Portable Charcoal Grills

This smaller version of our favorite Weber Original Kettle Premium Charcoal Grill shares many of its attributes. The ample cooking surface fit six to eight burgers at a time or a 1½-pound flank steak. The domed cover allowed us to grill-roast a butterflied chicken perfectly. Adjustable vents on the cover and on opposite sides of the grill’s body gave us plenty of control over the fire.

A larger version of our favorite, this spacious grill cooks food nicely and is easy to use. Four inches wider than the Smokey Joe, it boasts enough room for at least six beef patties (and has room for probably two more), as well as a large, 2.5-pound flank steak. The domed cover helped us grill-roast chicken perfectly. We liked its raised lip on the edge, so we didn’t have to chase the burgers to remove them. Assembly was easy, as the instructions were clear and straightforward. We liked the addition of the ash catcher, located under the belly of the grill, as it caught most of the ashes produced by burning one chimney worth of charcoal, making cleanup easier than for the models without it. It’s lightweight and fits in the trunk of an SUV-style car but its large capacity also makes it a bit bulkier to store and carry around.

This grill is easy to assemble, compact, cooks food well, and has extra features that are useful. It comes with two wheels that make it especially easy to transport for short distances, but its legs can also be detached for the long haul or for storage. It also has a handy removable ash catcher, which makes cleanup a breeze. Our one minor complaint is that the rim around the grates is only slightly raised, which made flipping burgers precarious, as the food sometimes threatened to slide off the side of the grill.

Compact and lightweight for easy transport, this colorful little grill is similar in design to our winner. While the cooking surface easily accommodated a whole butterflied chicken, the lid’s dome was too shallow for it. But for high-heat grilling, such as steaks and burgers, this grill performed as well as the winner.

This grill easily fit six burgers but was a little too narrow to accommodate a butterflied chicken. We couldn’t grill-roast, either, because the grill has no cover. We did, however, like the draft door to regulate heat, and a flip-down door made it easy to access coals. Made entirely of cast iron, this grill seared beautifully. If only it didn’t weigh 32 pounds. Portable, yes—if you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This grill is a chimney starter and a grill in one: Fill it with coals and use it as a chimney when folded; unfold it to reveal two adjustable cast-iron grates, albeit very small ones. When you’re done, fold it up and place the hot grill in its heat-resistant snuff-out pouch—very clever. Unfortunately, this grill held the fewest briquettes and could not fit a whole chicken, nor does it have a cover. Only for small batches of food.

This grill stands 13 1/2 inches tall but collapses to just 1 inch thick. It has plenty of cooking surface and a high coal capacity, and it easily fit eight burgers. But it doesn’t have a cover, making it ill suited for anything other than high-heat grilling, nor does it have a lip, so we found ourselves chasing burgers off the edge of the grill. This model dented and warped during testing.

This grill has the largest cooking surface of all the grills we tested, but no lip or lid. It folds down to just 2½ inches wide, which is nice for portability, but all the hinges required to collapse it proved cumbersome. More than once, the sides buckled while we were cooking, making the grilling surface unsteady (to say the least). What’s more, the grill’s sharp edges tore the carrying case it came with. The final demerit: It has no lid.