All,
Just acquired and had a chance to use the BBQGuru UltraQ unit for the first time this past weekend. I wanted to provide comments and there isn't much out there I can find on this unit given how new it is and I personally don't think there is much documentation on it that is helpful.
I am coming from their older Cyber-Q system which really was pretty nice. It's older technology but the appeal of the lid open technology of the UltraQ was very appealing as I definitely found that opening the lid on my cooks with the Primo spiked my temps and by 10 hours into the cook, an initial 225 would be near 260 with little chance of going the other way.
Anyway, here are some random thoughts on my one time use of the UltraQ so far. It isn't the best example because I was cooking Baby Backs using 2-2-1 method so no real use of the meat temp probes. Most of my comments are around pit temp management.
1) Bluetooth vs. WiFi - The unit appears to have two options for connecting to the unit. I originally connected over Bluetooth and used the mobile app, but there is also an option to connect over WiFi and store your cook in the cloud on their sharemycook.com site. It was very unclear to me if you can do both at once as I periodically lost bluetooth connection in the mobile app if I moved too far away, and using the website repeatedly showed me as disconnected. I did connect to WiFi and the cook was recorded, but for whatever reason, only recorded 20 minutes and never reconnected. Attempts to reconnect while recording repeatedly failed and I wasn't going to reboot mid-cook to figure it out. So not sure if you need to choose one or the other but this was not clear and if anyone can shed light on approach I would appreciate it. My preference is to connect over wifi and not be contained to a bluetooth radius around the cooker.
2) Buggy App - The app has been updated a number of times already and I definitely found some issues with it. At times the temp of my cooker would revert to 110 degrees and show the fan at 100%, I'd walk outside and see if was fine at 252 degrees and no fan output. Again not sure here if I was losing connection to the UltraQ due to bluetooth or if we are talking bugs in the app, or data from the sharemycook site but it is concerning when the app shows the fan is blowing at 100% and you know the cooker is already at or over temp.
3) Temp Management - I never had this issue with the CyberQ, but with the UltraQ I really had a hard time monitoring the pit temp. I had a target temp for 250 and the UltraQ was plugged in around 120 degrees. Plenty of time for the algorithm to gracefully get up to 250. I cook with a PrimoXL here so we are talking a pretty consistent temp in the ceramic cooker. Before long, I was getting alerts that the temp was at 280 degrees one hour into the cook. The UltraQ offers 4 auto smart cook options, but the documentation is very poor at describing which may be correct for someone to use. Very vague details there. Bottom line, I found myself adjusting the fan vent from fully open to closed and was adjust the top vents as well, something I never had to do before. Very frustrating. Not sure if the fan is more effective than previous fans, but seems odd for the unit to overshoot so drastically.
Anyway, thanks for letting me share. I may post this to their support team to see what comments they may have. If anyone else has thoughts I am very interested. Coming from a CyberQ, I expected this to go much smoother. If I experience another cook with that wide a variance of pit temp, I may be forced back to their older unit until the app and algorithms improve.
Just acquired and had a chance to use the BBQGuru UltraQ unit for the first time this past weekend. I wanted to provide comments and there isn't much out there I can find on this unit given how new it is and I personally don't think there is much documentation on it that is helpful.
I am coming from their older Cyber-Q system which really was pretty nice. It's older technology but the appeal of the lid open technology of the UltraQ was very appealing as I definitely found that opening the lid on my cooks with the Primo spiked my temps and by 10 hours into the cook, an initial 225 would be near 260 with little chance of going the other way.
Anyway, here are some random thoughts on my one time use of the UltraQ so far. It isn't the best example because I was cooking Baby Backs using 2-2-1 method so no real use of the meat temp probes. Most of my comments are around pit temp management.
1) Bluetooth vs. WiFi - The unit appears to have two options for connecting to the unit. I originally connected over Bluetooth and used the mobile app, but there is also an option to connect over WiFi and store your cook in the cloud on their sharemycook.com site. It was very unclear to me if you can do both at once as I periodically lost bluetooth connection in the mobile app if I moved too far away, and using the website repeatedly showed me as disconnected. I did connect to WiFi and the cook was recorded, but for whatever reason, only recorded 20 minutes and never reconnected. Attempts to reconnect while recording repeatedly failed and I wasn't going to reboot mid-cook to figure it out. So not sure if you need to choose one or the other but this was not clear and if anyone can shed light on approach I would appreciate it. My preference is to connect over wifi and not be contained to a bluetooth radius around the cooker.
2) Buggy App - The app has been updated a number of times already and I definitely found some issues with it. At times the temp of my cooker would revert to 110 degrees and show the fan at 100%, I'd walk outside and see if was fine at 252 degrees and no fan output. Again not sure here if I was losing connection to the UltraQ due to bluetooth or if we are talking bugs in the app, or data from the sharemycook site but it is concerning when the app shows the fan is blowing at 100% and you know the cooker is already at or over temp.
3) Temp Management - I never had this issue with the CyberQ, but with the UltraQ I really had a hard time monitoring the pit temp. I had a target temp for 250 and the UltraQ was plugged in around 120 degrees. Plenty of time for the algorithm to gracefully get up to 250. I cook with a PrimoXL here so we are talking a pretty consistent temp in the ceramic cooker. Before long, I was getting alerts that the temp was at 280 degrees one hour into the cook. The UltraQ offers 4 auto smart cook options, but the documentation is very poor at describing which may be correct for someone to use. Very vague details there. Bottom line, I found myself adjusting the fan vent from fully open to closed and was adjust the top vents as well, something I never had to do before. Very frustrating. Not sure if the fan is more effective than previous fans, but seems odd for the unit to overshoot so drastically.
Anyway, thanks for letting me share. I may post this to their support team to see what comments they may have. If anyone else has thoughts I am very interested. Coming from a CyberQ, I expected this to go much smoother. If I experience another cook with that wide a variance of pit temp, I may be forced back to their older unit until the app and algorithms improve.
