These Editor-Approved Portable Grills Give You Good Eats on the Road

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We think of grilling as a backyard pastime: Cooking up burgers and hot dogs out on a perfect sunny day surrounded by family and friends at home. The truth is, though, we love to grill everywhere. We love to grill at a tailgate before a football game. We love to grill on a camping trip. We love to grill on a chill day at the park.

A portable grill, whether it’s a miniature tabletop model that’s easy to carry or something a little bigger to cook for a crowd, gives you the freedom to grill whenever you want.

You don’t have to compromise much when grilling away from home, either. While the smaller size of these models means you can’t cook for too many people, they run on charcoal or gas like most other grills, and they get more than hot enough to fire up whatever food you’re hungry for. We’ve tested and picked out the best portable grills for every type of cook just in time for grilling season.

More Grilling Stories: Popular Mechanics Yard & Garden Awards ● Best BBQ Smokers ● Best Kamado Grills

The Best Portable Grills

• Best Overall: Masterbuilt Portable Charcoal Grill

• Best Value: Weber Smokey Joe Portable Grill

• Best Design: Cuisinart CGG-750 Venture Portable Grill

• Best Charcoal: Oklahoma Joe’s Rambler Tabletop Grill

• Best for Burgers and Dogs: Weber Q1200 Liquid Propane Portable Grill

What to Consider

Type of Fuel

Portable grills are fueled by lump and briquette charcoal or propane, each with its own advantages. Lump charcoal is easier to ignite and burns hotter than charcoal briquettes. Because it’s charred wood, it consists of irregularly shaped pieces, and so requires a bit of experience to correctly build a fuel bed.

Bagged charcoal is slightly more difficult to light but is easy to work with in that you ignite a pile of it in a charcoal chimney and pour the glowing coals onto the coal grate. You can easily move these regularly shaped pieces with a coal shovel to put the heat where you need it. Charcoal is dramatic and fun to work with; outdoor chefs generally like smoke and flames.

Propane, both in a 16.4-ounce camper-size fuel bottle and the common 20-gallon size, is tame in comparison. It’s certainly cleaner and quick to set up and light: Open the fuel tank’s valve and light the burner with a match, butane lighter, or the igniter on the grill.

Type of Grill

Aside from fuels, think about your other needs. Do you want to set up, cook, and cool down quickly? Then gas is your obvious choice. Just how compact does the grill need to be and how lightweight? These point you in the direction of a small, sheet-metal kettle or 16.4-ounce propane model.

If durability is your sole criteria and not weight, look at the grill’s build and features that contribute to longevity. Perhaps a cast-iron hibachi is your best choice, or again, maybe it’s a simple, low-maintenance charcoal grill.

How We Tested

We evaluated these grills based on their neatness of manufacturing, consistency of cooking surface, ease of use and assembly, and—for charcoal grills—how easy it is to place and manipulate the charcoal and whether the vents provide sufficient airflow.

We also monitored how much attention the food needed while cooking and used a professional-grade meat thermometer to ensure food safety. But perhaps the best test for these grills: We ate what we cooked.

We also included a few grills that we didn’t test based on our experience with the brands, user reviews and ratings, and how closely they align with our criteria.

For its portable charcoal grill, Masterbuilt employed a simple version of technology it developed for its larger digital charcoal grill, the 560. With the use of a fan and a separate charcoal firebox, you can get this grill hot enough to cook in about the same time it takes to heat up a portable propane grill.

We loaded the firebox with charcoal from The Good Charcoal Company, which is a consistent medium size and perfect for the small, 1.5-pound-capacity firebox. We lit the charcoal with a torch for about 60 seconds, turned the fan to medium, closed the firebox, and in 15 minutes we were grilling burgers. The fan is electric, but that doesn’t mean you have to be tied to an outlet—you can also use four AA batteries. When we tested the battery power with the fan set on medium speed, we were able to grill for about five hours.

The grill features a porcelain-coated, cast-iron cooking grate that helps provide even heat—and which we found easy to clean. We could roll the grill around easily with the collapsible cart, and the dedicated firebox and locking grill lid meant we didn’t spread ashes wherever we went with it. The Masterbuilt portable charcoal grill makes grilling with charcoal easy, fast, and clean.

This is a phenomenal small grill, a kettle-shaped classic. A bottom vent and an aluminum top damper allowed us to dial in the airflow. Despite the Smokey Joe’s small volume, there was enough room to manipulate the coal for precise cooking—we mounded charcoal on one side for indirect heating and rotated the lid so that the top damper drew smoke past the food.

The grill’s setup and cooldown are simple, precise, and fast. Years of experience with it have convinced us of one thing: It’s a classic that would be almost impossible to improve upon.

Packed up, Cuisinart’s Venture resembles a picnic basket, making it about as portable as a table-top grill can get. And it took us less than a minute to set up its three pieces, including a wood top, a grill body with handle, and a base. The top and base combine to form an attractive prep surface that clips alongside the grill.

