Pit Boss Grills Reviews

by Dream Home Designs, LLC

This is the first negative review I’ve ever written. If I’m unhappy with a place or product, I normally keep my opinion to myself so that I don’t harm someone’s business.

PitBossGrills is so bad that I can’t keep it to myself. I own an Austin XL, a Laredo 1000 Platinum, and a 1600 Pro Series. I love the Pit Boss brand and the food that comes out of them. Unfortunately, PitBossGrills is not as good as the smoker. Every page in PitBossGrills is preceded by an error warning. Sometimes the tab loads after the warning, and sometimes it doesn’t. I regularly have to remove my smokers and then re add them for them to show up, and then minutes later an error occurs and I can’t control them through PitBossGrills again. It’s Thanksgiving and I’m running all three smokers. I have to keep coming outside to ensure they are running the right temps as opposed to being able to work on other dishes.

The Austin XL doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I can’t complain about that one. The others were desirable to me because of the Bluetooth. The 1600 cost a grand and the Laredo was $500. The apps should work when you charge that much. It has been several years that I have been trying and failing to use the apps. You’ve had enough time to work out the bugs. Please fix this!

by WI645

I have been very happy with my PitBoss grill…..but I had to swap out PID unit which would be different from what I had it set for originally……but I swapped to the new unit and tried it out with using just the controller and it worked great……but then I tried PitBossGrills to set it up……there are no instructions anywhere…..PitBossGrills would not let me update the existing grill to connect……then I tried to add a grill…….it wouldn’t connect……I deleted the new grill since it didn’t work…..the existing grill won’t let me edit but will connect but when you go in to connect the grill picture is flashing and to connect you have to time the connect input button with the silly flashing…..once you get in it works I think……afraid to use this junk app so it doesn’t mess up my controller……I will say that it worked fine with the original controller and setup……if I could delete the grill I have and start fresh I’m sure it would work great but I cannot delet the current grill!!!!! Frustrating!

by 303Matt

I’m a pretty forgiving guy. This is the single worst piece of technology I’ve ever owned in my entire life. I’m a software engineer, I work in tech, and I worked in IT before that, and then before that I was an A/V installer. PitBossGrills in the smart grill is terrible. There’s no way around it I never write reviews. I wanted to give it a try and give to Pitboss the benefit of the doubt. After numerous attempts, a painful set a process and multiple calls to tech support. All I was told was just to keep re-trying to get PitBossGrills to connect to Wi-Fi. There is no answer no rhyme, no reason, just keep trying. Do you want me to tell you buying something having a do that is terrible. I’m almost tempted to sue for false advertising, because this product does not work and will not work. Pit boss, if you have a solution, let me know. Otherwise, I’m returning it and never touching one again ever in my life.

by SmokeShowLarry

Went to smoke a Pork shoulder last night and downloaded/set up the new pit boss app. Wondering if they were making a new app to run from the atrocity of the SmokeIT app. It seems that they’ve made another terrible app. I set my pitboss to 230degrees. I last checked it at 1:30am, wake up at 7 am and at some point it decided to go back down to smoke mode in the night. Guess I’ll continue to have to get up every hour on the hour. Not to reload wood chips, but to make sure the garbage technology keeps performing correctly.

Update: App ended up dropping the smoker temp down to ‘smoke’ 4 different times throughout the cook process. Completely defeats the purpose of having a monitoring app. If I could send my grill back, I would. Very angry. Also, the Bluetooth cuts out your music every time you go to PitBossGrills and app doesn’t have many of the previous features. Doesn’t seem like an improvement at all.

by UNLIMTD

I was excited to see an app update today from the SmokeIT to PitBoss App. Grill did a firmware update, I like the new app. Other than it forced me to make a new password (this is important later). Now Alexa tells me the grill is at 180 when it is smoking at 230, I do not believe it was connected at all. It had a very bad setup of telling me the last temp when it was powered off. So I think this is still reading the last value it read before PitBossGrills and firmware were updated. I have disabled the skill and removed the grill and probes from the Alexa app. Then Enabled PitBossGrills ..... and the only password that will work to enable it is the original password.

This tells me that their old app used a different authentication method than what the new app is using. That is fine, but not if the Alexa skill is still pointing to the old user repository. 5 min of testing should have proven this and so I am left to think this was known and they pushed it out early knowing this was broken.

This was a MAIN reason I bought this grill, I wanted an app and the Alexa integration. I have 20 days to return the grill and will if this is not working by then. Not meant as a threat, just to point out it is important to me.

