SMOKE IT Reviews

Edit*
After leaving a few messages I did get a call back, from a few different people, wanting to get things fixed up. Both people I spoke to were tremendous help! Don’t know exactly what they did but my phone is now connected to the smoker! Haven’t had a chance to actually use SMOKEIT yet besides setting up, 5* for now

Got my Pit Boss for Christmas, got it built, downloaded SMOKEIT , despite the poor reviews, because it was on the sticker. Once I downloaded SMOKEIT I followed the instructions, set up an account, plugged in and turned on the smoker so it could be found on Bluetooth, clicked on the grill to connect… I was told it was already set up on a separate account, what?! Thinking I possibly did something wrong I went through the steps again making sure I got everything right… same thing. This time I clicked a button that asked if I wanted to switch ownership over to my account, said it sent a confirmation email to some email I didn’t know, frustrated that that wouldn’t work, I gave up that day. Next day I try everything all over again and this time I get the grill is set up under a social media account. Finally decided to call app support… called a total of 6-7 times and each time it only rang 3 times before saying to leave a message, left 2… no call back.

They fixed it by completely replacing it. So now all the features work. The temperature updates in real-time. Setting the probes to a temperature actually sticks and an alert pops up when reached. They had to completely replace the old app but this one works now. Good job. It looks good too.

Original: So SMOKEIT looks nice but it’s effectively useless. It simply doesn’t update information realtime and seems inconsistent about when it does. I launch SMOKEIT , see it’s connected (Bluetooth or Wifi) and it shows me the temperature from a previous grilling session. It may eventually update to the current temperature or it may not. It’s never been real-time. There is a way to set a target temperature for each probe but it doesn’t stay put. When you go back to SMOKEIT the target you set is gone. I’m also not sure if it would even alert you when the temperature is hit. I love grill but SMOKEIT is isn’t fully cooked. 6-month update: SMOKEIT just does not show you the correct anything. The actual temperature may update after 5 minutes or never. Basically SMOKEIT is effectively useless. It’s faster to just go look at the grill. The only thing that work consistently is the light. For some reason SMOKEIT can turn the light on and off 100% of the time with almost no lag. That’s why I give it 1 star.

Was disappointed at first when SMOKEIT would not allow me to configure a Wi-Fi connection. Called the number in the error message and was immediately greeted by a real person that was willing and prepared to help. After a few checks he knew it was out of his hands and asked me to wait to hear from the developer. That contact came shortly after and today my grill is connected to Wi-Fi. Now I’ll be able to check Christmas dinner without leaving the living room! It’s a 3 Star app because it lacks features. I give 4 for EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE. The service even makes it worth 5 stars but then I couldn’t say: Like other reviewers, some history graphing with data download would be great. Something charting actual and set point temps so that I can see what temps the meat actually went through. If you’ve got the thermocouple for it, ambient temp might be good too. It would also be nice to be able to set up a cook recipe from SMOKEIT like the book says I can on the controller. I haven’t tried that but it sounds cumbersome. Seems SMOKEIT could make it very simple and even store it for use next time.

Go to use Smoker. My app seems to not find my devices. I reinstall my device, says my smoker already has a wifi connection; sometimes says I don’t have Bluetooth. I see latest update is 1 day ago. I can’t find a way within app to ID what version I have; Help About takes me to home web page. I un installed app, reinstalled, etc. Smoker connected to my router, could see smoker w/ LightBlue app. So all day no control of smoker while away from house; plus couldn’t even set temperature probe SP while at home; could monitor temps and change cook temp only at home w/ Bluetooth connection. Late that day while I’m away from house I decide to read reviews; now it shows update available. I do update and everything is back to working.
Apple’s auto updates are not timely; had tech support w/ totally different app before and told to get update; but until Apple would say “update available” I couldn’t. Maybe if I’d deleted from cloud might have worked around..

