Masterbuilt Gravity 1150 Review: A great charcoal grill for bigger feasts

Design and features

• Huge, premium charcoal BBQ
• Useful built-in prep space
• Takes a while to put together

The Masterbuilt Gravity 1150 is a big BBQ; there’s no getting around it. Compared to more compact options like the Traeger Woodridge, which I reviewed recently, the 1150 is a bit of a unit – and I love it. Yes, it’s going to take up a bit more space in the garden, but its design is sleek and unapologetic, combining black and silver with orange accents. 

It has not only a very large drum, but a gravity-fed hopper attached to the right. This essentially holds your fuel and, using a built-in fan beneath, stokes the flames to the exact temperature you set on the accompanying control panel. And with an 8KG capacity, you can get up to 15 hours of use from a full hopper – though it’ll depend on the cooking temperature. 

I’m also a big fan of the amount of counter space you get; there’s a permanent counter that juts out to the left, along with a long retractable front-facing counter that doubles as a nice design detail when flat and not in use. They both came in very handy during testing, but more on that a little later. 

Beneath the main unit lies dual-door storage – though think again if you were looking to use it to store fuel, as I was. Since the fan that heats the hopper is also in this area, there’s a slight risk of embers getting into the space. Instead, it’s designed to house accessories like the griddle insert or pizza oven – though neither of these comes in the box, so unless you invest, you’ve got a bit of wasted space there. 

Safe to say that putting a BBQ like that together can take a bit of time; Masterbuilt estimated 1.5 hours with two people, but by myself, it took just over three hours. I’d recommend getting a friend or family member to help you with this; even with my experience building BBQs and previous Masterbuilt grills, the scale of the unit made it a challenge to put together. 

Still, once put together, the Gravity 1150 looks and feels the part. It’s sturdy, well built and looks and feels every bit as premium as its price tag would suggest, with four castor wheels that make it surprisingly easy to move around. 

The famous Masterbuilt reverse grill plates are present and accounted for, with a side of thin bars for smoking and a side of thicker bars for grilling, along with two regular BBQ grill plates. If that’s too much for your BBQ session, you can slot one of the traditional grills down the back for storage. 

There are a few key changes here compared to older Masterbuilt BBQs; the control panel has shifted from the left to the right-hand side, which really is neither here nor there, though the placement of the grill vents has changed. 

While on the Masterbuilt 560, you could add or remove vents from outside the grill to start or smother the flame in the hopper, the 1150 has a grill plate that goes inside the hopper, next to the ash tray. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather put my hand on the outside of a grill than the inside after it has been on for hours. 

I do like some of the other QOL changes here though; there are better seals in the hopper and the grill, reducing the amount of heat and smoke that escapes, and the hooks on the left for holding my BBQ utensils are a nice touch too. 

And unlike the 560, the 1150 has smarter grill and hopper sensors, ditching the basic pressure-based system used before to detect when anything was open. 

I also like that the cabling is, for the most part, within the BBQ housing itself, with only a single thin power cable running from the unit to your plug socket. The cable itself is pretty long at 4.5 metres, though depending on where your BBQ is in your garden, you may need an extension. 

The actual control of the 1150 is refreshingly similar though; press the button to turn it on, rotate the dial to your set temperature (in F or C) and let the grill do its thing. You can set a timer to count up or down and monitor internal temperatures with a probe. All this information is shown on a display panel, where you can manually flick through the different systems. 

And, of course, like most high-end grills, there’s a Masterbuilt companion app for iOS and Android that’ll let you control various elements of the grilling experience. 

Performance

• Fast heat-up for charcoal
• Proper smoke, bark and tenderness
• Best for confident grillers

Compared to the likes of the Traeger Woodridge and its smoke pellet design, the Gravity 1150 can feel a little more intimidating to get going. It’s not anywhere near as involved as smoking on a ‘dumb’ grill, but there’s a knack to properly loading up the gravity-fed hopper – especially if you’re mixing in lumps of wood to really get that smoky flavour.

As I’d used the smaller Masterbuilt 560 for the past five years, I’m already pretty well seasoned with the right way to load a Masterbuilt grill – and it’s a little different to the official advice. Masterbuilt says to simply mix the fuel and the wood – but in my experience, that’d usually translate to periods of heavy smoke, followed by periods of minimal smoke. Getting it consistently smoky is more challenging. 

I tend to go by the two-inch rule; add two inches of lumpwood charcoal, add a small block of wood, and rinse and repeat until it’s full – at which point you’ve got enough fuel for up to 15 hours, depending on temperatures. 

That way, the wood has a chance to char and smoke before it hits the flames at the bottom and burns up. I also find that when I want a little more smoke, I can simply throw a (small) chunk of wood into the ash tray; the small embers allow it to smoulder and produce smoke without catching fire.

