This is my first experience with a pellet grill. I was surprised by how noisy the burn chamber is when you open up the lid. Pellets are constantly being burned and it's a blast furnace in there. Generally I'm happy with this unit, but the hopper design needs improvement. The slope of the sides of the hopper are not steep enough to ensure pellets fall into the hole into the auger chamber. If the hopper gets too low on pellets the bbq stops working despite a significant amount of pellets still in the hopper, just none around the hole feeding the auger. If I let this happen, the temperature will plummet and despite manually pushing pellets down the hole, or adding more pellets, I often have to restart the bbq ignition sequence. Make sure the hopper is full enough, a least to the grate level, more is better for longer use. Monitor it and add more pellets as needed if your cooking for extended periods of time.