Happy to update this when the Alexa integration is back.

by Being Fair

No Wi-Fi connectivity to monitor when away, bluetooth range poor, no longer can set temp in increment of 5 degrees, no display on what functions, auger, fan, igniter are working. And that’s just the beginning, spend time reading other reviews to see what else is missing. Worst part is you need to update the firmware for the smoker so it will work with the new app, and once you do you can’t go back to the old app that worked just fine, you will be stuck with the new app. I hope Pitboss resolves these missing features sooner than later. I wish I had read the reviews before blindly updating my smoker… Update: OK now they brought back the icons telling you what’s going on with the grill. But now you cannot set a temperature between 250 and 300 degrees, lol, You have to do it from the grill. OK Pit Boss keep working you’ll get there someday. Would like to upgrade the stars, but icons were the least of my concerns, You need to give us more flexibility with the temperature. Once you get those critical fixes done, I can upgrade it back to four or five stars. Good luck!

by Comfyinthesky

The previous app, Smoke It, was fairly utilitarian but it was reliable and easy to use. The Pit Boss app that replaced it is neither of those. Connection via wifi and/or Bluetooth is extremely bad and inconsistent. I loaded PitBossGrills today and was connected via wifi and Bluetooth. Everything seemed to be working ok. I do some things around the house and check PitBossGrills again, it shows that I’m connected and it shows the temperature… but it’s about 10 degrees off. I try to reload PitBossGrills and it sits there and never loads up.

The old Smoke It app wasn’t the best looking, but it always was reliable. This thing doesn’t even seem like it connects half the time, it says my grill is off when it’s on, etc etc. There’s really no point to PitBossGrills if you can’t keep track of your grill’s temp or the temp of the meat. I’ll probably try it one more time but will call it a bust if I can’t get it to work. The worst part is that I can’t even go back to the old app. I hope the developers fix this, but I might have to go a different route.

by RachelBagel

Changed to the Pitboss app because I had to. PitBossGrills is terrible. I can stand right next to my smoker and cannot get PitBossGrills to connect to the smoker via Bluetooth, however, the Home Screen indicates that I am connected. I have been able a few times to get it connected, but as soon as I move more than 10 feet away it drops the connection. This is unsatisfactory. What’s even worse is I can’t get PitBossGrills to connect to wifi. It just won’t connect. When trying to set up wifi connection, I get a message saying it can’t connect to Bluetooth, not “can’t connect to wifi” but bluetooth. Now, I’m not a genius with this, but PitBossGrills is supposed to be able to go between the two. Can’t do that if it can’t connect or stay connected to either. Basically, it’s a useless app, it provides no value other than me getting exercise going outside to check on the temp. I’d rather just have stayed with the SMOKEIT app.

by Lyricanvas

At first, PitBossGrills was fine. Not really a great app but it got the job done. I could see my temperature when I was away from home and change it if I needed. I fired it up (pun intended) to smoke a shoulder and when I did it said it needed to update my grill. After the update had finished it seemed everything was fine. I was able to connect, both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi lights were on. I thought it was working again until I left the house, or even got outside of Bluetooth distance. Now the Wi-Fi light is ON and says it’s connected but PitBossGrills just gives me an error when I try to open it away from being next to the grill. Tye app says I’m not logged in when I leave the house but it won’t allow me to log in. The cooking graph does not work. And even the help tutorial doesn’t even go over all of the functions of PitBossGrills which they’re only about 6 functions of PitBossGrills and it goes over 4. It skips the cooking graph and the timer as if they don’t exist. PitBossGrills is useless as I need to be near the grill to even see the temp and if that the case I can just look at the grill screen itself. I bought the grill because of PitBossGrills and the ability to control and observe when I was away. Now I can only use the grill when I’m home. It’s hard to cook something at 220° for 12 hours now.

by @tlamarca

Edit: app said I needed to update my grill. So I did. Ever since then, the grill doesn’t hold its temperature well, the graph on PitBossGrills stopped working, and I’m on the verge of switching to a different smoker altogether. The cook I’m trying right now had the smoker up to temp, when I checked again, temp had dropped from 230 to 150 and nothing seems to be working any more.

Edit: I knocked another star off… 12.5 hrs into the cook, the graph lost all its data too. The feature would be great if it worked. I really like the addition of the cook graph in the latest update and was excited to see I could take notes on the cook. I’m at hour 9 of my brisket smoke and all of the notes I took have vanished. This was going to be the first time I took notes on a cook in order to get more consistent, but now they are gone along with my short term memory where those notes were in my head… Fix that bug and it’s 5 stars for sure.

by Dadof6girls

Went to open my smokeit app and was notified to install this, so I did. Had to create a new account, no big deal. Went to add my smoker, it would connect Bluetooth but not wifi (yes using 2.4g). When I tried to connect to the smoker it would not. I Then loaded PitBossGrills on my iPhone and it continually told me my account did not exist. Went back to my original device I installed PitBossGrills on, logged out, tried logging back in and it told me it couldn’t find my account. Tried to reset my password and it told me too many attempts on the first try. Again, useless app now. Reverting to my inkbird so I can at least monitor temps.

