Last year, I commissioned one of our freelance writers to cover the Ninja Woodfire grill. I wasn't expecting anything remarkable. In fact, I was waiting for a bad review. Ninja has been releasing some pretty niche appliances recently, and each time they get further from their original blender. When I received the press release for a cheap tabletop grill that could smoke meat, I was very skeptical.
However, when Alex filed her review, I was utterly taken aback. The grill is good. The grill is great. It costs hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars less than a Traeger or a Weber, but delivers similar results. You can make smoked tenderloin, beef jerky, smoked salmon, and even cinnamon rolls. It defies all logic. It shouldn't be good, but it is. It's one of the best grills we've ever tested.
Best of all, I've been tracking prices for this grill since it dropped, and the Amazon Prime Day deals mean it's the lowest price we've ever seen. You can finally buy an exceptional grill for under $200.
What's the deal?
What's so good about this grill?
This grill tackles the two big problems with smokers - size and price. A full-size smoker takes up a lot of outdoor real estate, so if you have a small yard they can dominate the space. Most smokers are also expensive. You need to factor in between $800-$1200 for a good smoker. The Woodfire, on the other hand, takes up about as much space as a laptop, and it usually costs $370.
It sounds too good to be true, but the Woodfire can grill, bake, dehydrate, and smoke. While I'm not entirely convinced by the claim that it offers 7-in-1 functionality (the roast, bake, air crisp, and broil functions all do the same thing under different names) it can do much more than most grills.
Our tester Alex found that it can grill a delicious bacon-wrapped filet mignon, and bake cheese-stuffed chicken breasts. She smoked a perfect pork tenderloin - which a neighbor taste-tested and said was one of the best they'd ever had. She could make homemade beef jerky in just two hours, and she even baked cinnamon rolls. The possibilities with this are pretty much endless, and it costs hundreds of dollars less than an equivalent smoker.
Cleaning the grill is easy too, though you have to wash the crisper basket by hand like an air fryer. It's so small that it's easy to store in a shed or garage when you aren't using it to keep it out of the way.
What are the drawbacks of this grill?
The biggest drawback of this grill is that it's pretty small. We found that you can fit a lot of hot dogs into this grill, but it's pretty crowded. It's perfect for feeding a family of four, but you might struggle to cater to a cookout. That also means you can't cook larger cuts of meat. We had excellent results smoking tenderloin but you may struggle to fit a big cut of pork shoulder. However, there's an XL version of the Ninja Woodife on sale at Amazon. It can just about grill 10 burgers at once, which is pretty great for a tabletop grill, though it's more expensive than the original.
Another issue is that, because it's electric, you need an outdoor outlet to cook with this grill. If you don't have one of these, you might find yourself trailing power extension cables from your kitchen into your garden, which is at best a little irritating and at worst a safety issue.
There's another issue with the electricity, which is that this grill uses 1760 watts, so it can only be plugged into a 15-amp circuit breaker. It tripped our tester's circuit breaker.
We also found that this grill is a little too fast for its own good. The digital timer is really helpful, as it tells you when to flip your food, but our tester found that she needed to flip the food before the timer, as it cooks much faster than the presets and included recipes suggest.
While it tastes fantastic, it's not quite the same as a full-size smoker. It's smoky and delicious, but there isn't the same depth of flavor as you find in a full-size smoker.
What are my other options?
There isn't really anything comparable to the Ninja Woodfire. Traeger makes a portable smoker, available at Amazon, but it's smaller, more expensive, and doesn't have a bake function. Z Grills also makes a portable smoker, available at Amazon, but it has almost identical drawbacks to the Traeger. Your next best bet is to buy a smoker, but these are expensive even with discounts.
For more discounts, our coverage of the best Amazon Prime Day deals has unearthed a wide range of grill deals on some of our favorite grills.
