---
title: The ASMOKE Essential 'smart' grill is neither smart nor essential
date: "2025-05-13T00:00:00Z"
cover: /img/asmoke-grill.png
toc: false
comments:
  host: indieweb.social
  username: adriano
  id: 114502560318069104
tags:
  - consumer-warning
---

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    "description": "ASMOKE Essential Portable Wood Pellet Grill and Smart Smoker with Built - in Screen",
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  "reviewBody": "The ASMOKE Essential grill is billed as a 'Portable Wood Pellet Grill and Smart Smoker'. So let me put this plainly up front -- this grill is very unsmart. Not only is it very unsmart, but in two short weeks of ownership, mine became very unusable. But that's not even the bad part. Things break and manufacturing is hard. The bad part is what I discovered afterward.",
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# The grill

I recently purchased an ASMOKE Essential 'Smart' pellet grill. Before purchasing it, I did what any average consumer does and watched several YouTube review videos. As it turns out, those were all [astroturfed](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Astroturf), paid content from ASMOKE.

My experience convinced me to write this post as counter-programming to ASMOKE's prolific astroturfing. This post is what I wish I had found before purchasing the ASMOKE Essential very dumb, very bad, non-essential grill. My hope is that at least one person searching the internet for information on ASMOKE grills ends up here.

{{<image src="/img/asmoke-grill.png" alt="the grill">}}

{{<toc title="Contents">}}

## My ASMOKE experience

The ASMOKE Essential grill is billed as a "Portable Wood Pellet Grill and Smart Smoker". So let me put this plainly up front -- this grill is very unsmart. Not only is it very unsmart, but in two short weeks of ownership, mine became very unusable. But that's not even the bad part. Things break and manufacturing is hard. The bad part is what I discovered afterward.

I purchased this grill **February 10th 2025**, it arrived **Feb 21st**, and by **March 7th** the screen's touch capability unceremoniously died, rendering the grill unusable. The touch screen's death shouldn't have been problem; remember, the grill is "smart"?. Unfortunately the app, or the firmware, or both shipped profoundly broken, and remote control is not an option, as of firmware version `0.5.8`.

Yet ASMOKE continue marketing the Essential's remote smartphone control capabilities, so you'll be forgiven for thinking that a broken screen should not render the entire grill useless. Let me remind you -- this grill is very unsmart, its firmware is very broken, and its smartphone app (iOS), is very ungood at speaking to ASMOKE's broken firmware.

Today is **May 13th 2025** and ASMOKE has made precisely zero progress toward replacing my grill or any of its faulty components. I say zero progress, despite the fact that one day ago ASMOKE finally asked me for an address where they can send "replacement parts". Why? Because it's been two months since support assured me that my problem was being "escalated" and "expedited". If this is how they handle requests expeditiously, I hesitate to think how non-expedited requests get handled. I'll believe ASMOKE when and only when I have a functional grill smoking a fatty brisket at a stable temperature.

While I watch ASMOKE drag its miserable feet, let's take a dive into my contemporaneous notes, call logs, and emails -- shall we?

## Everything is wrong with ASMOKE the company and the ASMOKE Essential grill

The fact that I made contemporaneous notes should tickle your spidey senses. But here is why: I noticed that ASMOKE had been deleting comments/cries for help from their Instagram account. It appears that they either delete comments, or delete entire posts and then replace them with the same image and a bunch of fake "likes". Either way, it's not the sort of thing companies do when everything is above board. So I started taking notes. 

### Hardware problems

1. The grill lid regularly hits the pellet hopper both when lifted and when coming down, the hopper can prevent the lid from closing until it's pushed outward, away from the grill, exacerbating (2.) below.
2. The hopper creates a visible gap between the lid and the bottom of the grill, which causes the grill to lose heat and contribute to its myriad temperature regulation problems.
3. The right-front leg fell off, despite being firmly screwed in during assembly. Maybe it could use loctite, but I'm guessing this is a manufacturing flaw based on...well everything else about this grill.
4. The day the screen stopped working, I could see that the screen was beginning to visibly separate from the control board.