I purchased my pit boss last year because of the ability to remotely monitor and control my device. Now it’s no better than most others out there.

by Ih8work1

i bought my grill a month ago. when i read the reviews on PitBossGrills , i thought: these people must be doing something wrong. Boy was i ever wrong. First off, i have had 5g internet for 3 years. Why are they using 2.4 ghz? to show you how bad this is, the only way i can connect to bluetooth is to be within 6 feet of the grill. After setting up a 2.4 wifi, it loses the bluetooth trying to connect to it. i am in my kitchen, 10 feet from my modem and about 7 feet from the grill. this is a deal breaker. i have 2 more days to return the grill. Since nobody in customer support will ever call you back, i suggest everyone return them and maybe they will get the message. This is useless if you must go outside continually to check the temp. Worst app that i have seen.

by Tgh111775

Every since PitBossGrills came out it’s not uncommon for me get alerts from someone else’s PitBoss! Prior to June 1st, I was living in Georgia and now I’m living in North Carolina with a different internet provider , I’m still having this problem! Not only that I’m getting alerts from someone else’s smoker, I’m able to adjust their temps and even power their smoker off! I’m scared to use my smoker for anything overnight or unattended for anytime because, if I’m able to manipulate someone else’s smoker there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen to mine. I have uninstalled PitBossGrills and reinstalled nothing has changed. I have powered their smoker off a couple of times and sent small messages through the name my cook to alert them of this happening. Meat cost too much take any chances like this!

by Odunucmed

Still Zero Stars

Edit: PitBossGrills does not improve what needs to be done when there are some major UI changes. What’s the point of the preset temps based on meat type if they’re not based on smoking? I put a brisket on and select beef and the target temp is 140F???. You know what happens when your internal temp hits that? The grill shuts off or at least shut off in the past, when I didn’t realize that edits to this default setting sometimes don’t store and you wonder why your grill cut off in the middle of a cook.

Original Review: My grill was unattended and covered in the backyard while I was working in my front yard. I get a notification that the smoker was at the desired temp of 325. I ran to the backyard to find that the smoker was actually off and not up to temp. I don’t trust PitBossGrills at the moment to report accurate info. I went ahead and unplugged it to be certain that it can’t turn on autonomously.

by G Lazz

i've had a pit boss dual grill for several years now; PitBossGrills has been terrible since day one, with the latest update things have not improved, as a matter of fact they may have gotten worse. I'm on my 3rd controller; every time I fire up I'm not connected and have reboot PitBossGrills several times, today i got nothin' - some issues: I have Fahrenheit selected it displays in centigrade, one window will displayed in one temperature setting the other "control your grill" page will show Fahrenheit, the probe temperature doesn't update, if I unplugged the probe it sometimes triggers the correct temperature to register on PitBossGrills . The wifi connection never stays connected, I have a robust connection, sometimes I only have bluetooth, then suddenly the wifi pops back up; i've called customer service many time and they say that they get a lot of similar calls - if you are a tech person and expect this grill to operate flawlessly look elsewhere!

by Flight Info

PitBossGrills does not work. It won’t connect to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. You can’t control anything from PitBossGrills . It disconnects you. It won’t even connect sometimes. I also had to get a new control console and it also asked me to update my firmware. I have no idea if it got updated correctly or if my new control console will even work. I have called Pit Boss and they acknowledge there is a major problem with PitBossGrills . If they can’t resolve it, I’m sure Traeger is going to get more customers. Again, do not download PitBossGrills. Downloaded the newest version 2.0.1. IT STILL DOES NOT CONNECT. I am about to take a shotgun to this a buy a Trager with WiFi. I tried two different phones and reset everything but no connection.

******update******. Still won’t connect. OFF TO HOME DEPOT TO BUY A TRAGER WITH WIFI THAT WORKS. PIT BOSS, this is all your fault for putting something out that failed. Hope there is a class action suit against you!

by L-Con

PitBossGrills asks to update my GRILLS (plural). I go through the process, and it says “updated successfully”. Then, it asks again, and again, and again…. No amount of “successful updating” actually updates my grills. The WiFi used to work fine, until about 3 updates ago. Now, it’s Bluetooth only. The grills show they are connected to wifi, my router shows them in the client list, and reconfiguring the connection on the grills does not resolve this. So, a grill with wifi capabilities is now relegated back 20yrs into only having Bluetooth capabilities. Not what I paid for…. PitBossGrills shows temps in Celsius on the overview screen, but Fahrenheit on the actual grill control screen. The cook analytics show only 0° after this update. No temps, no times. All of these features used to work. I’m not sure what the software developers are doing, but Pit Boss needs to find more qualified developers, because the ones they are using have no clue…. It seems like each update that Pit Boss puts out is worse than the one before it, and every update removes at least one feature that was present before the update. I have 9 Pit Boss grills/smokers, but won’t be buying another from them. I’m going to research and find a manufacturer that actually has their stuff together, and doesn’t downgrade you with every update.

