Masterbuilt® Gravity Series® 800: A Comprehensive Overview

Updated: July 5, 2026

I’ve built fires in everything from a hole in the ground to a competition trailer, and I’ll tell you the one truth that fifty years over charcoal teaches you: the fire doesn’t care about your schedule. Managing a charcoal fire for twelve hours is a skill, and it’s a skill most folks don’t have time to learn. That’s the itch Masterbuilt set out to scratch with the Gravity Series — charcoal flavor with pellet-grill manners — and the Gravity Series 800 is the version of that idea that ships with a flat-top griddle in the box. I haven’t run this particular unit on my own patio. What follows is built from verified manufacturer specifications, professional hands-on tests, and thousands of owner reviews and forum reports — the good, the bad, and the burnt-out firebox. Where owners disagree with the marketing, I’ll tell you.

What the Gravity Series 800 Is

The 800 (model MB20040221) is a digital charcoal grill, smoker, and griddle in one cabinet. A vertical GravityFed hopper on the right side holds up to 10 pounds of lump charcoal or 16 pounds of briquettes. The charcoal burns at the bottom of the hopper, gravity feeds fresh fuel down as it burns, and a variable-speed DigitalFan pushes air from the fire into the cooking chamber to hold whatever temperature you punch into the controller — anywhere from a 225°F smoke to a 700°F sear. Masterbuilt rates the hopper for up to 10 hours of cooking on a full load, and heat-up times are quick by charcoal standards: 225°F in 8 minutes, 450°F in 10, and 700°F in about 14. Owners on the barbecue forums back up the runtime — one long-time Gravity owner reports a full hopper of charcoal and wood chunks lasting at least 10 hours on an overnight cook, holding within about 10 degrees of the controller’s reading against his own separate digital probe. The cooking chamber gives you 800 total square inches: reversible cast-iron main grates (one side profiled for searing, the other for smoking) plus two porcelain-coated fold-away warming racks. The controller runs by itself from the panel, or over WiFi and Bluetooth through the Masterbuilt app, with ports for up to four meat probes (one probe comes in the box). Stainless front and side shelves handle prep, and the whole thing runs on a standard household outlet — which does tether you to power, something to think about before you park it at the far end of the yard.

The Griddle Is the Reason This Model Exists

The 800 sits between the Gravity 600 and 1050 in the lineup, and the flat-top griddle insert is what sets it apart. This isn’t a thin accessory plate. The Barbecue Lab’s hands-on test describes it as thick cold-rolled steel that sits secure in the chamber with very little movement, with a grease drain hole in the lower-left corner. Hey Grill Hey’s testers called the griddle the feature that takes the grill “to a whole new level” territory — their words on smashburgers and breakfast were enthusiastic, and swapping between grates and griddle means changing the manifold insert inside the chamber, with hooks under the side shelf to hang whichever surface you’re not using. That’s a real distinction from the rest of the outdoor griddle market. A gas flat-top gives you the sear but no smoke character. This gives you a charcoal-fired griddle. Eggs, fajitas, smashburgers, then swap the grates back in and smoke a brisket overnight on the same fuel system. If that versatility matters to you, this is the model in the Gravity line to look at. One buying note: the Costco version of the Gravity 800 does not include the griddle insert. Check the listing before you assume it’s in the box.

How It Actually Performs

The temperature control is the headline, and the professional testing bears it out. AmazingRibs, testing the Gravity platform with a separate Maverick XR-50 thermometer, found the cook temperature held within 15–20 degrees of setpoint once the unit came up to temp — no vent fiddling, no fire babysitting. Multiple owners report similar accuracy against their own probes. For a charcoal cooker, that’s oven-grade behavior, and it’s the whole pitch. Flavor is where charcoal earns its keep over pellets, and the reports are consistent. A long-time stick-burner on the Texas barbecue forums says the Gravity gives “much better flavor than anything I’ve ever tasted out of a pellet grill” and still reaches for it when he doesn’t want to tend an offset all night. The AngryBBQ long-term reviewer — a man with pellet grills he loves on the same property — says food off his Gravity simply tastes better than anything he’s cooked on pellets. You add smoke by tossing wood chunks into the hopper with the charcoal, or into the ash bin where falling embers light them. The Barbecue Lab’s guidance from Masterbuilt: keep wood to 10–15% of the hopper so charcoal stays the primary fuel and the controller can hold temp. High heat is genuinely high. The fan stokes the coals hard, and The Barbecue Lab’s Porterhouse test off the factory sear grates produced the kind of grill marks you want to photograph. The safety engineering matters here too: switches on the main lid, hopper lid, and ash door cut the fan when anything’s open, and the lid switch caps the grill at 500°F while open so the fire can’t run away from you. Hey Grill Hey called those safety features one of their top three likes on this cooker. One honest flavor caveat from an owner who gave his away: because the fire lives in the hopper off to the side rather than under the food, drippings don’t hit the coals the way they do on a kettle. Some of that classic drippings-on-fire flavor is muted compared to direct charcoal cooking. Most owners don’t share his conclusion — the review corpus runs strongly positive on flavor — but it’s a fair description of the geometry, and if drippings-vaporizing-on-coals is your definition of charcoal flavor, a gravity-fed cabinet works differently.

