The three kinds of combo, and who each suits
“Grill-smoker combo” covers three genuinely different machines. Buying the wrong type is the main way people end up disappointed.
The barrel-plus-firebox.A horizontal drum with a smaller firebox welded to one end. Build a fire in the main chamber and it’s a big grill; build it in the side box instead and heat and smoke draw sideways through the chamber for low-and-slow. This is the classic combo and the best value — the Royal Gourmet and Char-Griller entries here all work this way. The catch is that budget versions leak at every seam, and the end nearest the firebox always runs hotter.
The insulated kamado.One chamber, no firebox, doing both jobs by being thick-walled enough to hold any temperature you set it to. The Char-Griller Akorn is the budget example. This is the best-performing approach and the least fiddly: no leaks to chase, and it’ll hold 250°F for hours on a small load of charcoal. The trade is capacity and the fact that it’s slow to change temperature in either direction.
The kettle with a smoking setup.Worth naming because it’s the option most people should take. A Weber Master-Touch with the coals banked to one side, or arranged in a “snake” around the edge of the charcoal grate, will hold 250°F for four or five hours — enough for ribs, chicken and pork shoulder. It is not a substitute for a real smoker on a 12-hour brisket, but for most people the best combo is a good kettle they already know how to use.
What separates a good cheap combo from a bad one
Four things, in order of how much they matter.
Seals.Every dollar you save on a combo comes out of the lid seam, the firebox door and the ash pan gasket. Smoke escaping is heat escaping and airflow you can’t control, which is why a leaky offset is so much harder to hold at temperature than a sealed kamado. Budget for a roll of high-temperature gasket tape on any barrel combo — it costs little and is the single most effective modification you can make.
An adjustable charcoal pan. Being able to raise the coals towards the grate for searing and drop them for roasting effectively gives you two grills. The Royal Gourmet entries here have a two-level pan; it is a genuinely useful feature and not a common one at this price.
Ash access. A long smoke generates a lot of ash, and ash smothers a fire. A pull-out pan or a dump mechanism turns a mid-cook problem into a ten-second job. Grills that make you shovel ash out of the firebox door will annoy you into not smoking.
Thermometer placement.Almost all of these ship with a lid gauge, and almost all of those gauges read the air in the dome rather than the grate. Assume yours is 25-50°F out and buy a two-probe thermometer — one probe at grate level, one in the meat. On a combo this is not optional equipment.
Running a combo as a smoker: the short version
Light a small amount of charcoal — a quarter chimney is plenty — in the firebox, and add unlit fuel around it so the fire creeps outward rather than all igniting at once. Add two or three chunks of smoking wood, not a handful of chips. Open the firebox intake most of the way and the stack fully, then control temperature with the intake only, in small movements, waiting ten minutes between adjustments.
Target 225-275°F at the grate, which is the range USDA guidance for smoking meat and poultry works within, and use two thermometers — one for the pit, one for the food. Meat still has to reach a safe internal temperature: 165°F for poultry, 145°F with a rest for whole cuts of pork and beef. Tough cuts like brisket and pork shoulder go far past that, to 195-205°F, because that’s where connective tissue breaks down — that’s a tenderness target, not a safety one.