by Jrob121212

Absolutely terrible app. PitBossGrills is as useful as wet cardboard. For all the money I paid to get a PitBoss grill and it only half works. The grill itself works fine always has and originally the “SmokeIT” app worked great as well, I could connect via Bluetooth or WiFi to check on the grill, set timers and adjust the temps. For whatever reason PitBoss got stupid and got rid of that app in favor of this piece of garbage that does absolutely NOTHING! Go through the set up process only to get continuous errors when trying to select my grill. I have unplugged the grill, I have deleted and reinstalled PitBossGrills etc. The one time I actually got it to do something it spent an hour doing a firmware update, after that I had a screen that said Bluetooth was connected to my phone but whenever I tried to control the grill it would error out saying grill was disconnected. I have set up the WiFi to the grill again and that NEVER connects anymore. Half the reason I wanted a PitBoss grill was because of the ability to control and monitor it remotely. This issue isn’t a isolated issue. Look at other reviews and the countless forums online with people all having the same or similar issues with no fix or help from PitBoss. I should have just spent the extra money and gotten a Traeger. What a waste.

by NC Pilot James

My wife purchased the Pit Boss KC Combo grill for my birthday 3 years ago. ❤️ It’s the first real grill I’ve owned, or so I thought. Just received the warranty replacement control board for the smoker portion after waiting about 2 months since filing a claim. Okay, I know this is not a review of the grill; it’s for PitBossGrills . As the title indicates, PitBossGrills is trash just as much as the grill is. Search for a recipe in PitBossGrills and tap the ‘go’ button on the iOS keyboard - BAM! App closes (crashes). Back to the grill… New controller card arrives and its wire harness appears to have about 2-4 AWG higher than the failed one! Cutting corners even more! Hopefully I can smoke something nice at least one more time before recycling the materials and investing in a high quality grill. Dansons, the manufacturer of this grill and presumably connected to PitBossGrills should just give it up already, but there are always unsuspecting individuals who will buy a product at least once. I hope this review prevents at least one of those individuals from making a mistake!

by Peidei

The most recent update in August ‘24 fixes a few of the bugs mentioned below, however now PitBossGrills shuts down every time you search for a recipe. That is not the concerning part however. PitBossGrills will stay connected for most of a cook then randomly disconnect or randomly shuts down. At that point you lose your cooking analytics, which i like to use and keep the info for the next cook.
Two versions ago it worked great. Why do you try to fix what’s not broken?

Before the latest update it worked almost flawlessly. After the update i have to be standing next to the grill and restart PitBossGrills several times to be able to connect. Even when close, It gives me multiple errors trying to connect. I did find that disabling my 5ghz on my wireless router helped, that was never an issue before! Why do you feel the need to update something that works just fine? Please roll back to the previous version ASAP!!!

by Blntfngr

The smoker itself works great. The non smoker options, eh, not so much. It constantly loses its connection to my WiFi network. When this happens I literally have to use Bluetooth to reconnect to
it to the network. So not doing that away from home. Then when doing so the keyboard overlays the entry line making it a real pain in the brain to type in the password. Now that that is out of the way; PitBossGrills is junk. I would give a half star if the option existed. Any time that my phone changes service providers. Such as when I leave my home WiFi and switch to a cell network, PitBossGrills will reset and completely lose all of the acquired analytics. Woke up this morning to 8.5 hours of analytics, took my daughter to school, opened PitBossGrills on the go, and boom all that data was now property of the ether. Might try and install it on my iPad since I leave it at home. Perhaps that will help curve the junky nature that has been designed into the system. Try again.

by JhiZzle 391

I’ll start by saying that the interface is nice and flashy and when it does work, it works great but that is less often then one might hope. When pulling up PitBossGrills it takes forever for the grill data to load, if it loads at all. Most times I have to close PitBossGrills multiple times and re open to be able to anything that’s going on with my grill. One of the most frustrating things is the cooking analytics, there are DOZENS of extra entries that are duplicates of an actual cook or entries are one second long. I’m also unable to change “cook name”.

