for owning three different grills.
In my experience, this category makes the most sense for:
Want to throw burgers on in 15 minutes on a Tuesday and smoke ribs on Saturday, without switching equipment.
Don’t have room for a smoker and a grill and a griddle on the patio.
Upgrading from a basic pellet grill and tired of its inability to sear a steak properly.
Need one cooker that can handle appetizers, mains, and sides without a traffic jam.
If you’re a competition pitmaster who needs dedicated equipment for each job, you’ll probably still want separate cookers. But for the other 95% of us, a combo unit is genuinely the smarter buy.
Before we get into specific models, I want to clear up something that trips up a lot of first-time buyers, because “pellet smoker grill combo” actually describes two pretty different types of cookers:
Both are legitimate “combos,” but they solve the problem differently. Single-chamber units save space and give you one cooking surface to manage. Dual-zone units give you true simultaneous cooking — you can smoke a brisket on one side while grilling corn on the other, at the same time, at completely different temperatures. Keep that distinction in mind as you read through the reviews below, because it matters more than most spec sheets let on.
What This Guide Covers: I’ve broken this down into a full roundup of the best combo units by category (overall, budget, premium, and so on), followed by deep dives into specific combo types — gas/propane hybrids, griddle combos, charcoal combos, and Traeger’s combo lineup specifically, since so many readers ask about it by name. Then I’ll walk you through exactly what to look for before you buy, and answer the most common questions I hear about this category. Let’s get into it.
I want to be upfront about something: I haven’t personally cooked on every single unit on this list under my own roof, but every model here reflects extensive testing, owner feedback, and hands-on time either by me or trusted colleagues in the BBQ review space. I’m not going to tell you a grill is perfect when it isn’t — you’ll see the cons section on every one of these.
Overview: Weber had a rocky start in the pellet grill world with the original SmokeFire, which struggled with grease fires and temperature swings. The Searwood is Weber’s redemption arc, and it’s a genuinely impressive piece of engineering. It uses a direct-flame mode that lets heat bypass the drip pan entirely, hitting the cooking grates with real open flame for true searing — something almost no other single-chamber pellet grill pulls off convincingly.
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Overview: Traeger built its name on reliability, and the Westwood is their answer to buyers who want that reliability without paying for every bell and whistle.
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Overview: Pit Boss has built its reputation on giving you a lot of cooker for not a lot of money, and the 850 DX continues that tradition. Its standout feature is a slide-plate flame broiler — flip a lever and you expose your food directly to open flame for a proper sear.
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Download my printable internal temperature pull-chart for combo grills. Never serve undercooked meat again.
Overview: If you ask serious pitmasters what separates a good pellet grill from a great one, a lot of them will point to Camp Chef’s Smoke Box system — a dedicated compartment that lets you burn real wood chunks or charcoal alongside your pellets.
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Overview: When you’re cooking for a crowd, cooking space becomes the deciding factor. The Woodridge Pro Plus delivers an enormous insulated cooking area, and surprisingly beats out Traeger’s more expensive Ironwood XL in total usable flat cooking space.
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Overview: This is the grill I point tech-minded readers toward. The Zelos-450 uses smart controller algorithms that actually adjust cooking temperature and timing based on your target internal meat temperature, rather than just holding a static grill temp.
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Overview: This one surprised me. It uses an electric heating element combined with a small dedicated pellet-burning smoke box, delivering genuine wood-fired flavor in a compact, apartment-balcony-friendly footprint.
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Overview: For readers who want the true dual-zone experience — a real pellet smoker and a real grill, running independently, side by side — the Charleston Onyx Edition is the benchmark.
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Overview: Yes, this one shows up twice, and that’s intentional — the Ninja Woodfire is genuinely the standout in both the “portable” and “electric hybrid” categories, since its electric-plus-pellet design is exactly what defines this niche.
What’s the difference? A traditional pellet grill is built around one core strength: low, steady, indirect heat for smoking. A combo adds a second capability — direct, high-heat searing or independent grilling.
Traditional pellet grills excel at smoking but generally top out too low for a proper sear. Combo units close that gap.
Standard pellet grills typically max out well below what you need for a hard sear. Combo units with direct-flame tech can rival a dedicated gas or charcoal grill.
A dedicated pellet smoker with no combo features can sometimes hold ultra-low temperatures slightly more precisely, simply because there’s less mechanical complexity involved.
Combos pull ahead decisively here. A traditional pellet grill asked to sear a steak will usually disappoint you.
Convenience: One cooker, one spot on the patio, one set of pellets to manage — combos win on simplicity.
Price comparison: Traditional pellet grills are often cheaper than combo units with equivalent build quality, but factor in the cost of buying a second grill for searing, and combos frequently come out ahead on total value.
I get asked about “pellet smoker gas grill combos” and “pellet smoker propane grill combos” so often, and so interchangeably, that I want to address them together — because in this category, gas and propane essentially describe the same style of hybrid cooker. Whether the grill side runs on natural gas or propane, the design and benefits are the same, so I’m covering them in one section instead of splitting hairs over fuel type.
These are almost always dual-zone, side-by-side units: one chamber runs on wood pellets for smoking, the other runs on propane or gas burners for fast, direct-heat grilling.
Advantages:
Popular models: The Pit Boss Charleston Onyx Edition and the Pit Boss DX Series 1020 Combo are the standouts, both pairing a fully independent pellet smoker chamber with a genuine propane burner setup.
