Best grill, unless you are talking about a flat top, is a plain old Weber charcoal burner, I have four, one 22, one 18 and two small smokey joes.
For steaks, burgers and chicken they can't be beat.
For smoking there's a zillion choices, stickburners are the best but take MANY hours of fire "management" (on all but the top end choices) to keep the temps where needed, but top end stickburners exceed your projected budget.
Also factor in the cost and hassle of finding "good" wood and storing it where it will stay dry and free of vermin.
Kamado's can grill but they are poor smokers, plus the good ones cost a lot.
Pellet burners are more or less a convection oven with some smoke added and rank way below stickburner flavor profile.
The new kid on the block and the one I went to, after owning all of the above, is the gravity feed charcoal cooker.
Hardwood is added in with the charcoal and the ash catch bin and the coal burn temps are high enough to elimanate the smoke flavors we don't want in our meat, resulting in meat that tastes almost as good as a stickburner but with near zero work on the part of the pitmaster.
Cost on the gravity units start well under $1000 so it's almost a no brainer.
My small
Masterbuilt gravity cost $500 flat and it's my favorite smoker, I use my Weber grills a lot but the other smokers sit under cover on my porch.
Anyone near Austin want a good deal on a Kamado and a Pellet spitter?
Both work great.