I have never seen one if these smokers, but I looked it up on
Masterbuilt's site and watched the video for it.
It looks like it ought to work pretty well. I like the large ring shaped heating element because it seems like it would give fairly even heat.
Reading some reviews on
Amazon, it sounds like the temperature reading of the thermometer in the top of the lid tends to read higher than what people see with a separate probe placed lower in the smoker.
It is a common problem with smokers that the heat is not well mixed, and temperatures vary considerably from place to place in the chamber.
You might want to get one of those oven thermometers that have a probe on a wire that goes in the oven, and a display box that sits outside the oven so you can read the temperature in the middle of the unit just to verify that the built in thermometer is giving you an accurate picture of what's happening. The little thermometer might also just be way off. Often, you can recalibrate those with a simple mechanical adjustment.
If it really can't be set low enough, maybe the controller is defective. One of the reviews I saw complained of needing to insulate the unit to get it hot enough in cold weather. So that's the opposite of what you're seeing.
I have a charcoal smoker similar in shape to yours, and I modified it by drilling additional holes at the bottom to get more airflow. But that was to get more combustion air at our higher elevation here to get it to run hotter.
I think the control on yours shoud let you set a lower temp but maybe not. Still, the sensor on yours is likely right down on the controller itself. So maybe it doesn't see the higher temperatures that actually happen up where the hot air from the heating element goes.
There might be some sneaky way to use a piece of aluminum to capture a better sample of the temperature higher up and conduct it down to the sensor, effectively moving the sensing point higher up. Or you could even use a similar method to "thermally short circuit" some heat directly from the heating element over to the sensor tip. But you could easily go too far and end up with too little heat and no smoke.
The unit looks simple, but quite good, actually. It ought to make some great food!
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