New here - smoker only gets to about 180 degrees

Cheap smoker=poor performance. However, there are some things that might work, such as ribs, sausage, boneless chicken, but they'll take a pretty long while to get up to temps. May result in dried out meat

Do you have any options about taking it back? Apparently, it may be defective. Also, are you going by the built in thermometer? They are notorious for being wrong.
Good luck
Lamar

Lamar said:

Do you have any options about taking it back? Apparently, it may be defective. Also, are you going by the built in thermometer? They are notorious for being wrong.
Good luck
Lamar

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while Lamar's advice is pretty good in general... your smoker isn't a "cheap smoker" by the normal definition like a charbroiler offset or something. your smoker is actually a decent smoker for what it's designed for. it's like a big chief and it's just not designed to smoke things like brisket, pork butt, or ribs... it's made for things that are warm smoked like fish, sausage, and jerky... its honestly borderline dangerous to try and smoke bigger things like brisket or pork butt because you'll be in the danger zone for too long (40-140 for longer than 4 hours)   

if you want something to hot smoke, you have to get something else. there are tons of inexpensive options... if it's just me, my wife, and 2 kids, i use the snake method on my webber kettle and get pretty good results. (its too much effort and wood to use my offset for a small amount of food) stepping up from there but still keeping things less labor intensive, you could get a webber smokey mountain (frequently abbreviated WSM here), an electric masterbuilt (search around though because there were some models with pretty universal poor reviews), or maybe a pellet grill like a rectec... those options have you in the $100-$500 category.  if you want a stick burner, they are labor intensive and you really need to start at $400+ for the bare minimum to get something that you don't have to tend literally constantly and won't rot apart in one season... i've heard that oklahoma joe makes some inexpensive offsets that work ok... i have only ever seen the extremely thin walmart ones and i would never get one of those... Old Country (i have only seen them at academy) are made out of nice thick steel and work fine, but they don't have anything fancy like reverse flow.