SMOKEIT is useless. I decided to buy psb1150 pro series 2 because it was made out of thicker material than the trager and it was sturdy. I love the smoker itself but SMOKEIT is horrendous. I have several friends who have tragers and they have no issues. I’ve had this for over 8 months and I said before, love the smoker it regulates extremely well but I also bought this because of the wifi connectivity. I have two networks and one is the 2.4 they recommend for use with it. I have had to reset this connection so many times I have lost count but it is well worth over 20 times. Sometimes the smoker app won’t relay the change in temp when I tell it to. It just reverts back to what it was before and I have to physically walk out there to reconnect it. I have a mesh system that extends very well beyond our walls in the house. It is not a weak signal. If it wasn’t for the extended warranty I bought for this I would just get a trager. I’m writing this review as SMOKEIT once again has failed me. I have reset it, deleted over 10 times tonight alone. It only works for like 10 minutes and then again loses connectivity. Have to keep going outside to check on the internal temp of my brisket. Just get a TRAGER. I hear there app is great.

Edit: Went through support and finally got it resolved. Will agree that a version number is needed on SMOKEIT . I have automatic updates turned on but best I can see it was never downloaded? Who knows. But it I working again and I am happy!

Started off smoking a few weeks ago and the first few times were flawless. There are a lot of negative reviews or just mediocre but I genuinely thought SMOKEIT was pretty good. All the basic commands from your phone. Would be nice to be able to control the auger from the phone but I can live with not being able to. BUT, SMOKEIT stopped working today. Attempted to open and SMOKEIT shows a white screen and then closes. Attempted to open several times. Tried restarting my phone. Looked for an update. But nothing. Left with a feature on the grill, that cost extra, that doesn’t work. Good while it lasted I suppose.

Update: my initial issues with the latest update seemed to go away after SMOKEIT was restarted once or twice, my grill showed up and the notification seem to be working. In fact I get multiple notifications for temperature targets but that is way better than no notifications. I still think the delay to update the temperature is a little much but it does seem better than before.

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SMOKEIT has never been good, but they recently updated SMOKEIT and I completely lost my connection to my Pit Boss grill. As a programmer, I’m embarrassed for the team behind SMOKEIT. Amazingly slow refresh rate and doesn’t tell you when the last update was, so you have to wait minutes to make sure you are seeing anywhere near the recent temperatures. Notifications have been unreliable in my experience. Just awful. I bought a WiFi controller upgrade for my grill hoping it would make monitoring easier but SMOKEIT is horrible.

I have the PBV4PS2 professional series smoker. I bought it several months ago. It has worked as advertised and I have been pleased with the results. However, SMOKEIT has become glitchy and irregular. I am thinking that SMOKEIT has not been updated as the only change I have made is upgrading my iPhone 12 to the 15.1 firmware. Before that SMOKEIT easily accessed Bluetooth and my home Wi-Fi. Today, however, not the case. I have reset the grill, deleted and reinstalled SMOKEIT and ensured it is both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled. After it stops working on Bluetooth, it won’t connect and then may or may not alternate to Wi-Fi. The smoker is solid, so far. They just need to upgrade SMOKEIT .

I hate to be the one doing this but, I’m fed up. SMOKEIT was mediocre before, I could usually get it to work, and just monitor the smoker once in a while from the display on the front of the machine. SMOKEIT was useful only in the immediate vaccinate of the smoker, on blue tooth. From WiFi it was useless. No adjustment capability or real time feed from the machine. So, not really useable in the way it is intended. Now with the updated bug fixes I can’t even down load SMOKEIT to my phone because it’s requiring a new version of iOS. I’m totally disenchanted, because at least before I could see what it was doing while staying indoors. Now? Have to stop what I’m doing inside and go check it outside. Really pretty mad about this because it’s Thanksgiving and already have enough to do. Now I have to worry about this too. The main reason I bought this smoker and not a Traeger was the price point and SMOKEIT capabilities. Should’ve spent a little more money and got the Traeger. Only reason I gave it one star is because you can’t give it less than one.

This newer version of SMOKEIT really isn’t much better. The Bluetooth connection works when you are near the grill, but even then it is very slow. If you have to be within a few yards of the grill it’s easier and faster to just walk over to it. I had high hopes since the weather is getting colder, but I still need to get my coat on and check the temperature at the grill itself.

Wi-Fi just flat out doesn’t work. I’ve contacted support several times to get it to work, but it still has never worked. Not once. The grill shows it’s happily connected to the network and my router’s DHCP server has issued an IP address for it, but SMOKEIT has never once been able to connect via Wi-Fi.

