I just tested this AI-powered smoker — and its surprisingly good for under $500

AI has touched every aspect of our lives, and it seems even grilling has gotten the AI bug. Brisk It’s Zelos AI Powered WiFi Grill integrates AI features into its companion app to simplify the process of figuring out how to make the best meals outdoors.

Simply ask Brisk It’s Vera AI chatbot how to cook what food you’ve got, and it can spit out recipe options in seconds. It will even do all the work for you; just send the recipe to the grill and let it cook everything to perfection.

It’s a neat system, and it’s one of the better implementations of AI into home goods that I’ve tested. The grill itself is quite small, though, and the build quality is just okay. As an entry-level grill and smoker for a small gathering, it does a wonderful job of pumping out excellent food with very little effort. If you want smarts on a budget, it could be the best grill for you.

Brisk It Zelos review: Price and availability

The Zelos retails for $449 and can be bought directly at Brisk It's website, as well as other online retailers, where you can frequently find it on sale.

The brand also offers the Origin 580, $849, and the Origin 940, $1,099.

• Buy the Brisk It Zelos 450 Smart Grill direct at BriskItGrills.com

Brisk It Zelos review: Design

The Zelos is a fairly small grill, which isn’t to say it can’t handle a lot of food. But it is smaller than most Wi-Fi-enabled grills out there, with a 21.5 x 15.5 inch cooking grate surface. That’s still a lot of chicken, burgers, steaks, or whatever else you’re looking to get onto the table for dinner.

On the front of the pellet hopper you’ll find a full-color LCD controller. If you aren’t using the app (which you really should do), you can control everything right here. Set your temperature, set timers, and monitor meat probes right from this screen.

Opposite the hopper, you’ll find a prep surface with hooks for your various cooking implements. Beneath that is the grease catch, a pull-out tray that collects your food’s grease and stores it long enough for you to dispose of it when you’re done cooking. Inside the grill, a metal surface sits at an angle beneath the cooking grates to funnel grease downward toward the trap.

The hopper features a cleanout should you need to empty it of unused pellets. And there’s an ash cleanout as well to dispose of ash byproduct.

It takes about an hour to build the Zelos. The materials that comprise the grill are of decent quality, though they aren’t as heavy-duty as some of the competition, like the Spider Grills Huntsman, which feels like a tank. The Zelos is much lighter at just 75 pounds, though.

The Zelos includes plastic wheels to help you move the unit around easily. These wheels feel fairly cheap and they wobble a bit. These are my biggest concern with the overall build. Everything else feels pretty solid.

Overall, the Zelos is a simple unit with a cooking surface large enough for small families, but perhaps a bit too small if you’re entertaining large amounts of guests frequently.

Brisk It Zelos review: App and AI Features

Much of the benefits of the Zelos come through its pairing to the Brisk It app. It’s here that you can control the grill remotely, in much the same fashion as other Wi-Fi-enabled grills. But the app has AI capabilities that set it apart.

The main cooking screen features all the basics: timers, probe alerts, temperature graphs, and even recipes you can look up. And pairing is quick and easy, so you can get up and running in no time.

The Vera 2.0 AI features really help the Brisk It app shine, though. This chatbot is integrated slickly into the app and you can activate it any time. Just punch in your question and get cooking right away.

For example, you can ask Vera 2.0, “How do I smoke chicken thighs?” The chatbot will present you with tips for cooking chicken thighs properly, including the internal target temperatures, and the overall process for smoking your meats.

But then, it goes a step further: you can send the recipe automatically to the grill, put your meat on, and walk away. The app will tailor the cooking process according to the loaded recipe.

You can even ask Vera 2.0 other cooking-related questions along the way. For example, “What is butcher paper used for?” Vera knows, and she’ll not only tell you what it’s for, but also how to use it properly.

The best part is the Generative AI with dynamic reactive cooking automation, which basically adjusts the grill to ensure the best results. It’s a slick system.

Of course, AI in general has drawbacks. For starters, AI culls information from all over the internet, and not all of that information is reliable. You may still want to double-check other sources before placing complete trust in any AI chatbot.

