Weber 1810001 Summit S-420 Natural Gas Grill, Stainless Steel

I replaced a grill that had cast iron everything. It would take 20 minutes or longer to get the grill to 400 degrees. This new Weber takes only about 5 minutes to hit 500 degrees. I love the 4 burner front to back design. It is a design that gets me back to the days of indirect heat cooking I got from my Weber charcoal grill. I have cooked steak, burgers, chicken and a Wisconsin favorite brats. This is the first time I have a side burner on a grill. I've used it to heat a few things and appreciate it.

I live in an area that has a constant breeze that was always a problem for other grills. The wind would get into the grill between the base and the cover and mess with the flame and cool the food. This grill has an inner cover that connects to the base and blocks the wind. This makes for very even temperature.

I was told this grill is manufactured in China and I was a little nervious about the quality of it. As far as I can tell, it is very well made and all the stainless is very thick. I looked at a couple other stainless steel grills and there is a noticable difference. Even the lower line of Webers have thinner metal.

The grill comes preassembled except for the two side tables. Two screws each and the grill was pretty much done. The grates and flavor bars had to be put into place. I was preheating in no time.

I've been using the grill for the last couple weeks and I must say I absolutely love how it cooks. It does a fantastic job. There are many pluses about this grill and I read many positive reviews before getting it, but I'm focus my attention on what I feel is a fairly hefty design flaw with this model. When it rains, the water channels down the back of the top cover (the part that doesn't move) and wraps around under neither and drips into the stainless steal grease tray, which then funnells the water into the alumimun grease tin. The water also appears to be all over the bottom shelf area after a good rain. I'm not sure if this is because it's overflowing out of the aluminum tin, or whether it's coming in somewhere else. The result is, if the BBQ is out in the rain, you'll have a very wet interior. The next problem that occurs because of the moisture is the electric starters don't always function as expected. I've had to start my BBQ with a lighter a couple times now. However, once it heats up (which it doesn't very quickly) the starters dry out and then function normally again (this is what the online help for the BBQ states to would happen). I'm also starting to see rust forming on the interior rivets. My guess is they weren't designed to have that much water around them, but it's concerning as I was hoping this grill would have no problems lasting many years.

I have called Weber support and told them about this issue they said I need to keep a cover on it and are sending me out one. I have to say the people on the support line were very friendly. I just wish they had a solution to the real problem, other than covering your grill. If I'd just bought this thing to look pretty, I wouldn't care, but I use it everyday for at least one meal and I live in the Pacific Northwest were BBQing in rain is a common practice. Waiting for the grill to cool down before putting the cover on is a pain and not something I always remember each night.

I've also looked at the Genesis series at Home Depot and noticed they have a lip on the back to help prevent the water from coming in. According to the guy at Home Depot this does help a fair bit and definitely more than the design on the Summit.

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The grill was pretty easy to set up. Since my back yard is open and exposed, I will chain this beauty down...but there is no easy way to do that, I'll have to drill through the stainless steel.

Reading reviews of other models, I knew that it was going to run hot. But caution! The book of recipes that comes with the grill will make you burn everything up. It does warn that they are extra hot before they get broken in (dirty) but that doesn't say it all. I very nearly ruined 3 meals before I started watching the meat instead of following their instructions to leave the lid down as much as possible.

Always adding olive oil to your meat will make things better. Having a grill that will heat to 500 degrees or more is great, it is easier to clean than my old one. You can bake a pizza in there.

I did not follow the advice from a review on a similar model, I've gone ahead and purchased the Webber cover. While the stainless steel is easy to maintain, the rain and snow leaves too much dirt on it, so I'll cover it in winter.

Read Best Reviews of Weber 1810001 Summit S-420 Natural Gas Grill, Stainless Steel Here

The Summit grills are excellent, but very expensive. Relative to the top-rated (Consumer Reports) E-series at less than half the cost, the S-420 is not a particularly good value (hence the 3 stars).

However, if you are considering spending ~$1.5k on a grille, look closely at the Weber S-470.

For an additional ~20% in cost, the three additional burners add a *HUGE* amount of versatility:

1) Built-in smoke-box (with separate burner control) is extremely convenient, and works well.

With our old Weber, smoking was difficult to control and I never got good results. Now I smoke anything other than thin cuts. Ribs are amazing... :-) The smoke box does slightly reduce the available grill area, but the S-470 can still handle a large load. The dedicated smoker burner also acts as an excellent additional indirect heating source, even if you are not smoking.

2) Extra "searing" burner generates crazy amounts of heat in the middle section, enough to match any charcoal fire. This works extremely well for steaks.

3) Added infra-red burner makes browning on the rotisserie easy.

4) The combination of these added burners enables extremely rapid pre-heating. Our S-470 hits >700F in less than 10 minutes with all 7 burners active!

If you shop on-line carefully, you may find the S-470 at sale prices even closer to the S-420 than the 20% gap in list price. At the time we bought our S470, the street-price gap was less than 10%.

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This is my fourth Weber but my first Summit model. The previous Genesis models that I owned came with quite a bit of assembly required so I was surprised to see the Summit come off the truck pretty much all assembled. All I had to do as to follow the simple instructions for adding the left and right work surfaces/burner and a couple of other things and I was in business.

It works like all Webers ... just plain excellent! I still miss the left and right side fold up work surfaces that disappeared in the redesign that happened a couple of years back. If I have one complaint it would be that if you opt for the side burner you really have only one work surface and that is on the left side. Being right handed it would have been better for me to have the work surface on the right side and the burner on the left, but I can live with it.

Mine is the natural gas model and I have found little difference in cooking times from the propane models I enjoyed earlier.

Webers are not cheap, and you can buy a whole lot more grill (read hardware) for the money, but if you spend some time inspecting the other models and doing some comparisons you can quickly see why the Weber is a better product.

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