I’ve spent hours troubleshooting on and off the phone with support, but it just doesn’t work. It’s very frustrating. I think PitBoss needs to consider a different development firm if this is app going to be a value added product, because right now there is no value at all.

I spoke with Leslie, she shared that with an IPhone all I needed to do is sign in through the apple password. Everything works great now updating rating as Pittboss took care of issues quickly.

I really liked SMOKEIT until now. I got my pitboss in January and have used each week since I got it. I always utilize SMOKEIT that was until this last week. Now when I go to SMOKEIT it looks like it’s no longer registered and if I try and register it again it tells me it’s already registered to a different account. I’ve checked with other owners who have uninstalled SMOKEIT and reinstalled it thinking that might fix it that doesn’t seem to work either. Hopefully they’ll have a fix for SMOKEIT out soon!

Based on older reviews it sounds like the previous version of SMOKEIT wasn’t great. It’s a bummer that those reviews are attached to this version of SMOKEIT because this version works great.

It is easy to connect to the grill, set the temp, timers, and meat probes, and SMOKEIT keeps you apprised of temperatures in the grill as advertised. There is a very short (<20 second) lag between when I open SMOKEIT and when it updates the temps. Overall I am really pleased with it. My one suggestion would be to allow two users to connect to the same grill from different phones and both have control of it at once? Maybe it already does that and my husband just couldn’t figure it out. Anyways. Good app and a very nice grill!

I’m not able to access grill controls. Get an error that grill is off sometimes. Other times, it says it connecting to Bluetooth but never does. Tried creating a login myself using email and password, tried using apple login option, re-downloaded SMOKEIT a few times, deleted grill and went through setup again. Nothing has worked so far.
Selecting grill health on startup says all is green and good. When I get the Bluetooth error, grill health is say that Wi-Fi and time stamp have issues.
Called the number that was posted on other reviews and left a message. Hopefully they can help me out.

I do like having recipes that I can search through. Not sure if this is an option or not since I can’t connect, but I think it would be cool to select a recipe in SMOKEIT and it setup the recipes on the control board for you.

I didn’t think SMOKEIT could get any worse, but I was wrong. After the most recent update, I can no longer log in, or log out of SMOKEIT . Sounds weird, right? When I open SMOKEIT , I have no connected grills to control. Tried to login, doesn’t remember me. Reset my password and logged in - can’t connect a grill. If I log out and try to log in again, it says my password is incorrect. However, if I go to “My Account” in settings, it gives me the option to log out, but I still can’t log it, but I can still go to my account where it still says I can log out. I’ve tried setting up a new account, resetting the existing account, but still end up in the same circle jerk scenario with no ability to connect or control my grill. And btw, in the previous version, I wasn’t actually able to control the grill - only monitor temps. Should have gone with Traeger! FWIW, I own the Pitboss Pro 1150.

I’ve been a pit boss owner for about 3 years now and I have purchased several of your grills and accessories. And yet, I still don’t get it. You guys have in my opinion the best pellet grills on the market, from construction, design, and features. I’ve had to call customer service a couple of times, and your customer service is always awesome. (Still the only pellet grill on the market with a sliding sear plate). And yet, SMOKEIT is still the most inconsistent and unstable app in SMOKEIT Store. The design of SMOKEIT is fine, the features in SMOKEIT are fine. But it constantly kicks you out; you have to constantly sign back in, and even re-add your grills at times. I just don’t get it. Just simply make the darn thing stable. It just reflects so poorly on you guys and I don’t get it, because everything else about you guys is the best.
(From one business owner to another: please fix SMOKEIT , for everyone’s sake.)

SMOKEIT is really bad. The interface looks okay, but the buttons are laid out in a bad way and its difficult to know how to adjust some of the controls. I was away from the house and accidentally touched the power button and shut the smoker off in the middle of cooking a brisket. I didn’t know until I got home because SMOKEIT was still showing the last reading it had although the device was totally off. The first issue is with the power button itself, which needs to have an “are you sure?” feature built in, rather than a single tap. The second problem is that it needs to display the current status of the cooker. Even standing 3 feet away, it takes an unreasonably long time to connect to the smoker. Buy the device for its other features. If you pick one because it has SMOKEIT, you’re going to be very disappointed.