The Problems Owners Actually Report

Here’s where I earn my keep, because the complaint patterns on the Gravity Series are well documented and consistent across sources. The safety switches fail. This is the big one. AmazingRibs had two of the three magnetic safety switches fail within a few months on their test unit and reported the same failure from multiple readers and Pitmaster Club members, calling the switches “a weak link in an otherwise groundbreaking cooker.” A Texas forum owner reports two switch failures of his own before bypassing all three by twisting the wires together — a common owner workaround I’m mentioning for completeness, not recommending, since those switches are what keep the hopper from turning into a chimney with the door open. The AngryBBQ reviewer had the hopper-lid switch stick “open” on his 600 and got a replacement kit from Masterbuilt under warranty; he calls it an under-an-hour fix. If you buy this cooker, expect that you may be replacing a switch at some point. The firebox is a wear item. The firebox liner at the bottom of the hopper takes the full brunt of the fire, and reports of warping and burn-through show up repeatedly. AmazingRibs dropped their Gravity Series rating from five stars to three after their test unit’s firebox interior warped, buckled, and rusted through the inner layer. A verified retail reviewer with four years on his unit reports the firebox “burnt out twice” and having a replacement insert fabricated. And read the warranty terms closely: Masterbuilt’s one-year warranty explicitly does not cover rust or paint. The component most likely to fail is the one the warranty language is thinnest on. Grease fires at high heat if you don’t clean it. Multiple owners report the same scenario: smoke something fatty — pork belly, brisket, a shoulder — skip the cleanup, then crank the unit past 500°F for burgers, and the rendered grease in the chamber lights. One owner puts it plainly: keep it clean or keep it under 350. This isn’t a design defect so much as physics, but the fan-stoked airflow makes it more dramatic than on a kettle. Clean the chamber after fatty cooks. Every time. The metal is thin. Owners who compare it to offset smokers and kamados consistently note the sheet metal is light for the price class. One four-year owner sums up the trade honestly: loves the ease and the temperature control even in below-zero weather, but calls the material “very cheap.” This is a cooker you keep covered — and The Barbecue Lab’s 18-month outdoor report under the factory cover is actually reassuring on that front: painted surfaces held up with no rust, firebox still solid, with only surface rust on the bare-metal griddle and heat diverter, which they manage the way you’d manage any carbon-steel cooking surface — heat, oil, scrub, keep cooking. Smaller electrical gripes. A multi-year owner reports his controller died and had to be replaced, and warns that cheap aftermarket replacement controllers lack Bluetooth — buy the correct Masterbuilt part. The Barbecue Lab flags a related habit worth building from day one: disconnect the power cable from the controller before wrapping it on the cord mount, because yanking the wrapped cord can pull the wire clean off the controller’s circuit board. The AngryBBQ reviewer also found his hopper kept slowly burning charcoal for hours after shutdown due to air leaking past the lid — a sheet of aluminum foil over the hopper top solved it, along with tightening the lid latches per the manual. Lump charcoal can bridge in the hopper. Irregular lump pieces occasionally hang up instead of feeding down. One owner keeps a fireplace poker next to the cooker and gives the top of the charcoal column a poke on long cooks. Briquettes, being uniform, feed more reliably.

Who This Cooker Is For

The Gravity 800 makes sense if you want real charcoal flavor but your life doesn’t have room for fire management. Set 250°F before bed, load the hopper, wake up to a brisket that held temp all night — that’s the honest value here, and thousands of owners confirm it delivers. Add the included griddle and you’ve got one footprint covering breakfast, burgers, steaks, and low-and-slow. It also makes sense as a pellet-grill alternative. You get a wider temperature range than most pellet cookers (700°F sear versus the 500°F ceiling common on pellets), and charcoal-and-chunk flavor that pellet owners on the forums repeatedly describe as a step up. Skip it if you’re a buy-it-for-life buyer. The thin metal, the switch failures, the consumable firebox, and a one-year warranty that excludes rust all say the same thing: this is a cooker you should expect to maintain, repair, and eventually replace, not hand down to your grandkids. A kamado or a heavy offset costs more per square inch and demands more skill, but the steel outlives you. Different tools, different deals. Skip it too if you have no outlet where you cook. No electricity, no fan, no cooker.

Availability and Price Reality

Heads up before you fall in love: as of this writing, Masterbuilt’s own site lists the Gravity 800 as out of stock with a notify-me form, and Home Depot’s listing shows the same. Academy shows it available with a compare-at price of $899.99 (their actual price shows in cart), and in late January 2026 select Home Depot stores were clearing remaining units in-store from around $225 — a signal worth reading. Masterbuilt has been pushing its newer Gravity XT hard, and the 800’s spotty first-party availability suggests the model may be winding down. If the griddle-included Gravity is the one you want, the used market and retail clearance racks are worth watching, and clearance pricing on this cooker is a legitimately strong deal for what it does. Prices and stock move around. Check current listings before you make the drive.

Bottom Line

The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800 does the thing it promises: pellet-grill convenience with charcoal flavor, plus a heavy griddle that no competitor includes at this price. The temperature control is verified by independent testing, the flavor reports are strongly positive, and the runtime claims hold up in owner hands. Against that, you’re accepting known weak points — safety switches that fail, a firebox that wears out, thin sheet metal, and a warranty that won’t cover the most common failure mode. Owners who go in with eyes open and a grill brush in hand rate it 4.3–4.4 stars across thousands of reviews, and after reading a pile of them, I understand why. It’s not built like a tank. It cooks like a champ.

Helpful source: USDA grilling and food-safety guidance.