The 7 Best Portable Grills of 2023, Tested and Reviewed

Gas and charcoal, tabletop and standing, these portable grills came out ahead in our outdoor lab tests.

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Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

I often start these lists with some variation of "when I was young," and I don't mean to — it makes me seem like a curmudgeon. It's just that, as an elder of Gen X, it's hard to believe the grilling technologies on the market have replaced the often life-threatening pieces of equipment that were commonplace in my youth. Far from the open-fire, thin metal tabletop models I grew up with, contemporary portable grills are designed to stand their own against full-sized models in terms of heating, retention, capacity, and ease of use. They also happen to be easy to move, light, cool, clean, and repack on top of that performance. Whether you’re looking for a gas or charcoal grill, a tabletop, or one with a stand and wheels, we’ve tested a range of top-rated and best-selling portable grills to find the best performers in each category.

Amazon

The Weber Q 1200 provides the quick and even heat of larger grills with a small enough footprint to fit in most car trunks with space to spare.

It's somewhat heavy, and we had to fiddle with the gas bottle, which raised some concerns.

The Weber Q 1200 remains at the top of our list of tabletop gas grills because it packs the performance of larger grills into a small form. Assembly is simple thanks to the manual providing pictogram-style instructions, and the whole task took just 12 minutes for us to be ready to cook. Attaching the gas bottle took a little manipulation that sparked safety concerns but ultimately resolved once connected. After the easy task of lighting the grill with the pushbutton ignition, the grill grates came to cooking temperature in just eight and a half minutes — a tough task for most portable grill competitors.

You might expect hot and cool zones in a smaller, portable grill, but the circular, 8,500-BTU tube burner provides even heat across the enamel-coated cast iron grates, and all of the food we tested cooked evenly, with no excessive charring or lack thereof. The grill runs a little hotter with the lid down than the temperature indicated on the built-in thermometer, and there were minimal flare-ups in cooking. Cleanup is easy; using a grill brush on the grates and wiping down the inside of the lid to prevent grease buildup did the job. It's ultimately a reliable compact grill that does double-duty as an indoor or outdoor workhorse.

Price at time of publish: $259

Amazon

The Traveler has the added benefit of wheels and performs at a level expected of larger grills, with quick, even heating and no hot spots.

The grates are slightly difficult to clean, and brushing them requires you to hold onto the grill as it shakes in the process.

We found the Weber Traveler intuitive and approachable — it's a dream to assemble, light, and use. With a similar burner and grate design to the Q 1200 but a larger cooking area and an upgrade to 13,000 BTUs, the Traveler is more suited to family-size groups than the former. The stand is easy to operate, with clear indicators for raising and lowering it. Since the base is included, you won't need to hunt for a safe cooking surface or crouch down to flip burgers, but it requires a little more storage space and room in your trunk.

Performance-wise, it cooks consistently across the grates without hot or cool spots. While it is one of the heavier grills we tested, the wheels make moving the grill around a simple task. Cleanup is easy using a top-down approach of wiping the inside of the lid with soapy water, cleaning the grates with a grill brush, and emptying the grease collector.

Price at time of publish: $375

Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

Amazon

The Venture is an easy model to transport, set up, and cook with, and results are fairly consistent.

There are hot spots around the edges, and detaching the top can be troublesome.

The Cuisinart Venture, with its picnic basket appearance, is a good entry-level grill for the uninitiated and a value model for more experienced grillers. It's a model intended for direct-heat cooking, as there's no lid to control humidity for "low and slow" cooking. But, in that, it performed very well in our cooking tests. The burner packs 9,000 BTUs under enameled cast iron, providing adequate heat for small-group cooking. The grill comes to temperature quickly, but there is some variation in hot spots, especially towards the outside edges of the grill, which charred more than the center, where foods cooked slower.

That aside, foods cooked fairly evenly and sported aesthetically pleasing grill marks in our tests. Heat regulation is very easy, with one knob to control everything. We found that one person can set it up in under five minutes. And with generally good cooking results, it's an easy model for someone to get started with gas grilling.

Price at time of publish: $156

Amazon

The CUBE is highly portable and has a good capacity for one to two people.

The CUBE doesn't have a lid, so it's limited in functionality to direct heat cooking, and the firebox could be easier to empty.

Everdure designs premium grills in collaboration with chef Heston Blumenthal, so you can't expect a run-of-the-mill design. The grill has nicely sized handles for carrying, and setting up this grill is foolproof – place your pieces in position, and it's ready to go. The grill grate real estate is ideal for serving two people. Our test load of two burgers, two brats, and two ears of corn consumed most of the acreage but still left enough room that the food wasn't touching and the grill wasn't overloaded.