### Firmware and iOS App

Let's start with the grill firmware, OS `v0.5.8`

1. When the grill is working at its absolute best, it spends the majority of its time ~50F above the set temperature.
2. When the grill is working at its worst, it's doing an emergency overheat shutdown (two times by 5th use), or flaming out because the control board hasn't requested the auger for more pellets in the burn pit.
3. The grill is unable to connect to most 2.4 GHz WiFi networks. It only connects to an iPhone hotspot, and that hotspot needs to be in "compatibility" mode. Prior to the OS update to `0.5.8`, the grill was able to connect to one additional non-ios-hotspot 2.4 Ghz network. That one hasn't worked since, nor have any others.
4. When nothing is near or pressing the screen, “phantom” presses can sometimes be observed as the UI responds to them. E.g. it goes into "recipes" mode on its own, and then back home with no intervention.
5. Probe set temperatures are labeled in French for some reason.
6. Probe set temps display as a different number than what is entered. E.g. Setting probe temp to 160F is displayed as 158F. (I did the math, they have a rounding error in their `F -> C` conversion during set temp entry because temps are stored in `C`)

Now the iOS App

1. There's no "login" workflow, only "create account". And no logout. So maybe no login makes sense in a weird way? You're logged in forever?
2. The app can't connect to the same grill twice. Once you've connected to a grill, you have to remove the grill from the app and re-add it to connect.
3. Once connected, it will not stay connected, even while well within range. This is exacerbated by (2.)
4. When connected, the vast majority of functionality in the app just doesn't work. I once got it to set the temperature from the app, but that's it. And never again.

### Support problems

1. My grill was shipped separately from the accessories (I ordered a table and carrying case). ASMOKE wasn't aware of this, so when I called when only the accessories had arrived and all they could tell me was that my "item" had been "delivered", it was very frustrating. They were clearly unaware that the order had been sent in two shipment. The grill arrived a few days later. 
2. Between my first email about the failed touch screen problem (`March 7th`) and my third call to support (`April 21st`) ASMOKE hadn't proactively reached out to me once via phone or email. I always had to reach out to them proactively, even when they said I'd hear back from them soon. (Listen to my support calls below for evidence of this)
3. ASMOKE's support phone line went unavailable for _weeks_. I don't know the exact duration, but when phone support came back online, the support number had changed. Presumably, this is when support was outsourced to BESENDER, a third party support provider.
4. It's now over two months since my screen problem was reported and the grill is just as useless today as it was on the day issues began. Enough said.

For your listening pleasure: these are the audio recordings of my support calls with ASMOKE, so you know I haven't been a complete ass with the support team. I don't blame front-line support people for any of this. The issue is clearly a leadership issue, because ASMOKE is run by bad people with bad intentions.

**Call 1: March 7th** (Starts at `00:29`)
{{<audio src="/files/asmoke-call1.m4a" caption="call 1" >}}

**Call 2: April 1st** (First few seconds were clipped as I told the specialist I was recording)
{{<audio src="/files/asmoke-call2.m4a" caption="call 2" >}}

My favorite part about this call is how their solution is to nonchalantly mention that I need to install a new "control board". No mention of the process, no mention of the required tools, no mention of where on the device the control board is. Just that I'll need to install control board and that I'll get some sort of "tutorial".

**Call 3: April 21st** (This is the first call after their support number was offline several weeks and came back online)
{{<audio src="/files/asmoke-call3.m4a" caption="call 3" >}}

If you listen to these recordings, you'll hear me mention that I'm planning a credit card chargeback imminently. However, I became morbidly curious about how trashy ASMOKE would be, and here we are. ASMOKE is very trashy, and I haven't charged anything back.

### Social proof of badness

#### On Instagram

If you monitor ASMOKE's [instagram account](https://www.instagram.com/asmokegrills/) for any amount of time, you'll notice that people desperate for some semblance of human-level support occasionally comment on ASMOKE's posts. But it appears that ASMOKE deletes old posts to get rid of those comments, and then replaces them with the same images, in the same order, with a bunch of fake likes, so it appears as though nothing changed. But you will notice that pictures you've seen before have updated post dates.

While that's bad, it's not _that_ bad. I understand a company wanting to police its image to some degree.

#### On Kickstarter

It's on Kickstarter, where ASMOKE began, that the saga becomes downright comical. I'm not a Kickstarter expert, but it [appears as though](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/asmokegrill/asmoke-essential-smart-pellet-grill-with-unlimited-flavor/comments) ASMOKE is not able to delete salty comments from backers. And so, their campaign is rife with unhappy backers who were promised this grill in August 2024 and still haven't received one. Pages upon pages of salty backers. I wonder if those backers know how flawed the grill is? I say to those backers here -- you don't want this grill. If you get it, only more misery awaits. If you can get your money back, do it. The ASMOKE Essential is a bad grill. This is the cryptocurrency of grills made by the Sam Bankman-Fried of grill masters.