After spending an hour or two and getting very frustrated trying to get my my phone connected to the the Brunswick I called tech-support. I got Gary and he informed me that I needed to update the software on my phone. After doing that I called back and I got Scott. After methodically explaining and going through the motions Scott who was very patient with me got it to work ending my frustration. I do very much appreciate the help that I received from Scott and he should be considered an asset to your company and I appreciate the way he handled my problem. Please thank him for me without him I’m sure I’d still be trying on my own.
Thank you
Kevin Sanger

Bought a PB850PS2 2 days ago. Got it up trying to do my first burn off. Trying to set up SMOKEIT while I’m waiting. Following along in the instruction manual, nothing matches what the book says. I make it all the way through the connections and to naming the grill, hit complete and nothing happens. Just start the whole process over again. After the 8th attempt I’m giving up. I’m so lazy i can’t walk outside and check on the stupid thing. What a waste of advertising dollars though. All SMOKEIT does is make Pit Boss look foolish. I won’t buy another one. As soon as i can get this one sold I’m going to go buy grill/smoker from a better brand. If SMOKEIT is any indication don’t ever buy one of these grills. I’m scared now that this might literally kill me or someone in my family. Trust completely broken and irreparable. I feel cheated and dirty.

SMOKEIT never works. Sometimes it connects to my 1150 but usually it doesn’t. Yesterday it didn’t even show my grill on SMOKEIT yet I was getting notifications on when the grill hit a certain temp. A big reason people buy these grills is because of the ability to adjust temps and monitor temps remotely, so far I’m extremely disappointed along with most other users I’ve seen post on the pitboss Facebook group. Put some money into your app pitboss! Get temp history, graphs, etc. but before you do that, make SMOKEIT work. Love the grill but if this isn’t fixed I will definitely switch brands. I bought a pellet smoker because of the technology and ease of use, SMOKEIT associated with the grill is a major part of that. Pitboss is failing miserably with this.

I’ve had SMOKEIT for 7 months and I was very happy with the wifi connection to my smoker. It just plain worked with no hassle or dropped connections. But the two most recent updates are cr@p! Can’t connect at all with wifi because SMOKEIT only shows 5 nearby wifi networks...and none of those are my home network. No way to scroll through more networks and even when I get lucky and they allow me to manually enter my network name and password it can’t connect. I’ve been trying for an hour and their customer support is closed.

I believe the manual from Pit Boss could do with some adjustments. There are obviously a lot of issues that people have had with getting SMOKEIT to talk to the grill. I initially left a bad review. Not two days later an app developer contacted me. Extremely nice and knowledgeable person who spent the time to make sure we could get everything working in harmony. Biggest problem ended up being that I was trying to connect via the 5GHZ channel on my router. Their systems only support the 2.4GHZ bandwidth, as that generally works better through walls (most of us use our grills outside, I hope). We ended up having to reset the router a couple times, but were able to change the router settings on the grill by deleting SMOKEIT and downloading again. After all that, it does take a minute or two for the grill to talk to SMOKEIT . Once it does, though, changes can be made instantaneously to grill temps. The real key to knowing that the grill is attached to your wi-fi is that the small “iT” icon on the top left of the grills digital panel will be glowing solid. If it is blinking, it is not connected. I hope this helps some of you, and I look forward to a lot of years of use out of this grill.

The good you can monitor the set temperature and the actual temperature from your phone. It will alternate between the two. It will show the two prob temps. You can adjust the set temp from your phone. You can shut down / power down the Pit Boss from your phone.

The bad is it could do all those things in a much better way. It would be nice to have the set temp and the actual temp shown at the same time, or at least be able to manually toggle each one on the fly instead of having to wait. It will let you set a target temp for each prop, but when it reaches the target temp it didn’t really do anything like an alert or an notification so I don’t really see the point in setting a target temp. Would be nice to be able to set a program like “smoke for x amount of hours then turn to x temp for x amount of time.

Anyway there is some potential and I hope Pit Boss pays attention!