The stainless steel grates take a little more work to clean than cast iron, but not a herculean effort by any means. The firebox pops out for easy emptying, but the handle bolts make removing it without tipping a little difficult. The grill has no lid for cooking, as the top consists of a storage compartment and cutting board. As such, you’re grilling with direct heat and should keep that in mind when meal planning.

Price at time of publish: $199

Amazon

It's built solidly, heats quickly, and distributes heat evenly.

It's heavy, and some hinges for the cast iron cooking grates would be helpful.

The PKGO scored top marks in our testing, with good reason. First, assembly is a non-issue, as it consists of lining up the grates after taking the grill out of the box, and it took longer to unpack than to make it ready to cook. The cast aluminum body, top, and cast iron grates are built to last, and the included Flipkit turns the two-piece top and bottom into two hibachi grills that double your cooking area.

One of the only problems encountered was correctly positioning the grates. Still, we found it heated quickly and was ready to cook in 10 minutes after adding lit charcoal from a chimney, while side vents gave us greater control over lower-temperature cooking. Cooking tests showed good caramelization and even cooking of meats and vegetables, with the heat concentrated at the center of the grill.

Cleanup was simple, and as the grill comes with no specific cleaning instructions, dumping the spent ash was a simple task. We followed this with a quick wipe-down with soapy water to remove remnants. Finally, we should note that, at 40 pounds, this grill is more suited to car camping or picnicking, where it's only a short walk to where you’ll be cooking. It would also fare well as a supplemental grill when cooking for a crowd in your backyard.

Price at time of publish: $338

Amazon

The hopper and fan arrangement give excellent heat control, and the grill is very easy to move for its size. Plus, cupholders!

Setup requires a degree of time and thought to complete successfully, and the sear on food could be deeper for the temperature.

Unlike most of the charcoal models reviewed here, the Masterbuilt features a charcoal hopper and fan to regulate its temperature, similar to a pellet grill. While it's 52 pounds, it's easy to move for such a heavy grill, thanks to its stand and wheels. Our tests showed it to be relatively consistent in its temperature, and while it didn't give the best caramelization, the foods we cooked did have a satisfying crunch to their texture and good grill marks.

Setup took less than 20 minutes, but instructions are very detailed and require close attention to succeed on the first try. The shelves provided the biggest challenge, with little clearance for your hands to attach them easily. The components fit snugly and stay put when transporting, and the grill is a good size for cooking for three or four people. The fact that it pulls double duty as a smoker is an added bonus.

Price at time of publish: $242

NOMAD Grills

The NOMAD is a compact, stylish design with excellent heat control and retention.

The dampers could provide a bit more heat control, and the domed grill grates are good but slightly shift the cooking temperature in the center of the grill.

The NOMAD portable grill sports a modern design, folding together like a briefcase for carrying, with heat dissipation in mind to keep the exterior cool while cooking. Like the PKGO, the NOMAD can function as a closed grill, or you can use each side independently as a hibachi-style cooker, doubling the cooking space. The magnetic grates stay in place when transported, are slightly domed for strength, and can invert for use as a vegetable cooker basket.

The NOMAD is sleek but has few frills and is all about functionality. The design that keeps heat in and dissipates what heat does transfer to the exterior justifies much of the cost while making it a safer grill all around. It has side dampers to adjust airflow and regulate the temperature when it's closed. The built-in thermometer skewed about 30 degrees lower than our test probes, but the heat retention was very good overall.

Price at time of publish: $519

Food and Wine / Russell Kilgore

Food and Wine / Russell Kilgore

For tabletop models, we really like the Weber Q 1200 for its ease of use and heat management, which make it equally effective for cooking a burger or vegetables as it is for cooking more delicate items, like fish. In terms of standing models, the Masterbuilt Portable Charcoal Grill and Smoker has a few shortcomings. Still, its temperature control and portability more than make up for them.

We conducted two sets of tests for scoring, depending on whether the grill was gas-fueled or charcoal. The first step for each was to assemble the grill, rating it on the clarity of instructions and how easy it was to accomplish the task. Next, we judged the grills' portability, such as how easy they were to move and if lids or grates fell off easily. For those with carts, this included how easy or difficult they were to move, pop up, and collapse. Then, we rated them on how easy they were to light, add charcoal (if applicable), and how long they took to reach a cooking temperature. From there, the paths diverge.

Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

We tested each for their heat retention and distribution via cooking a prescribed set of items. For gas, that was grilling onions, cooking burgers, and then toasting buns. During this time, we measured the temperature before and after placing the food on the grill and what temperature the grill recovered to after loading it. We conducted the same temperature measurements for the charcoal grills with a different lineup of food: two bratwursts, two burgers, and two ears of corn. We judged the food for browning, grill marks, and overall doneness after cooking for both test cases.

What's to test after cooking? Cleanup, of course. We rated the grills on ease of cleaning, including dumping any ash and unused charcoal for applicable models. After rating the grills’ overall performances in these areas, we looked at those scores and weighed them against their retail prices. Rating each area on a scale of one to five, we averaged the category scores to arrive at the final score for each grill.

When you’re looking for a portable grill, materials count. Look for construction that will stand up to the elements, especially if it will live outside when not in use. Sturdiness is a big factor for safety and sanity when considering a tabletop or pop-up model. A grill that rocks and wobbles will provide significant challenges when you attempt to cook on it. As a rule of thumb, a grill with thicker construction will retain and spread heat better than one with thin walls and bottoms, with some exceptions. The Everdure CUBE, for example, has thinner construction but is specifically designed to distribute heat evenly.

Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

Consider the size of the group you’ll regularly be cooking for. Smaller grills in the 100- to 150-square-inch range are suitable for one or two people, maybe three in a stretch. Larger grills are better suited for three or four people. While you won't conveniently feed a large crowd on a portable grill, a larger model will minimize your cooking time for more people, but by the same token, it may be larger than you need if it's just going to be you and someone else.

Consider prep area, too. Grills with side table attachments, stands, and other prep areas ended up ranking higher in our tests, as we rated grills for their overall design. When cooking outside, a clean, workable surface makes prepping convenient and efficient.

This depends. Some portable grills have an adapter available for 20-pound tanks, but not all do, so we’ll consider a one-pound tank. Burner BTUs vary, so their fuel consumption does, as well. Given that, a one-pound tank usually lasts an hour for higher BTU ratings and an hour and a half for lower ratings.

Some portable grills come with non-heat-conductive feet and have designs intended to disperse the heat before it reaches the grill's exterior. With that, some consider them to be plastic-table safe. It's better to err on the side of caution, however, than ruin a table or, worse, have the grill fall when the table melts.

Dyna-Glo Signature Series Portable Tabletop Charcoal Grill ($186 at Amazon)

The Dyna-Glo scored highly for performance but was edged out for Best Value by its weight (40 pounds) and a more complicated assembly process that could require a second person to accomplish easily.

Expert Grill Premium Portable Charcoal Grill ($74 at Walmart)

This could be a good starter grill for someone who wants to try grilling but doesn't want to make a large commitment to the endeavor. Its biggest drawbacks are wobbly legs, even when ensuring that the attachment hardware is fully tightened, and visible air gaps in the lid that limit the ability to control the temperature.

SnS Slow ‘N Sear Travel Kettle Grill ($180 at SnS Grills)

The Travel Kettle suffered in a couple of areas. First, the setup was challenging as the legs were difficult to install properly. Next, the heat distribution was very uneven, where a uniform layer of coals still resulted in a hot spot in the center.

We tested many grills, and not all of them could be winners. While it's hard to always be awesome, some of the grills didn't perform at the level expected of their brand's reputation. Some had portability problems like the lids and grates falling off when moving them. For example, without a lid lock handle, the Weber Smokey Joe 14-Inch Charcoal Grill ($46 at Amazon) isn't an ideal portable option. Despite Weber's gas grills performing exceptionally well, both the Smokey Joe and its Go-Anywhere Charcoal Grill ($71 at Amazon) left food gray and unappealing. We found that the heat didn't transfer to the grate, or the grill didn't recover its temperature after opening it to put the food on.

Other grills, like the Napoleon 14-Inch Portable Charcoal Kettle Grill ($65 at Amazon), radiated heat towards the center of the grate, which left the edges too cool to cook effectively and food not cooking evenly. Others couldn't accommodate all the food from our tests without overcrowding. The features of some grills didn't perform adequately, such as dampers not effectively regulating the temperature. Finally, in some cases, grills lost points for assembly in areas like the legs being challenging to attach.

Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and food writer with four decades of experience in the food industry. His written work appears in Food & Wine, Food Republic, and other publications.