I do like the recipes in PitBossGrills but honestly if there was a provided hyperlinks to send you to the internet that could possibly increase stability and size of PitBossGrills . Also, an addition to the cooking analytics. While looking at the temp chart. Having the ability to slide your finger across the time of the cook and it give you times and temps for that moment of time would be neat.

by Tynin

Sorry to be a jerk, but PitBossGrills really stinks compared to the original Smokey app. I detest comments berating the developers, but next time you should pay someone to write your app. All of your slide panels ask me to enter some data, but then completely blocks the field. I can’t see what I am typing. You force me to update the grill, but I can’t see half of the progress because half is below the bottom of the screen. The main grill screen is like absolute basic fields showing data crammed together. Not everyone has the iPhone Mega Max. I realize it’s much cheaper to throw some basic fields on a screen and let your customers test for you, but this is ridiculous. Silly me trying to grill a shoulder without pre-flight testing to make sure PitBossGrills was still available and working. Sigh. I’m sure I would be ok with it, if I had never used the previous app. Epic fail for this one.

by Spam Spam Spam Spam…

PitBossGrills is a huge, frustrating disappointment. The marketing devs are much more interested in having pretty full motion ads and connecting you to their online store than functionality and connecting to the expensive thing you already paid for. The page to connect via wifi to the device won’t scroll down, presuming you have one of the newest giant screen iOS devices, so you cant select your SSID and enter the password. Half the time, 8 feet away, in the open, bluetooth fails to connect, requiring several retries. Its bloated with useless pitches. Im sure it will start interrupting my cooking and monitoring with important Google adserving in the next spin, and pushing Disney+, too

by Grant Bumgarner

Had to download new app and it won’t update my grills software. It says it needs an update to work but always errors out around 10-20%. Sure hope they can get this fixed.

by S80S_SS

This new app doesn’t improve my grilling as promised it actually removes a bunch of functionality that the old “SMOKE IT” app had. I see no way to get the Graph-lytics or toggle on or off the smoke mode, I also no longer have control of the auger or anything else, at least I can still see and set the temperature… I think the worst part is it forced a grill update and the old app won’t connect now… I was really hoping for better not worse.

by KDPG12

Please if you are going to change PitBossGrills it’s supposed to be for a better one. This is a downgrade comparing with the Smoke It. You lack the graph of temperature and the probes and the ability of temp control on 10F increments and also it’s slow!!! I’m sad I did the “upgrade”

by Swidep427

Loose controls compared to smoke it app. Does not show S setting. My grill says S with P0 setting but PitBossGrills shows temp of 160 and says heating to 180. Very confusing. I can not go back to using the old app because the new app updated my grill. Super Disappointed!! Please help or show me what I’m missing.

by Thomas51

Can no longer get the grill to connect to Wi-Fi so I have to be right next to the grill or the Bluetooth drops out. Makes it pointless to have the ap if I have to stand next to the grill. I can just use the display. Makes multitasking a pain.

by Eric Ohio

Application is terrible , cannot direct connect to the smoker without internet . Often when trying to use PitBossGrills get “too many attempt “ errors. Unreliable and makes the interaction with your smart smoker terrible

by Zackgrillz

The new app doesn’t send notifications like the smoke it app, all my settings are turned on but PitBossGrills won’t send notifications. I want to know when the grill hits temp and when the probes hit temp.

by Mstumpf9

My old app has me download this new and improved one.

It’s super buggy and won’t let me log in. Before I even tried anything it told me error: too many attempts!

Not happy. Trying to grill and can’t monitor my cook. Lame!

by RockinBass63

I tried the first SmokeIt app with little success. Often times PitBossGrills would not even find my grill. So I was excited to see the new Pit Boss app. I downloaded PitBossGrills and found my grill. After turning on the grill I was able to connect the Bluetooth and wifi. I was excited! And that’s where it all went wrong. As soon as you get more than ten feet away from the grill the Bluetooth disconnects. Which sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? But even if you are standing right next to the grille, and connected, I couldn’t do a thing. Couldn’t even see what the temperature of the grill was. So, back to using the grill as it is, and that’s disappointing.

by Wolford33

This new app that Pit Boss directed us to download looks nice but is very very basic with what it shows the user. The old SmokeIT app would show you what part of the smoker was active at any given moment and alert you as to when your grill and meat would reach your set temperature, PitBossGrills doesn’t seem to have any of that. PitBossGrills only shows you what temp your heating your grill to, what temp it is currently at as well as your probe set temp and current temp, nothing further. Wi-Fi at first would say it was connected but then wouldn't show connection in PitBossGrills and I finally figured out that you had to select save settings after the “connection successful” message for it to actually go into effect. Hopefully they’ll see these reviews and make PitBossGrills we were forced into more like the SmokeIT app that had much more functionality.

by I'm A Weiner

This grill is awesome, however PitBossGrills is so flawed, it should be embarrassed.