And if you’re environmentally conscious, it’s important to know that AI queries use vastly more energy — and consequently, natural resources like water — than a standard web search.

Brisk It Zelos review: Grilling performance

I have cooked a lot of meals on the Zelos so far, in large part due to its smaller size. I have ten grills sitting in my back yard right now (the joys of being a gear tester) ranging in size and capacity that handles one to three people, up to parties of twenty or more hungry guests. For nightly meals, the Zelos works well for my family of three.

It’s important to note that before I used the grill for the first time, I seasoned it by firing it up at high temperature and running it for an hour. This burns off any chemical residue or other materials from shipping that might still be in the grill. This is necessary for any new grill you purchase.

My first time using the Zelos, I grilled an Angus strip steak. I wanted to test the Zelos’s high-temp grilling capability, so I simply fired it up to 500 degrees and cooked the steak as I would on any type of grill. I did not use AI this time.

It took a long time to cook the steak, and in the end, it was still undercooked. I used my infrared thermometer to check the grilling temperature, and while the display read 500 degrees, the actual temperature varied between 400 degrees and 485.

I tried again with chicken a few nights later, the temperature was much more consistent. I set it for 400 degrees, where it largely remained, give or take a few degrees. The chicken came out very good.

That said, if you’re after a grill that will sear your steaks at high heat like you’d get on an open-flame, you won’t get that here. You’ll need to adjust your cooking style a bit to get close to a high-temp sear. I would recommend reverse searing if you’ll be using the Zelos frequently for traditional high-temp grilling.

Brisk It Zelos review: Smoking performance

Here’s where the Zelos really does some magic. I used the app’s Vera 2.0 chatbot to get a recipe for smoking chicken thighs. The AI feature came up with a recipe in seconds, and I loaded it into the smoker with the tap of a button. Then, I largely ignored the grill for the next two hours, aside from occasionally sopping the chicken with barbecue sauce.

The chicken came out absolutely perfect. Well, almost…at the end of the recipe, the internal temperature of the chicken hadn’t quite reached the target temperature, but I pulled it off anyway. It was slightly undercooked, but I could have simply left it on for more time to reach the target temperature to avoid this problem. As it was, the chicken was cooked nearly to perfection, so I wasn’t about to split hairs.

I have since used the AI feature to come up with recipes and cooking instructions for chicken, pork, steak, and even vegetables. It’s easy to vary your recipes and find something new to treat yourself to. And just about every time, the food has come out cooked nearly to perfection, particularly when smoking meats.

Grilling at high temps is still a bit tricky to get good results, but I’ve adjusted my cooking style (mostly by reverse searing more often) to get excellent results here.

How does it compare?

The Zelos is the first AI grill I’ve tested, and there isn’t much competition out there just yet. The most notable competitor is SearGrills’s Perfecta. But it’s such a departure from the form and function of the Zelos that it’s unfair to compare the two. It also costs $3,500.

So the Zelos stands apart from other Wi-Fi-enabled grills due to its implementation of Vera 2.0, which is good and improving with every update. There are plenty of other Wi-Fi enabled pellet grills out there, most with more cooking space. But they also come at a higher price.

A good example is Traeger’s Woodridge Pro. This also features Wi-Fi capabilities and an excellent app to control the grill. And the Traeger’s build quality is much better than the Zelos, not to mention the additional cooking space the Traeger offers. But the Woodridge Pro also costs $1,000, and the least expensive Woodridge grill still costs $800.

Brisk It Zelos review: Verdict

I love the Zelos for quick weeknight meals. It’s easy to set it and forget it, and to think very little about the meal you’re cooking while still reaping excellent results. The Vera 2.0 AI chatbot is an excellent feature that makes it easy to cook, get educated, and find new ways to prepare foods to keep your palate sharp.

It’s best suited for someone who wants a very small smoker with AI capabilities to make it truly set it and forget it. But it’s not ideal for anyone who needs a lot of grilling space, or an outdoor chef who wants high-heat grilling and searing capabilities.

• Buy the Brisk It Zelos 450 Smart Grill for $399 direct at BriskItGrills.com