Traeger 4+

You ever try and google a recipe and have to sit there and scroll through a 10 page essay on the history of the authors grandma and the passage of her secret baked ziti recipe just to find out you don’t have an emulsifier (what even is that) and you can’t do it. So it’s on to the next essay just to try and find an ingredients list.
Well those days are behind you now. Just a picture of the food and a name saying “hey, does this look bomb to you? Here’s how you make it.” The app is extremely intuitive and user friendly. Hide what you don’t want to see, open what you do. Save recipes that you want to come back to later. I save my recipes and go to the store with nothing but the Traeger app. Just open up the recipes I want to make as I shop and look at the ingredients. Easy. I went from cooking almost nothing to doing ALL the cooking in my household. Every night before bed my wife prays and thanks Jesus for inventing the Traeger because now she doesn’t have to cook anymore. 10/10 would recommend.

The smoker works great but keep an eye on it like you would an offset. Twice I have had it run out of pellets 2 hours before a cook ends because the app just stops alerting you. You can control the temp and settings but it stops sending notifications altogether.

Traeger has also deemed it unnecessary to allow us to see our past cook data to compare to others so plan on again keeping it old school with written notes. They used to kindly send you “convenient” monthly review that included you data but as per my last conversation with their customer service, they no longer even do that. It’s no loss because to get the review as well as any emails for customer service/account issues (which there are a LOT on my end), you have to give them the okay to send marketing emails. I was receiving two a day before opting out which messed my entire account up.

Over all, worst $1800 I’ve ever spent, garbage app, and even worse Customer Service. Even though the grills work as far as maintaining temp and getting good smoke, everything else being as unreliable as it is make me regret giving them money. Best advice, sell this crap and get a Yoder. Slightly more but WAY more reliable. If the market was flooded with used Traegers and they started losing money on new purchases, they would be forced to listen to customers and make changes. Not something they like doing.

Only thing good I can say about this app is the recipe resources. But the number one thing this app was made for, the ability to remotely control the grill over WiFi, they have designed it to not work unless you allow access to your location and your entire network. Both things of which are entirely unnecessary to the functioning of WiFire. I have a dog feeder that works over WiFi just the same and it doesn’t as for that information and works just fine. Customer support claims it’s so they can tell you where all the places are to buy Traeger products. Which if you bought one of their grills pretty sure you know where they are so to use that as an excuse to deny access to the ability to use WiFire is a poor company decision. And being that they also made a poor choice to manufacture their products in communist China, that decision to tie features to whither you toggle location services or network access on/off is very sketchy. If they make a better choice for the customers and change this requirement I will give a better rating and change my opinion of the grill when I talk with people about it. But until then if you deny people the main thing this app is for and one of the bigger selling points of the grill, this app is worthless and doesn’t even deserve 1⭐️.