Getting the whole thing going is a little more involved than with some smart BBQ grills, too, requiring you to add a firelighter (I tend to use natural firelighters, as they don’t produce that horrible petrol-y smell) to a small shelf beneath the hopper, between it and the ash tray. 

Its small size makes it hard to get them into place, but with a bit of force, you can use natural firelighters, a ball of newspaper, or whatever else you want to act as a lighter. Masterbuilt does sell its own rectangular firelighters that fit perfectly into the space, but they’re pretty pricey at £36 in the UK, though only $12.99 in the US.

You then need to start the fire yourself, leaving the hopper lid and ash tray door open for air circulation for a minute or two, before pulling out the two vent blockers, closing the doors and turning the BBQ by pressing the knob on the control panel, setting the temperature and confirming your choice to bring it up to temperature.

That’s a long ol’ way of saying that getting this thing going, and getting it going properly, may feel intimidating at first. And it’s mainly because of this that I’d say it is more of an intermediate-level grill, requiring a bit of knowledge about grilling fuels and the like to really get the best out of it.

It’s not all bad; that approach also means that you can customise the level of smoke to your liking by adding extra wood as you like – something you can’t really do with regular wood pellet grills. 

It also has the benefit of being much faster to reach your set temperature than the likes of the Woodridge; while the wood pellet grill took 18 minutes to hit a low-and-slow-ready 105C, the Masterbuilt did the same in just over three minutes, and getting it to a grill-ready 220C took only four and a half minutes, quicker than Masterbuilt’s own claims. That speed makes it a much better option for those last-minute, ‘why not’ BBQ dinners, getting up to temperature quicker than most conventional ovens.  

And, with the use of ‘proper’ fuel, it can get much hotter than other grills too, with a maximum cooking temperature of 370C – a not-insignificant 110C more than the Traeger Woodridge. 

It also recovers temperatures much faster than a lot of the competition. When opening the grill to flip or remove food, heat is, of course, lost. However, with the 1150, it usually took less than a minute to close the gap and reach its target temp once again. It did get a bit overzealous at times, going past the set temp by a few degrees, but it dropped down quite quickly and stayed stable once there. 

With that all said and done, the Masterbuilt Gravity 1150 delivers an absolutely phenomenal smoke/grill/BBQ experience depending on what you want from it. As someone who specialises in low-and-slow grilling, I put two full pork loin rib racks on the bottom grill plate and left them to smoke at 225F for a few hours. 

You do have the option to put a thermometer into your meat for more precise internal readings, with space for a whopping four probes, but you only get one in the box. Still, when used, that temperature is displayed alongside the timer (if set) and BBQ temp on the built-in display, eliminating the need to open the lid and check it yourself from time to time. 

Unlike the Woodridge I reviewed recently, where I didn’t really see much smoke coming from the unit, there was definitely smoke here – and that translated to a very nice bark on the meat after the first three hours of smoking.

I wrapped them, put them back in for another couple of hours, and they came out perfectly; a pink smoke ring around the outside of the meat, and a bone that’d just slide out without complaint. 

And, with the built-in tray surfaces, I didn’t need to transfer the meat to the kitchen for my seasoning/wrapping either – I just prepped it all on the BBQ itself, with plenty of space for my sauces and utensils. 

It’s a great grill for bigger gatherings too; the inclusion of not one, not two, but three levels of grill plates provides a combined 1150 inches of cook space – the 1150 name makes a lot of sense now, right? 

That means that food like burgers, lamb chops, pork and the like can go on the bottom for that true charred BBQ look, while meats like sausages and chicken sit happily on the higher racks, slowly getting up to temp without getting burnt on one side. There are hot and cold spots – typically slightly colder on the far left and hotter as you get closer to the right side of the grill – but it’s pretty even overall. 

I grilled a lot of food for my testing, but as you can see with the photos, there’s still plenty more space that I could use. Really, this size of BBQ is only needed if you’re cooking massive bits of meat or regularly hosting large garden gatherings – the smaller Masterbuilt 560 has many of the same key features in a smaller package, and it’s around half the price too. 

But, if you do want the biggest BBQ possible, the Gravity 1150 ticks that box and then some.  

It is, of course, a smart BBQ – the Wi-Fi antennae protruding from the control panel is a massive giveaway here – but I’ve had a few problems with the Masterbuilt app. Well, I say ‘few’, it’s one big one: the ability to actually connect the BBQ to my phone. 

I can find the BBQ, and I can start the pairing process, but something happens and the BBQ simply turns itself off every single time. A cursory glance at social media and it seems this is a relatively common complaint, and it’s one I hope Masterbuilt addresses soon; it’s a very premium grill, after all, and the temperature monitoring/alerts can be very handy for those low-and-slow cooks.

Should you buy it?