Pitboss or Masterbuilt

[Sjb55]

I'm getting ready to purchase my first electric smoker. I've narrowed my choices to two, the PitBoss Series 3 and the Masterbuilt 230g. Both are available locally for $230. The Masterbuilt has the ability to monitor temps via Bluetooth, but only hits 275 degrees. The Pitboss reaches 400 degrees, (which I'd like for roasting vegetables.) Depending on where you look, both devices are fantastic or lousy.
Given the higher temps that can be reached on the Pitboss, I'm leaning towards it. Any thoughts from the forum?

Thanks

 

[normanaj]

I own a couple of Masterbuilts and both the built-in chamber temp and meat probes are inaccurate at best.One of mine is the bluetooth model(230g) and I've never used that feature as it only reports the inaccurate readings.Being able to adjust time and temp with your phone is novel at best imo.

I use a multi-probe wireless therm,one probe for chamber temp and the others for food temp.

And the vast majority of MES owners here use and A-MAZE-N tray or tube to generate smoke.Beats the hell out of using the chip loader.

Can't make any judgement on the PitBoss as I've never used one.

 

[dward51]

By Pit Boss "series 3" are you talking about the vertical pellet smoker "series 3" unit? If you are, remember it will not work without pellets, so there is a little higher operating cost involved. That being said, I would lean towards the Pit Boss myself.

Also there is another thread in this forum where a MES owner was denied warranty repairs because he used a pellet tube/tray in his MES instead of the stock wood chip tray. They have added the notice of "do no use pellets" to their owners manuals now (it's on page 3 of the 320/340g manual). I guess this is their "out" going forward although nearly everyone uses pellets instead of chips it seems (just not in their chip holder, but in a pellet tube mostly).

 

[Bearcarver]

I love my MES units, but I wouldn't use the Bluetooth as a "Plus" when comparing smokers.
Their old RF remote was definitely better!!

Bear

 

[Inscrutable]

No there is both a 2 and 3 series electric, the 3 a little larger. But has a much higher wattage element and top end temp than the MES’s ... at least theoretically.
Been looking at that 3 series too, but the pellet ones much larger and leaning that way.

 

[Inscrutable]

And agree with Bear, not wed nor enthralled with Bluetooth and all.
But getting older and curmudgeonly

 

[sigmo]

I have a gen 1 MES 40, and with heavy modifications and an AMNPS pellet maze, it works well.

The other day I saw a Pit Boss series 5 at a local store, and was impressed by its size, build quality, and adjustable racks. But it is a pellet burner, and I want an all-electric unit like the MES.

I wish Pit Boss made an all electric as large as this series 5, but they probably can't make one that large that is all electric and will operate off of a normal 20 Amp 120V circuit. With a pellet burner design, they can achieve the necessary heat.

Their series 3 all-electrics seem to use a 1550 or 1600 Watt heating element, and that's about the max you can have for a 120V appliance. So they must be limited on size by that.

I have not seen one of their series 3s in person, but the build quality of the 5 I saw seemed nice.

My reason for getting a new smoker would be to get a larger chamber. But if I was looking for a similar sized unit to what I already have, I would definitely look long and hard at a Pit Boss.

 

[Buzz G]

I have a gen 1 MES 40, and with heavy modifications and an AMNPS pellet maze, it works well.

The other day I saw a Pit Boss series 5 at a local store, and was impressed by its size, build quality, and adjustable racks. But it is a pellet burner, and I want an all-electric unit like the MES.

I wish Pit Boss made an all electric as large as this series 5, but they probably can't make one that large that is all electric and will operate off of a normal 20 Amp 120V circuit. With a pellet burner design, they can achieve the necessary heat.

Their series 3 all-electrics seem to use a 1550 or 1600 Watt heating element, and that's about the max you can have for a 120V appliance. So they must be limited on size by that.

I have not seen one of their series 3s in person, but the build quality of the 5 I saw seemed nice.

My reason for getting a new smoker would be to get a larger chamber. But if I was looking for a similar sized unit to what I already have, I would definitely look long and hard at a Pit Boss.

I have a pit boss 5, it is absolute junk, Chinese made garbage dumped on the U.S. consumers, control board was bad the day I got it, took close to 3 months to get a new one, just tried it again today and the temp ping ponged from 140 to 400 degrees, couldn't finish the cook in this pile of crap, put the pork in one of my home made smokers to get the job done, definitely stay away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[sigmo]

I have a pit boss 5, it is absolute junk, Chinese made garbage dumped on the U.S. consumers, control board was bad the day I got it, took close to 3 months to get a new one, just tried it again today and the temp ping ponged from 140 to 400 degrees, couldn't finish the cook in this pile of crap, put the pork in one of my home made smokers to get the job done, definitely stay away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mechanical build of the one I saw seemed good on a quick examination. I considered getting one mainly to retrofit it to be electrically heated and adding a separate smoke generator. So the reliability and design of the pellet burner parts and the electronic controls wouldn't be terribly important to me.

