We Tested 14 Electric Smokers — These Are the 4 Best

Our Favorite Electric Smoker

For its user-friendliness, heat retention, construction, and cooked results, we’re fans of the Masterbuilt 40-Inch Digital Electric Smoker. The Char-Broil Analog Electric Smoker is also a great choice for the more value-conscious.

How We Tested Electric Smokers

In our tests, we try to emulate the consumer experience, so we follow the same steps a person would after purchasing an electric smoker.

• Setup: First came the assembly or setup. We timed the process and gathered thoughts on ease or difficulty, the need for tools, and the clarity of instructions.
• Design: We then gathered insights on the overall design, including how easy or hard it was to move the smoker, add fuel, and add food. 
• Cooking performance: Then, we got to the meat and potatoes and smoked some food: chicken wings, ribs, and salmon. We recorded the cooking time for each item and then rated them on taste, appearance, and texture.
• Smoke output: During the process, we also noted the fuel required, the smoke level, and the smoke leaving the smoker.
• Cleanup: Finally, we cleaned the smokers, rating them on the ease or difficulty of the task. 

We scored the smokers based on assembly/setup, design, ease of use, performance, and cleaning before weighing and averaging the categories. We took these weighted averaged scores and used them to determine our top picks.

Factors to Consider

Digital vs. Analog 

Your choice of these two options depends on what you’re smoking and how much you want to monitor the smoker. A digital smoker should allow you to set a cooking temperature and sometimes a cook time. Some digitals do a fine job keeping the temperature on the mark, while others may need a little finessing to dial in.

Analog smokers typically have a rheostat for temperature control, indicating a number one to five or low to high, with no precise indicators of what those settings translate to for temperature. These will require some learning time to understand where the proper temperature is for you. In the most basic analog models, you get the choice of “off” or “on,” with no ability to set the temperature to anything other than “on.” These models did not fare well in our tests but are fine if you’re smoking fish, cheese, or other foods that don’t require much heat but still want to add smoke flavor to them.

Fuel Type

In contrast to a gas smoker, an electric smoker is typically going to burn wood chips, or sometimes pellets (and even more rarely, wood chunks). Selecting your chips for flavor is one thing, but examining their size is helpful, too. A larger chip will burn longer but will take longer to ignite, which may be halfway into your cooking time.

Build

Build is a multi-headed beast to consider. One aspect is the solidness of construction, including the insulation, how tightly the door closes, and its overall heat retention. Another aspect is the heating and chip-holding capacity, ensuring that the smoker can reach and maintain proper cooking temperatures and not require constant chip refills. Your smoker isn’t a Tex-Mex restaurant, after all. 

Another consideration is the electrical system. Do you have a circuit that can accommodate the smoker without tripping the circuit breaker? Is the cord long enough to operate safely in the location you choose? Yes, there are safety concerns about maintaining proper voltage ratings and wire gauges to prevent fires, but keeping a burning smoker away from a building is also an important prevention technique. (Many models we tested had infuriatingly short cords.) Can you safely use an extension cord to reach that location? 

Capacity

You’ll be dedicating a few hours, at the very least, to smoking once you fire it up. Many people look at this and see smoking multiple items at once as a way to equalize the time commitment. You’ll want to examine if you can add some ribs and 20 chicken wings, for example, to meet that criteria. Also, if you have a big family or friend group, you’ll want to ensure you can fit enough food for all of them on the smoker. Conversely, if you intend on smoking a chicken for two people as your regular usage, you can scale down the size.

Temperature Control

Temperature control matters with electric smokers, and some of the models we tested really struggled with it. First, do you want a smoker that allows you to set the temperature, or are you OK with playing with the settings to find your sweet spot? Next, when you load your smoker with cold food, the smoker’s temperature will drop because of simple physics. How quickly will it recover from that drop, if at all?

Finally, the balance of heating and smoke produced is huge. Some models heated and cooked the food but did not generate appreciable smoke. Others didn’t create enough cooking heat but blasted the food with smoke, leaving an acrid aftertaste to the food. Finding that balance of heat retention and recovery, temperature accuracy, and just enough smoke is the key to a good electric smoker.

Other Electric Smokers We Tested

Strong Contenders

Masterbuilt MB20070421 30-Inch Digital Electric Smoker ($230 at Amazon)
From the same maker as our Best Overall, the 30-inch Masterbuilt Digital almost made our list. It was an easy-to-assemble model with clear instructions for assembly and concise operating instructions. The chip hopper tube and firebox were small, so we had to reload chips every hour to hour and a half. The unit was easy to clean, and there was very little in the way of smoke escaping.

Bradley Smoker 4-Rack Outdoor Electric Smoker ($390 at Amazon)
The biggest shortcoming of this Bradley model is that it struggled to regain the target smoking temperature (225°F) after loading it with food. Because of this, the chicken wings and ribs were dry and rubbery, but the salmon fared well. But it’s hard to justify the price merely for good smoked salmon.

Pit Boss Grills 3-Series Digital Vertical Electric Smoker ($300 at Pit Boss)
The 3-Series has some nice touches, like the digital control panel that allows you to regulate temperature and time. It fell short because the airflow gravitates to the baffles at the back of the smoker. It produced uneven results for the food, with internal temperatures of the chicken wings varying as much as 40°F, depending on location, although big ups for producing some great ribs, which, oddly, were cooked simultaneously.

What Didn't Make the List

When testing several candidates, not everyone can be a winner. Some fell short on performance, like the Smokehouse Big Chief Front Load Smoker ($180 at Amazon), which never reached a food-safe temperature for meat smoking. The Cuisinart Vertical Electric Smoker ($195 at Amazon) struggled to maintain a consistent temperature while not producing appreciable smoke, leaving the food dry or flabby and decidedly not smoky. A Royal Gourmet model (now discontinued) produced more heat than smoke, leaving the foods we tested with more inconsistently roasted than smoked.

The Smokin Tex Pro Series Residential Electric Smoker ($874 at BBQ Guys) also struggled with heat, with chicken and pork not reaching food-safe temperatures within three hours, so we had to consider the tests a failure. The Smokin-It Model #2 Electric Smoker ($730 at Amazon) took an inexplicably long time to bring the chicken wings to temperature, leaving them leathery, while the ribs had an almost boiled texture, and the salmon, although visually appealing, had an acrid smoke flavor that affected its edibility.

Note: We had Char-Broil Deluxe Digital Electric Smoker among our Strong Contenders, but the model was recalled in February 2024 due to electrical current leaks.

Our Expertise

• 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, Serious Eats, Tasting Table, and other publications.