I have a PitBoss smoker and have had it for close to 5 years now and smoked close to 1,000 pounds of meat for ourselves, parties and even small catering events. It has been great. Typically smoke with hickory and oak, both of witch I buy as pellet smoker fuel, as well as the fuel that we use in our pellet stove - have to be careful and only use virgin non-finished wood to make the pellets, which ours come from a furniture factory in Virginia using only pre-finished scrap for their pellets.
I have the ability to grill with mine, but the second time I tried to do it, I nearly burned it to the ground. If you smoke a lot of brisket and pork shoulders, you get a build up of grease, which is fine at 225-300, but once you crank it up to 400-500 to grill, the grease will ignite.
I go by the simple method of manually checking the meat as I baste it and check the temp periodically. Many of the newer smokers have a lot of gimmicks with them like multiple probes and windows to see in. They break and once you smoke a few things, the window is pointless. Regular meat thermometer or a good dedicated temp probe should be all you need.
Look for a smoker with a larger hopper if you plan on doing long cooks. Doing a 10-12 hour brisket I have refill once or twice. Not a big deal until you do it overnight and forget to get up to refill and you wake up to a cold smoker and not done brisket under a deadline. Also look for one with a decent sized cook chamber that you can put an entire packer brisket or full pork shoulder in. Nothing sucks more than going to load the smoker and everything doesn’t fit. Not many people say they wish they had a smaller smoker.