Everything about this grill/smoker is fantastic, but in all seriousness, PitBossGrills is ridiculous. From getting two alerts for the same thing, alerts while on PitBossGrills saying the smoker has turned off, when it hasn’t, to not being able to set temps in incriminates of 5, is absolutely amateurish. If I couldn’t set my probes to my desired temp, and it actually read to temp, I would have returned this thing immediately. However, I know that software issues is way easier to fix than hardware, which I know isn’t the problem, but with that being said, it appears the last 4 or so updates had to do with these kinda of fixes, but it obviously didn’t take.

PitBoss! Fix your app. Don’t turn customers away from your product because of reviews for app issues. Your smoker is great, just fix this software issue!

by Hdbwbaiii$!27819

PitBossGrills is so-so, it’s sluggish and buggy; for the most part I can see what I need to and control what I need to.

I spent $800 on my grill with PitBossGrills being an added benefit. I did not however realize that my $800 purchase also included advertisements front and center when I open PitBossGrills . I paid for this functionality, it does not give you license to advertise to me, track me, or sell my information (if doing so). The notion of the grill being cloud connected is weird too. Many companies, when a change of leadership occurs, seem to think they can completely change the agreement and the way things operate in our own homes, with something WE spent good money on. Whats to say this won’t happen here. I want local access and control on my own network and no ads. Everything else is fluff and instills no confidence.

by Grillmaster_34

So I have a PB1100PSC2. When I select the smoke setting in PitBossGrills it’ll heat up just fine and maintain temperature. However, when I set it to 225 in PitBossGrills , it gets up to 230 and again maintains. However 230 is not what I selected I selected 225 so when I select 225 again for some reason it automatically starts to drop the temperature.
Interestingly enough, there is no 225 setting option on the actual unit itself it increases an increments of 10° (220, 230, etc). However, in PitBossGrills , it’ll allow you to select 200, 225, then 250.

Could this be an issue with the control board not knowing what to do therefore, it just automatically starts to lower its temperature?

by Siitty

To sell me the grill with one app and switch it to another is classic Bait and switch! They look the same but smokeIT had more features. The one I need the most is temperature notifications. Pit boss currently has no notifications when temperatures are reached. Isn’t this the whole reason and purpose behind PitBossGrills . So you can go about your day preparing and doing other tasks and then be alerted when settings are met! This isn’t the only issue but is the biggest. PitBossGrills needs smoke control as well! Why hurry up to push a new less superior app when it clearly is not ready.- Disappointed customer!

by Bomperbeanie

If all you want to do is to monitor the grills temperature or even the probe temp, it works. The big issue that's really frustrating is that if you set PitBossGrills to send you notifications throughout the cook, the badge icon shows you have a notification, but not what it is. Then, at the conclusion of the cook, you can never get the badge icon to go away, even after you're done and powered down. The only way to remove the badge is to turn Notifications off. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling PitBossGrills twice....no help. I updated the grills firmware - no help. I went to their website to try and get some help - a waste of time. The good thing is that the grill works well but PitBossGrills is horrible and worthless.

by Dang!4

PitBossGrills continues to glitch out clearing my settings on the probes. When the temp does reach my setting there is no alarm or notification.

by Player1nickname

App works. Repackaged Smoke IT app.

However, seeing the historical temp graphs for the pit and each probe is a pretty important feature, and not that hard to implement. Why launch a repackaged app and not include any improvements?

by Cja74 Deer

Like the new app, but the update that came with it not some much. I used to be able to set the grill temp by 5 degree intervals. Now it’s set to 10 degree intervals with the only exception being 225 is preset. The push notification that popped up explained that they’ve been proving the grilling experience with this frame ware update . One would think that they would give more control not less. Being able to set the temp in 1 degree increments would’ve been an improvement. This is a step back ! And not to forget that there are no graphs anymore. Hopefully, like many things these days. PitBossGrills and frame ware update is only a first or second step in a process of updating and now they are just waiting for the feedback before making any more changes.

by Kulwick

It started out bad, but every update it’s gotten worse. Not sure how that is even possible. Since the last update I can no longer connect via bluetooth or wifi making PitBossGrills completely useless. (I’m wishing I gone with the big named competitor.) The bluetooth connection cycles in and out, wifi says it connects but the open the control you grill and its gone. Very disappointed considering I bought this only 4 months ago. I did the uninstall/ reinstall thing it was no help. I even deleted my account and setup a new one, no help at all.

UPDATE: From 1 star to 3 stars.
Much better than before. Still has a couple issues. Setting the food temp goal does not stay set. It frequently asks if I am done cooking.

by Dustin1002

When I first got PitBossGrills, it would not connect to my grill. It looks like there were server issues or app performance issues overall. It looks to be getting more stable as the alp matures.