> Side note: it's weird that I purchased my grill in Feb. 2025 and received it two weeks later when there are Kickstarter backers who have been waiting for over half a year now. Again, let me remind you, this is a bad company, and they're willing to do bad things.

What ASMOKE has begun doing in their Kickstarter comments section is pinning comments from "happy" backers who received their grills. This is almost certainly more astroturfing. Because there are so many pinned message, you have to scroll to find real salty comments [like this one](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/asmokegrill/asmoke-essential-smart-pellet-grill-with-unlimited-flavor/comments?comment=Q29tbWVudC00NDk3OTIwMQ%3D%3D):

> This thing is terrible - tried this twice since i got it .. first time the thing would just run always over 500 degrees plus and turn itself off .. i let it sit for a few weeks and now tried it again a second time and getting a 103 error w/the ignitor? I put a troubleshoot ticket in and will try to reach out to customer service this week but i don't have a lot of free time and i thought this would be a simple to use grill but it's been the complete opposite .. can i request a refund and return it to you?
> - John

Sorry, John. ASMOKE doesn't like you. It's run by bad people who don't care that your grill doesn't work.

#### On YouTube

Proof of ASMOKE's badness has finally spilled over onto Youtube, with Tom Horsman providing the only real review. Allegedly, ASMOKE offered him $100 to remove the video, which he rejected. Unfortunately I didn't see this video before I purchased my ASMOKE Essential grill, but I'm happy to embed it here for your viewing pleasure {{< youtube J6qirWlG6As >}}

This is the alleged request from ASMOKE requesting Tom Horsman to take down his video.

{{<image src="/img/asmoke-100-takedown-request.png" alt="asmoke $100 takedown request">}}

---

There you have it. The workmanship is bad. The hardware is bad. The software is bad. The company is run by bad people.

The ASMOKE Essential grill is very, very bad, and I sincerely hope ASMOKE the company is out of business in May, 2026.

## What's next?

Let's assume that ASMOKE actually sends replacement parts, and they actually fix the touch screen. The grill will still be running ASMOKE's terribly flawed firmware, the hardware will continue its mediocre existence, and the iOS app will probably not, but maybe finally connect to the grill after an update to the app or the firmware or both?

I'm still left with the knowledge that ASMOKE could hardly give less of a shit about its customers. And the next time this hunk-o-junk breaks, I have no reason to believe the resolution will be any faster. I want ASMOKE to fail, even if that renders me smokerless. I already am smokerless, so that won't change anything for me.

---

Have you been burned by ASMOKE and want to add to this saga? I'd be happy to add details of your story here. Email me at `asmoke-is-a-bad-company-run-by-bad-people@adriano.fyi` (Yes, I will respond).

Cheers, and happy dreaming of smoked meats this summer. 


## Updates

### The new control board _did_ arrive! (05/16/2025)


Hey, I'll be the first one to admit when I'm wrong. On May 16th, the new control board arrived. But consistent with the rest of this story, it arrived without any of the directions that were promised. Luckily, the installation is a simple matter of popping the old board/screen off, unplugging some wires, and plugging those same wires into the new board. Voila!

The grill is functional again, and the firmware update to version `0.6.1` fixed the WiFi issues, and also allowed the iOS app to connect and monitor the grill temperature. The app is still very, very buggy, and all the marketing images of it are fake. The one thing that does work, which is quite useful, is remotely monitoring grill and probe temps. Every other feature doesn't work. 

### Update 2: They asked me to remove my Amazon review (05/19/2025)

It should come as no surprise to you that I left a [slightly salty](https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKS99Z18WZH1J/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0F23XHYD4) Amazon review. ASMOKE offered a 20lb bag of consolation pellets in exchange for removing it. To their credit, they sent the pellets before I responded. But the fact that they asked confirms my hunch that the only information you find about this grill on the internet is astroturfed/curated influencer garbage. ASMOKE works with a firm named Banda Labs that bills itself as "YOUR TRUSTED GLOBAL INFLUENCER MARKETING BUSINESS PARTNER". So just know that any positive content you see is likely coming from this arrangement, and possibly others. 

### Update 3: The grill died again 8 days later! (05/24/2025)

Well this wasn't a surprise. In the middle of cooking a 14lb brisket, the auger that feeds pellets into the burn pit stopped functioning. The motor visibly turns, but it appears to have unattached from the worm gear that actually feeds the pellets into the pit.

I have a support request pending. Hold on to your butts. 