The single 9,000-BTU burner is fueled by a 16-ounce propane canister that conveniently stores in the base. Being a single-burner grill, the Venture made it a little tricky to manage heat when cooking thicker meats like bone-in chicken, as it’s hard to get away from the heat for longer, indirect cooking.

We set the burner on low for the 100-percent beef burgers we grilled, flipped them once, and then turned up the heat to imprint sear lines from the cast-iron grate. Generally, we found it relatively easy to grill thinner foods and, even better, convenient to turn on and off as needed over the course of an afternoon.

One Popular Mechanics editor used it at her neighborhood block party to grill hot dogs and sausages. It was the hit of the day.

This somewhat simple, unassuming grill turned out to be the sleeper in our test. We were impressed by how easy it was to cook with either direct or indirect heat. The charcoal tray is adjustable, hanging from a ladder rack that can quickly raise or lower the coals as needed.

The burgers came out with fantastic coloring and that inimitable cooked-over-charcoal taste. To cook chicken more slowly, we shuffled the coals to one side, put it in away from them, and closed the lid. The damper on top allows for fine management of the heat, and a large, easy-to-read thermometer made monitoring the temperature simple.

As far as portability, this table-top grill doesn’t break down to take up less space—what you see is what you get, and it might be difficult to transport in smaller cars. We were surprised to find that the Rambler is nearly 50 pounds. That might seem a tad heavy, but it has cast iron grill grates and is fabricated from thick-gauge steel, instead of cheap stamped sheet metal. It’s built to last, though we wouldn’t suggest hiking into the woods with it.

The Weber Q1200 is compact and light, the most convenient portable grill we tested. It gets the job done almost entirely through conduction—its single burner provides heat to a porcelain-coated cast-iron cooking grid that functions much like a 189-square-inch pan. Narrow slots in the grid provide a path for drippings. With the lid down, you get reliable cooking as hot air circulates over the grid.

The bread test confirmed that the Weber has good middle-of-the-pack heat distribution. But because you can’t control that heat as well, you’ll need to either carefully monitor your food or save this one for burgers and dogs: It will dry out or burn chicken and more substantial cuts of meat. For added convenience, Weber makes a collapsible rolling stand—sold separately–which will be nice to have when you don’t have a picnic table on which to set the grill.

For tailgating, camping, or a barbecue in the park, the RoadTrip 285 is easy to haul and set up. It runs on 16-ounce propane canisters—bring spares if you’re cooking for a crew or making multiple meals.

The two-piece grates are made of cast iron and coated with porcelain, covering three burners that yield 20,000 BTUs. The burners all sit under the solid center sections of the grates, which our bread test revealed to be the hottest area on the grill. You will need to carefully manage indirect heat when cooking thicker things like chicken on the bone—we kept it over the open grates around the edges of the grill.

The 25-by-12-inch cooking surface will hold a lot of burgers, dogs, or whatever your preference. And, if you want to mix things up, the grill grates swap out for griddle or stove grates (available separately).

This folding GoBQ is a novel, innovative portable grill unlike any other. It packs up in a tube 8-inches in diameter and 14 inches in length, and carries easily by the handle on top or with the included shoulder strap.

Made of silicone-coated fiberglass fabric with a collapsible metal frame, it can withstand temperatures up to 2,200 degrees. We enjoyed the ease of setup, and once we were familiar with the grill, we could open it up in seconds. A flexible metal basket holds the charcoal, and we tested both with it full and with about 12 briquettes for a quick meal.

Once open, the outside carrying case becomes a hood to cover the grill and contain heat. In our testing, we grilled burgers, hot dogs, and bone-in chicken on the GoBQ, all of which culminated with the expected, delicious results.

While the standard fare was quite easy, the chicken cooked over indirect heat required a little more manipulation of the charcoal, which wanted to settle to the middle of the basket. Nevertheless, once we sorted out how to strategically set the charcoal, we could reliably create an indirect heat zone.

Post-grilling, cleaning and packing up was a breeze. After we dumped the charcoal and ash, the fabric cooled enough to touch within about 30 seconds—placing the cooking grate inside the cover with tongs, we then folded the grill, latched the cover, and packed it all away. The GoBQ grill is a great option for traveling, tailgating, or even for folks with small apartments, given its ease of packing, stowing, and carrying.

The Lumin is as reliable as Weber’s charcoal and gas models and offers much of the same capabilities in a streamlined design. It reaches over 600 degrees Fahrenheit and all you need is a standard outlet to do so.

Like other grills from Weber, it comes with a porcelain-coated cast-iron grate for even heat distribution and retention. The double-walled hood keeps the cooking temperature inside consistent no matter what ambient temperature you’re cooking in. In testing, we found the Lumin was user-friendly and versatile enough to cook everything from steaks to seafood to vegetables. It comes with stainless-steel steaming and smoking accessories which was a nice bonus and set-up and takedown were quick and easy. Consider getting the collapsible stand if you want to free up some table space.

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