But the cabinet and shelves would be important. How does the build quality of that stuff seem?

 

[GaryHibbert]

I've never used a Pit Boss, so I cant comment on them.
I've owned a MES 30 Gen 1 for years and love it. I modded it with a PID, AMNPS, and mailbox. Since I do all my smokes low and slow, the higher temps don't really matter to me. The MES and mailbox mod work beautifully for cold smoking.
Gary

 

[Inscrutable]

I have a PB 3 electric about to take on maiden voyage. Seasoned it with no problems. Yesterday did temp checks throughout the unit. Got up to 284* before I shut down. Had 4 racks equidistant and filled water pan. Top 3 racks pretty consistent 284/279/270, and about 20* cooler right above the water pan. As expected, the built-in (analog dial) thermometer read off/low. Will be seeing if it’s consistent so I can derive a calibration/equivalency table. Though I expect to use the Inkbird or Thermoworks all the time anyway.

But no wild oscillations - again, as expected with electrics ... the pellet poopers can oscillate a bit as the auger kicks in and out.

One flame post and no return yet ... At this point seems BuzzG just a troll ... happy to be proven wrong.

But plenty of happy PB owners as well as MES, wouldn’t discourage the OP either way.

 

[Buzz G]

I have a PB 3 electric about to take on maiden voyage. Seasoned it with no problems. Yesterday did temp checks throughout the unit. Got up to 284* before I shut down. Had 4 racks equidistant and filled water pan. Top 3 racks pretty consistent 284/279/270, and about 20* cooler right above the water pan. As expected, the built-in (analog dial) thermometer read off/low. Will be seeing if it’s consistent so I can derive a calibration/equivalency table. Though I expect to use the Inkbird or Thermoworks all the time anyway.

But no wild oscillations - again, as expected with electrics ... the pellet poopers can oscillate a bit as the auger kicks in and out.

One flame post and no return yet ... At this point seems BuzzG just a troll ... happy to be proven wrong.

But plenty of happy PB owners as well as MES, wouldn’t discourage the OP either way.

I am not a troll, been smoking meats for 20+ years and the PB is the worst smoker I have ever seen for temp control and consistency, the cabinet build is decent but the pellet controls are no good!!!

 

[Inscrutable]

Glad your back ... hang around and post some.

Frankly, unless have a PID based controller they all exhibit swings to varying degrees. Inherent to chasing setpoints whether temp or other parameters - even with those often need to incorporate rate of change logic as well.

 

[Buzz G]

Glad your back ... hang around and post some.

Frankly, unless have a PID based controller they all exhibit swings to varying degrees. Inherent to chasing setpoints whether temp or other parameters - even with those often need to incorporate rate of change logic as well.

Temp swings on my pb5 are way to radical to trust it, been messing with it for 4 months now and always wind up with it dropping to around 140 to 150 degrees then it pours the pellets to it and it has gone as high as 450 degrees with a big pellet fire in the pot then it sits until that burns off and you wind up with a bitter smoke flavor in your meat then it will hold temp close to 225 where I set it and then off to the races again. You absolutely cant leave this thing unattended.

 

[dr k]

Temp swings on my pb5 are way to radical to trust it, been messing with it for 4 months now and always wind up with it dropping to around 140 to 150 degrees then it pours the pellets to it and it has gone as high as 450 degrees with a big pellet fire in the pot then it sits until that burns off and you wind up with a bitter smoke flavor in your meat then it will hold temp close to 225 where I set it and then off to the races again. You absolutely cant leave this thing unattended.

I'd return it or have PB send new parts. They need to know about your issue and resolve it.

 

[Buzz G]

I'd return it or have PB send new parts. They need to know about your issue and resolve it.

they know about it

 

[sigmo]

I suspect it may be difficult to tune the controller for a pellet burner design. I would be curious to know how they accomplish smooth, even temperature control in any pellet burning design.

Does it seem like they leave the blower on constantly at a fixed speed, and use only the pellet feed to control the temperature, or do they also throttle the blower speed to adjust how rapidly the pellets burn?

I'm honestly tempted to buy one just to observe how it operates.

You could use a PLC or microcontroller to adjust the pellet auger AND the blower speed independently. But it would take some serious trial and error to figure out how to get what you want.

In a way, a pellet burner type smoker has an inherent problem like an all-electric that uses the main heater to also produce the smoke.

I think most of us agree that it is best to be able to control smoke production separately from cabinet temperature. So any system where the heating power is locked into the smoke generation seems less than ideal.

