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.
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. My touch screen's death wouldn't be a problem if the grill's smartphone app was functional, but alas, that shipped broken.
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 are 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.
> Why was this guy keeping notes about this product from early on? Is he just another salty consumer with unrealistic expectations and an internet to yell into?.
> ... you should ask
Perhaps, but let's dive into the ASMOKE Essential's problems, and you tell me if I'm just salty consumer with unrealistically high expectations.
### 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 temperate 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.
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. 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.
4. When nothing is near or pressing the screen, “phantom” presses can seomtimes 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 is no "login" flow, only "create account". This is just weird.
2. Cannot 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 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.
### Support problems
1. Initially, my grill was shipped separately from the accessories (I ordered a table and carrying case). ASMOKE wasn't aware of this, so it seemed as though my grill was missing when the accessories arrived first. I emailed support and called, and they weren't aware that the grill was shipped separately. All they would say is that my "item" had been delivered. Which item? The grill arrived a few days later.
2. Between my first email about my failed touch screen problem to my third call, ASMOKE didn't reach out to me once about my broken grill. I always had to reach out to them proactively, even when they said I'd hear back from them soon.
3. ASMOKE's support phone line went unavailable for _weeks_. I don't know the exact durations, but their support number changed when it came back online. Presumably, this is when support was outsourced to BESENDER, a third party support provider.
4. We're now ;two months since the problem was reported and my 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 my complaints in this post. The issue is clearly a leadership issue, because ASMOKE is run by bad people.
My favorite part about this call is how their solution to the problem 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** (This is the first call after their support number was offline several weeks and came back online)
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.
### 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 [seems 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. And so, their campaign is rife with unhappy backers who were promised this grill in August 2024 and still haven't received one. I wonder if those backers know how flawed the grill is? I say to those backers here -- you probably don't want this grill. If you can get your money back, do it. It's a bad grill, made by whom I presume to be bad people.
> 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 John 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 {{<youtubeJ6qirWlG6As>}}
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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 be much of a change.
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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.