Enhancement ideas: change the probe set temperature from a free text field to a slider, just like the grill set temperature.

Spritz/wrap Timer- just like adding a destination on your route within maps, can we add functionality to add a spritz time? Meaning, we can set the overall cook for 10 hours, then set spritz timers at whatever time we want, like every 2 hours. Maybe we could be able to label the timer whatever we want and set it just to remind us to spritz or wrap.

by Hddulfixhddyxuxufudjcfhf

My Pit Boss doesn’t have the Bluetooth/wifi connection feature so I can’t speak on the apps ability and reliability for that function, but I use PitBossGrills all the time for shopping and recipes. Shopping it seems like everything is fine. Filters stuff out and categorized nicely. The recipe section is where it gets a little glitchy. For some reason it gets more and more glitchy the longer you use PitBossGrills . Closing it out completely kinda resets it. Filters start to not work, many many many many repeat recipes, some even next to each other. Some recipes are incomplete or have typos in them. Searching specific recipes that you know are there don’t end up showing in the results. But like the title says, it works good enough to keep using it. I really do like the feature of favoriting recipes so you can go right to them.

by Danperrini152

I just got the notice trying to open the smoke it app. I set this one up and it works ok and everything works so far. But when I am away I am not sure if my grill actually shut off. Also I really liked the graph that showed the temperature of the grill as well as the probes and how the temp climbed throughout the cook.

by Tilehate

Easier to adjust the the temperature settings
Timer still doesn’t have the ability to turn off the grill. Recipe tab doesn’t have the ability to sort by meat type (beef, chicken, pork) and the filter seems to be nonfunctional.

by Raker50

Needs work !!

by Lexus321

PitBossGrills is cleaner looking than the prior Smoke It app, but is lacking some of the important features. Please add the ability to turn the grill light and smoke setting on/off via PitBossGrills . Please add the icons to see when the auger, igniter, and fan are running. And most importantly, please add the graphs back so that we can see progress of our cooks in a graphical manner.

by Blwack

When I first got PitBossGrills I must have tried around 20 times to download the grill update. Finally called the customer service line and a very nice lady told me they were actively working on fix with PitBossGrills . Checked back on PitBossGrills Store daily and followed her guidance to uninstall and reinstall everything. I had success the very minute I did this. Now I can utilize PitBossGrills control. Bear in mind that the entire time PitBossGrills wasn’t working the grill ran just fine. In fact of the pellet grills I’ve previously owned (2-Traeger, Louisiana, Green Mt) this 1150 Pro Series operates better than all it’s predecessors. Definitely cooks hotter when I want it to. First time I’ve gotten great searing from any pellet grill on my ribeye steaks. And the hot smoke for my brisket was perfect. Only leaving the 4 stars due to the initial issues with PitBossGrills . Grill itself so far I’d give 5 stars to after the 1 week I’ve had it.

by Charliedayman

My grill connects to both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. No problems there. I am lucky in the fact that my router is only 15’ away from the grill, so that might explain my relative success compared to others. I can control my grill from PitBossGrills if needed, other than starting the grill or priming the auger. (Both probably due to safety reasons, however the prime function would be nice to do from my phone, not gonna or lie)
My main complaint is the heat graph available during your cooks is kinda funky, and temperature lines don’t seam to line up very well. I wish there was an ability to zoom in and out of time periods, and more accurate heat axis values. Other than that can’t really complain. For a box store brand and price point, not a bad smoker or app

by BigD5823

I purchased the legacy wifi/Bluetooth controller for my 1100PS1 just so I could get wireless capabilities. I was nervous when I went to install the controller because of all the poor reviews regarding connectivity.. however I had no problems myself. Once the controller connected to my phone and I connected it to Wi-Fi, I received a prompt to update the controller firmware. I followed the directions and it was complete in about 10 minutes. After that, I did a quick cook using PitBossGrills and it worked as expected. Only thing I noticed was the temperature was bout 50 degrees higher then what I had the grill set to using PitBossGrills .. now this might be because the thermometer is due for a clean.. but more cooks are needed to confirm.

Side note, the recipe portion of PitBossGrills is pretty cool.

by Mr Gerb1k

Reading the reviews, I was crossing my fingers that it’d even pair with my smoker. To my surprise, no issues at all. Maybe people have weaker wifi signals than they realize? PitBossGrills doesn’t have all the features found on the control board, but has everything you need—and it does those things well.