SMOKEIT deserves a review because it’s just that bad. First of all when you change the temp on your app the grill may or may not receive the change. It does monitor well sometimes. Currently right now as I type this I have two probes plugged in and only one reads out. I have a Weber igrill2 that I may go back to for meat probe temperatures. I was hoping that the this app app would provide graphs.... it does not! I was hoping I would be able to change temperature setting of the grill from inside my house and I can....SOMETIMES.

SMOKEIT leaves a whole lot to be desired but instead of just having the Weber app for cooking I’m now in between two apps. One which works all the time (Weber) and one that works 18% of the time or less (this one)

For those using the WiFi connectivity and app as a tie breaker between this and something else, consider the fact that you will still have spotty responses or hit and miss reliability.

Just got my Pro Series 850 assembled and did the burn off tonight. While temp was coming up I messed around with SMOKEIT .

I’m an IT professional and have been for 20+ yrs. I live in a remote area in the country with my family so I have no password on my WiFi. SMOKEIT /controller requires a password but I was able to get passed that and set my PIN but I keep getting ‘Can’t connect to WiFi, password incorrect’ message. Sure...I could remote into my router, setup another SSID for the grill and set a password but there’s no need! Should just work with an open connection.

I’m able to adjust the temp with no issues and toggle between C/F but none of the timer functions work. It doesn’t ask me how long or anything. I tap Set and it does nothing.

I def think with some more development SMOKEIT could be awesome but as it stands right now, this should still be in a developer’s project list and not in full production with many poor reviews.

It doesn’t change the use of the Pit Boss for cooking. I def think it’s still a great grill/smoker, but get this working and you’ll make this techy’s day!

So it works. You can see two probes and watch it remotely from anywhere. It can be quirky - if you try to turn the knob left past S(130) it will sometimes jump to the far right H(420). I would love a recipe function but that is just wish list. More than that - when I first installed it - I could turn the knob by 10 degrees and it absolutely worked on the grill. My dad had the same experience but eventually it will give you a screen saying it is adjusting to your grill settings and then you can’t!!! What I want is for the developer to fix this! You can only adjust like you can with the physical knob. Which means they can fix it but they don’t. Come on! Fix it! I had it working for a whole day and then boom - back to the Stone Age of 25 degrees and then 50’s. Just fix it. Fix it and 5 stars.

SMOKEIT is definitely not the top of the line app and there are things I would love to see added and changed; however, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It’s a grill that I can control from my phone! It connected right away with no issues, it stayed connected, it shows accurate/up to date information it changed my grill temp when requested.
So not sure why people are having issues with connecting it to their grill, it connected right away for me.
Anyway, but the grill for the grill, not for SMOKEIT , and you won’t be disappointed.
My grill: PB Pro Series 1150 from Lowe’s.

UPDATE......after manually entering all my WiFi credentials from the network name to the password it finally connected. Still takes a while to update but push notifications work. Initially it did shut the grill off 2 times but a couple uses later I haven’t had that problem anymore.......

If and when the Bluetooth works it is extremely laggy, UI could use improvement as well. But the main issue is the WiFi won’t connect. It just keeps telling me I have the wrong password, I have restarted and unplugged the grill, deleted/reinstalled the smoke it app, restarted the WiFi, obviously ensured my password was correct... still nothing.

SMOKEIT looks like it was built by a child 5+ years ago. Bluetooth connection is very spotty and you have to reconnect every time. Still haven’t managed to get it to connect to WiFi. When it is connected, the temps regularly fail to update and even if they did, there’s no sort of graphing to see how the cook is progressing. And don’t even think about being able to shut the grill down or change the temp, that’s just not going to happen. This isn’t new territory here, there’s plenty of other grill and thermometer companies with much more useful and reliable apps. Seems pretty clear to me they’re way more focused on just pushing out new model after model without any concern for the software. The grill seems to work fine without it and I’ll be sticking to another company’s thermometer for monitoring.