If you're just heating a large space, a pellet stove can achieve as good of temperature regulation as a gas furnace (for example).

But to maintain a tiny space (like a smoker) at a reasonably constant temperature may be more unforgiving and difficult. Further, since the smoke production is directly tied to the heating, you're back to a similar situation as with a single-heater all-electric like my MES40 was, right out of the box.

I think I will always end up preferring an electrically-heated smoker for ease of temperature control, but it also needs a separate (and separately-controllable) smoke generator so I can adjust smoke and temperature independently.

I'm still considering getting one of the PB5s to play with, and then modify. The adjustable shelves and size of the one I saw seemed just right for what I want in a smoker. I just don't think I would want the unit to be heated by the burning of pellets. I'd likely set it up with a 220V operated heating element.

Still, setting up a PLC and writing the program to control both the blower and the pellet feeder would be a fun challenge! But even if I achieved good temperature control, would I like how the smoke was? It seems unlikely.

 

[Buzz G]

I suspect it may be difficult to tune the controller for a pellet burner design. I would be curious to know how they accomplish smooth, even temperature control in any pellet burning design.

Does it seem like they leave the blower on constantly at a fixed speed, and use only the pellet feed to control the temperature, or do they also throttle the blower speed to adjust how rapidly the pellets burn?

I'm honestly tempted to buy one just to observe how it operates.

You could use a PLC or microcontroller to adjust the pellet auger AND the blower speed independently. But it would take some serious trial and error to figure out how to get what you want.

In a way, a pellet burner type smoker has an inherent problem like an all-electric that uses the main heater to also produce the smoke.

I think most of us agree that it is best to be able to control smoke production separately from cabinet temperature. So any system where the heating power is locked into the smoke generation seems less than ideal.

If you're just heating a large space, a pellet stove can achieve as good of temperature regulation as a gas furnace (for example).

But to maintain a tiny space (like a smoker) at a reasonably constant temperature may be more unforgiving and difficult. Further, since the smoke production is directly tied to the heating, you're back to a similar situation as with a single-heater all-electric like my MES40 was, right out of the box.

I think I will always end up preferring an electrically-heated smoker for ease of temperature control, but it also needs a separate (and separately-controllable) smoke generator so I can adjust smoke and temperature independently.

I'm still considering getting one of the PB5s to play with, and then modify. The adjustable shelves and size of the one I saw seemed just right for what I want in a smoker. I just don't think I would want the unit to be heated by the burning of pellets. I'd likely set it up with a 220V operated heating element.

Still, setting up a PLC and writing the program to control both the blower and the pellet feeder would be a fun challenge! But even if I achieved good temperature control, would I like how the smoke was? It seems unlikely.

The fan runs at a continuous speed all the time, the couple of times it has worked for a couple of hours the temp fluctuations ran 25 to 30 degrees below the set temp to 50 to 70 degrees above the set temp, I think they have a very slow reacting thermostat control and the parameters are way to wide, there is a box above the pot and when it goes wild the fire will be shooting out the vent holes 4 to 5 inches on each side, had one hell of a grease fire in it once, it caught the drippings pan on fire and damn near burned the whole thing up, should've just let it burn up

 

[sigmo]

The fan runs at a continuous speed all the time, the couple of times it has worked for a couple of hours the temp fluctuations ran 25 to 30 degrees below the set temp to 50 to 70 degrees above the set temp, I think they have a very slow reacting thermostat control and the parameters are way to wide, there is a box above the pot and when it goes wild the fire will be shooting out the vent holes 4 to 5 inches on each side, had one hell of a grease fire in it once, it caught the drippings pan on fire and damn near burned the whole thing up, should've just let it burn up

You're a big fan of this smoker. I can tell! ;)

OK. That's interesting information. The blower runs at a constant speed, and they try to control the temperature purely by the rate at which they feed pellets into the burn area.

If you could feed the pellets very smoothly and slowly, it seems like you could still get reasonably precise temperature control. But it sounds like the controller in yours dumps pellets into the burn chamber in rather jerky, large dumps.

I wonder if this is because the controller is "jerky", or if there might be a mechanical issue that is causing your particular copy of this smoker to be jamming or hanging up when trying to feed the pellets. So instead of feeding them slowly and steadily, it binds up for a while, and then things break loose all at once dumping in a big batch of pellets.

It would be interesting to study the drive to the pellet feed corkscrew.

Pellet stoves usually work very well. I'm sure these smokers use a similar system. But a small smoker would be a lot more unforgiving than heating an entire room or part of a house.
,

 

[Jonok]

You will get better product with an electric smoker with some thought given to independent, controlled smoke generation.

I personally think that a butt from a Masterbuilt, (run well) even without a smoke mod, tastes a lot better than one from a Traeger.