My suggestions would be to standardize the intervals of the hash marks on the y axis of the temperature graph to something like 25 or 50 degrees—it currently auto-scales, making it hard to approximate the temp because they are such odd intervals (eg your trend line may fall between something like 117F and 183F hash marks). It would also be cool to be able to tap on the graphed line to tell you the temp and time for the data point you tapped.

by FalconFatboy22

Title says it all. Continues to drop Bluetooth connectivity even when standing by the grill and refuses to show internet connectivity. Didn’t have this problem with Smoe IT. Just deleted the pit boss app. Completely useless.
I’m changing my rating from 1 star to 4 stars. Since my last post, I’ve reinstalled PitBossGrills . I created a new account (different email address), and now PitBossGrills work’s completely as expected. Internet connection is perfect. Bluetooth is perfect. The only reason I’m giving 4 stars instead of five is that I don’t know if the new registration made the difference. If so, this should be stated clearly and boldly up front. Thanks!! Really liking PitBossGrills now.

by HorseBarnRope

App is not bad, prettier than the old SmokeIt app. I like that you can set goal temps for each individual probe and that there are recommendation shortcuts based on the type of meat you are working with. Only thing that I really would like to see added is a tool like graphlytics from SmokeIt that shows the probe and grill temps over the span of the smoking session. Helps to visualize especially during stalls.

by Pit Boss First Class

Pit Boss does it again and continues to put their customer care top priority while coming out with a new amazing app! I’ve never seen it, or have been apart of a company that consistently considers their customers when designing an app that makes it possible to control our grills straight from our finger tips! Let’s talk about convenience and incredible control straight from our phone ,being able to not just set our temperatures but also use outstanding recipes to have the best tasting meat coming off our grills straight from our backyards. I can’t begin to say how easy and efficient PitBossGrills is, but it’s also so easy to use, even if your not tech savvy! So let’s all stand up and say, Thanks to Pit Boss for making it so easy to cook some of our favorite meats from whenever we are weather we are home or not! Thanks Pit Boss! We appreciate you!

by Annie Loves To Cook

I just got my grill out for the first time after winter, and I love this new app! First of all, the graphics are so cool. I love the smoke and flames and the Pit Boss logo. I’m a huge Pit Boss fan so that made me really happy. I like how easy it is for me to set the grill temperature and the meat probe temperatures. I like that it shows me which of the grill parts are turning on, like the igniter, auger motor, or fan. I also like that it notifies me when my grill reaches its set temperature. Most of all it’s just super convenient to be able to be away from the grill and still see exactly what’s going on with it. I took the dog for a walk and could still see how my grill was doing on PitBossGrills . Well done, Pit Boss!

by RDTroub14

This does require an update to the control board which takes about 5 to 10 minutes. My Pit Boss upated with no issues. PitBossGrills does a fantastic job walking you through the process and showing you around the new interface once complete. It looks better, is mor responsive, and has more features. I'm still getting my temp notifications on the dot, which is the feature I use most and can change the temperature of the grill as needed from anywhere. Works great!

by Stigthevig

It has been a rough go of it for Pit Boss apps. I had many emails and support calls regarding the SmokeIT app, and it was almost there when Pit Boss launched their own app. I was definitely skeptical, and the first release was a bit rough.

With that said, they quickly made necessary changes and PitBossGrills is now doing everything I want it to do for me. I can easily see the temps of the grill and all the probes (it even let me add temp probes after start-up and then plotted the temps for these as soon as they were added, which the old app didn’t do).

The graph is really good and shows all the probe temps (the old one would only show two). My only request at this point is to add labels to the time axis along the bottom, in cook time hours with a minor tick mark at the 30 minute mark between labels.

by Twik11

After all the scathing criticism of PitBossGrills, i planned to not use it with my second PitBoss Smoker Grill as my first didn’t even offer connectivity. However, when setting up my new 850 Pro Series, I figured what the heck, I’ll at least give it a shot.
Low and behold, it’s working perfectly. I simply followed the instructions and connected it on the first try. It worked flawlessly through the initial burn off, then seasoning and first grilling.
Then today, plugged in, connected and used it to smoke some perfect Ribs!
Only two days, but I’m seeing no issues at all with PitBossGrills . (The other pitboss recipe app… eh,).
Regardless, these smokers are awesome with or without PitBossGrills , the fact that PitBossGrills is working perfectly for me is just icing on the cake!

by Dabbqman

App works great for me right away and is much faster. I can’t wait to see what updates they come out with.

by BGrillin

Responses are way faster than previous version, also allows me to control multiple grills without signing in and out.

by Refund 1234

Finally PitBossGrills we’ve all been asking for! It works great!

by Adequate Griller

Worked first time unlike my smoke iT app. So far so good!!!!

by Allyeah

Well after years of using their Smoke It app this new app seems to be much better and smoother. Started to have a lot of bugs with their Smoke It app in the past year and I hope this new apps stays as efficient as it is now. It seems to be smoother and after updating my grill it connects to Wi-Fi much easier and doesn’t disconnect randomly anymore.