I have the Pitt boss of combo and I was hoping that the “smoke it” app would be an amazing addition to the grill sadly though SMOKEIT has many flaws first when I use it to monitor my grill temp while smoking meats it doesn’t show my actual temperature of what it shows on the grill and when it does update the display on SMOKEIT it takes forever. Very unreliable on that stand point. I wish SMOKEIT could do more it has so much potential. Some other flaws I have notice is that it has issues connecting to the grill as I can click on my grill and it won’t connect to it. Hopefully SMOKEIT becomes better with time and future updates. Hopefully the developers of SMOKEIT takes the time to read all the reviews and take into account what the people that have downloaded SMOKEIT are running into.

So far SMOKEIT hasn’t worked right at all it doesn’t show you the current temp on the grill it will show what you had set it to but it comes up different when you look at what pops up on the grill. The temperature probe worked one time till 117 degrees then it has been stuck on that ever since the first use they work on the grill itself but not anything on SMOKEIT at all that’s one of the major reason I went with this model for this feature since I have a lot going and can monitor from my phone but it’s also not letting me connect to regular WiFi neither. on the grill temps are also fluctuating more that 18 degrees I have seen the +/-5 accurately yet. Please get a fix for SMOKEIT I really like the build quality but the electronic aspect and programming is lacking.

My second pit boss grill I decided to go with the laredo,not because it had an app I liked the reviews on it and how itlooked. I was having problems with SMOKEIT ,just got a new iPhone 3weeks ago and still in the learning curve to say the least putting it mildly. So I called customer service told the guy I was a dumb country boy help me out . And he did was very helpful and patient with me and this new phone,would just like to say thanks Danny Phillips from North Carolina, you sir are a champion,been cooking every night since,sorry for the profanity I used while figuring out to work this phone. And thanks pit boss grills. Yours truly Byrd Walker Powersville Ga.

I am a fairly tech savvy person but had troubles with SMOKEIT . After a few weeks I broke down and called SMOKEIT support number. There was no answer and I left a voicemail. I never thought anyone would ever call me back. 2 days later I received a phone call from one of the nicest and most helpful app assist representatives I have ever spoken with. This person was all American and genuine with helping get my smoker online! I would highly recommend contacting SMOKEIT assist number of your having problems before leaving a bad review!

First of all I love my kc combo. It’s wonderful! And I was too excited to see that it was Bluetooth and I could control it from my phone! But when I downloaded SMOKEIT , I had nothing but issues. I’ve had my grill almost two weeks and have only been able to get SMOKEIT to work once.

First of all it kept glitching before I could even set it up with my grill. Then when I did it wouldn’t word, still. I seen it needed a firmware update so I proceeded to install it. It took me forever to install it because it kept kicking me out of SMOKEIT . I’m really dissatisfied with SMOKEIT for sure! Need some major updating. I gave two stars only because I love my grill!

SMOKEIT is very basic. I don’t have connection problems like many do, I use WiFi. My grill is the pit boss 1150 which has its own issues. Yes I wish we can change the temp by increments lower than 50degrees but that’s not the apps fault I don’t think. My biggest complaint is that SMOKEIT must load/connect to the grill every time I open SMOKEIT even if it’s running in background. A bit annoying you have to wait. I do get notifications when the temp is reached and I do like the probe temp notifications when I set a desired temp. All I need. Don’t care if the GUI isn’t pretty like traeger. Just need it functional and seems to work fine.

SMOKEIT paired pretty easily with my Pit Boss pro series 4 v2 via Bluetooth and WiFi but unfortunately that’s where the success ended.

Consistently while using SMOKEIT the temp reading was different than what was on the smoker’s control panel, regardless of my proximity to the smoker. On multiple attempts to adjust the cook temp of the smoker from SMOKEIT it failed to do anything on the smoker even though according to SMOKEIT it was successful. While SMOKEIT says you can control the smoker from anywhere in the world, that proved to be false as well. Once I left the house SMOKEIT showed a completely incorrect temp for the set temp and probe, wouldn’t show auger, fan, or igniter working, and then SMOKEIT crashed and wouldn’t let me log back in until I was back on home WiFi.

These issues are on top of the already limited capability of SMOKEIT by comparison to competitors. Although I would love the ability to pull recipes, program cook settings, and have other useful features available...I’ll settle for SMOKEIT even working remotely close to how it’s supposed to.

Love my Pit Boss smoker hate he app. So much wasted potential.