On a weeknight, you don’t want to wait for a pellet grill to ignite and stabilize just to throw on chicken breasts — fire up the propane side and you’re cooking in five minutes. Then on Saturday, the pellet side is right there for a proper low-and-slow brisket.
Fuel costs: Propane tanks are a known, budget-friendly expense, and pellets come in manageable bags. Running both sides regularly means managing two fuel types.
Maintenance: You’re maintaining two systems — grease trap and burners on the gas side, auger and hopper on the pellet side — so expect a bit more upkeep than a single-chamber grill.
If your household genuinely needs both “fast weeknight dinner” and “all-day weekend smoke” capability, and you have the patio space for a dual-chamber unit, this style is built for you.
If you’ve never cooked on a griddle before, this section might change your weekend routine.
Breakfast: Bacon, eggs, pancakes, hash browns — all cooked side by side on one surface, nearly impossible on a standard grill.
Smash burgers: A hot, flat, well-seasoned griddle surface is the best way to make a smash burger at home — the direct contact creates a crispy, caramelized crust a grill grate can’t replicate.
Hibachi: Stir-fried vegetables, teriyaki chicken, fried rice — a griddle combo brings hibachi-style cooking to your backyard.
Meal versatility: Between the smoker side and the griddle side, you can cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus sides, on one cooker.
The Camp Chef Woodwind Pro with the Sidekick Attachment is the gold standard. The Sidekick mounts a heavy-duty, commercial-grade flat-top griddle directly to the side of the pellet grill, powered by its own high-output propane burner — smoke bacon low and slow on one side while smashing burgers on the other, simultaneously.
The Pit Boss Competition Series Pellet/Griddle Combo is another strong option, built into a single unit rather than requiring a separate attachment.
I want to manage expectations here, because the honest answer is more nuanced than a simple product recommendation.
Do combo units exist? Not really — not in the true single-chamber sense. Pellet and charcoal are fundamentally different combustion systems, and there’s no mainstream single-chamber unit that successfully blends the two the way pellet-plus-gas or pellet-plus-electric combos do.
Pellet vs charcoal flavor: Charcoal, especially lump charcoal, produces a deeper, smokier char flavor at high heat than pellets typically achieve. Pellets give you more consistent temperature control over long smoking sessions. Neither is objectively better — they’re different tools.
Is owning separate cookers better? In this specific case, honestly, yes. If real charcoal flavor is non-negotiable, pairing a dedicated pellet smoker with a quality charcoal grill will outperform any hybrid attempt to combine the two.
Hybrid alternatives: The closest thing to a true pellet-meets-charcoal experience is the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro 24’s dedicated Smoke Box, which lets you burn real charcoal or wood chunks alongside your pellets. It’s not a full charcoal replacement, but it’s the best middle ground on the market.
Traeger comes up by name constantly in this category, largely because they basically invented the modern pellet grill market.
While the Timberline sits above it as Traeger’s ultra-luxury flagship, the Ironwood XL is where most serious buyers should actually land — the best balance of premium build quality, a genuinely massive cooking footprint, and Traeger’s most advanced WiFIRE integration, without Timberline-level pricing.
Every current Traeger combo model runs on WiFIRE technology — Traeger’s app-based control system for remote temperature monitoring, meat probe tracking, and alerts. Being able to check your brisket’s internal temp from the couch instead of walking outside every 20 minutes is a genuine quality-of-life upgrade.
Traeger sits at a premium price point compared to brands like Pit Boss, but you’re paying for a more mature app ecosystem, generally stronger long-term durability, and one of the largest accessory and community networks in the space. If budget is your primary constraint, Pit Boss gets you more capacity per dollar. If you want the smoothest ownership experience, Traeger tends to win out.
Cost savings: One quality combo unit is almost always cheaper than a dedicated smoker plus a dedicated grill, once you factor in two carts, two covers, and double the maintenance.
Space savings: For smaller patios or decks, this is often the deciding factor.
Convenience: Managing one fuel source (or two, on dual-zone units) instead of juggling multiple cookers is a real quality-of-life improvement.
Performance trade-offs: A dedicated high-end charcoal grill will still out-sear most combo units. A dedicated offset smoker will still produce more traditional smoke flavor. If you’re chasing the single best result in one narrow discipline, a specialized cooker will usually win.
The Weber Searwood 600 takes the top overall spot thanks to its direct-flame searing mode.
The Traeger Westwood offers the strongest balance of reliability, smart features, and price.
A traditional pellet smoker generally can’t match a gas grill’s searing heat, but combo units with direct-flame technology close that gap significantly.
Yes, particularly for households needing both fast weeknight grilling and weekend smoking. Dual-zone units like the Pit Boss Charleston run both independently.
For most buyers, yes — comparable functionality in one footprint for less total cost.
Yes, on models built for it — direct-flame units like the Weber Searwood or slide-plate broilers like the Pit Boss 850 DX.
Very well, especially for breakfast foods and smash burgers. The Camp Chef Woodwind Pro with Sidekick is the current standout.
With proper maintenance, a quality combo from a reputable brand should reasonably last 5-10 years.
Weber, Traeger, Pit Boss, and Camp Chef currently lead — Weber for searing engineering, Traeger for app ecosystem, Pit Boss for value, Camp Chef for flavor depth.
Stop choosing between smoking and searing. Grab a combo unit and do both—right this weekend.
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