The Gravity 1050 is the most convincing answer we have found to the brisket cook’s actual dilemma: real charcoal, with a thermostat. Masterbuilt states 1,050 square inches of cooking area, a 225 to 700°F range, a gravity-fed hopper taking up to 10 pounds of lump or 16 of briquettes, reversible cast iron grates for smoke or sear, and app control reading up to four meat probes. For a packer — or two — that specification is close to ideal.
The one figure a brisket cook needs above all others is how long the hopper runs, because that decides whether you sleep. Masterbuilt publishes it twice on the same product page, and the two statements disagree: the feature copy promises “up to 10 hours of uninterrupted cooking,” while a gallery caption says the hopper “holds up to 8 hours of fuel.” A whole packer regularly wants twelve to sixteen. That gap, rather than smoke or bark, is the honest subject of this review.
We have not run this cooker and do not claim to — our methodology pagesets out exactly what we do instead. Every figure below was read from Masterbuilt’s own product page for model MB20041220 on October 18, 2026.
#1Best for two packers
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 1050 Digital Charcoal Grill + Smoker
The big gravity-fed cabinet: 1,050 sq in of grate, real charcoal, and a fan that holds your set temperature without you touching a vent. Masterbuilt states the hopper runs up to 10 hours, which is the number that matters — a brisket often wants more than that.
Strengths
- +1,050 sq in (stated) fits two full packers with room to spare
- +Real charcoal smoke with a set-and-hold digital controller
- +225-700°F range (stated) — the same machine sears steaks
Trade-offs
- −Hopper holds up to 10 hours (stated) — a long brisket needs a top-up
- −Fan, controller and hopper are all failure points a manual smoker doesn't have
| Fuel / power | Charcoal + wood (gravity-fed) |
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| Fuel | Lump/briquette charcoal + wood |
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| Total cooking area | 1,050 sq in (stated) |
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| Hopper capacity | 10 lb lump / 16 lb briquettes, up to 10 hours (stated) |
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| Temp range | 225-700°F (stated) |
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| Connectivity | Masterbuilt app, up to 4 meat probes (stated) |
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Specs read from the manufacturer listing, on August 11, 2026. “Not published” means the maker does not state that figure.
How gravity feeding actually works
A vertical chute holds charcoal above a small fire grate. Gravity drops fuel into the burn zone as the coals below are consumed, and a fan pulls air through that zone at whatever rate the controller decides is needed to hold your set temperature. A separate slot takes wood for smoke. There is no auger, no pellet, no electric element: the heat is burning charcoal and the electronics only manage the air.
Two consequences follow, and both matter more to brisket than to anything else you might cook. The first is that the smoke is combustion smoke — the same chemistry that gives you a smoke ring and a hard bark on a stick burner, which an element warming a tray of chips cannot produce. The second is that the fire is deliberately small and steady. You get less of the variation a hand-fed fire produces, which is a loss of character and a gain of roughly eight hours of your life per cook.
Masterbuilt’s stated time to temperature says something about how hard that fan works: “Hit 225°F in 8 minutes or 700°F in 15.” Those are preheat figures from an unlit start, and they are genuinely remarkable for charcoal. They also tell you that this machine is capable of moving a great deal of air, which is the same mechanism that burns through a hopper.
The hopper figure, taken seriously
Here is everything Masterbuilt publishes about fuel on this page, in one place. Capacity: “holds up to 10 pounds of lump or 16 pounds of briquettes,” with a spec row reading 15.9 lb. Runtime: “UP TO 10 HOURS OF UNINTERRUPTED COOKING” in the feature copy, against “holds up to 8 hours of fuel” in a gallery caption.
No temperature is attached to either runtime, which is the part that makes both figures difficult to use. Fuel consumption on a forced-air charcoal cooker is a function of set temperature, ambient temperature, how well the unit seals and how often the door is opened. Ten hours at 225°F and ten hours at 350°F are not the same claim, and “up to” is doing real work in both sentences.
So plan around the arithmetic you can trust rather than the number you would like. A trimmed packer at 250°F commonly runs twelve to sixteen hours including the stall, and when to start a brisket covers how to work backward from dinner. Against a stated ceiling of 8 to 10 hours, the sensible plan is: load the hopper full, set an alarm for roughly two-thirds of the lower figure, and top up once before you need to. That is a smaller intervention than any offset asks for, and it is also not the set-and-forget cook the marketing implies.
The practical corollary, which the gravity-smoker method guide goes into properly: ash management is the other half of hopper management. A gravity chute that chokes on its own ash will not feed, and a cooker that stops feeding mid-night is a brisket sitting in the range the USDA calls the danger zone rather than climbing through the stall.
What 1,050 square inches buys, and what it does not
Masterbuilt’s capacity claims for this model are 17 chickens, 7 racks of ribs, 67 sausages and 45 burgers. Brisket is not on that list, which is a notable omission on a cooker whose main competition is bought for exactly that cut — and a reminder that area figures are assembled from whatever fills a grate most neatly.
A brisket does not consume area. It consumes a straight run of sixteen to twenty inches on one rack, and no amount of stacked shelving changes that. Masterbuilt publishes no rack-by-rack breakdown for the 1050 and no individual grate dimension, so the figure that would actually settle a two-packer cook is not available. The main space plus two warming racks above it is the only structure the page describes.
What the area does buy, unambiguously, is everything that comes with a brisket when you are cooking for a crowd: the ribs, the sausage, the beans on the lower shelf. That is why this model is the top pick in our large-family roundup rather than in the general smoker roundup. If you cook one packer for six people, the Gravity 800 does the identical job in less space and the three-way comparison lays out why.
The reversible grates are a real feature
Masterbuilt states reversible cast iron grates — one face for smoking, one for searing — with porcelain-coated warming racks above. Combined with the stated 700°F ceiling, that makes this a cooker which genuinely does both jobs rather than one that lists a high number it cannot use.
For brisket specifically, there is one place that matters beyond steak night. Cast iron holds heat, which helps when the door opens on a cold day; and a cooker that reaches 350 to 400°F comfortably is a cooker that can finish a brisket hot and fast when a cook has run long and dinner has not moved. That is a genuine escape hatch, and it is not available on an electric cabinet.
What Masterbuilt does not publish
A weight.The page gives dimensions — 60.6 inches wide, 52.2 high and 31.9 deep in the spec table, with a gallery caption saying 61 by 52 by 33 — but no weight at all. For a steel cabinet of that size, bought by people who will wheel it onto a deck, that is a strange gap. Treat it as heavy, measure the gate, and ask the retailer if a deck load rating is involved.
A steel gauge or wall construction. Nothing is stated about thickness or insulation, which is the specification that would tell you how the cooker behaves in winter. Our cold-weather roundup ranks on exactly this and says plainly that no maker publishes a cold-weather rating; the fan-plus-controller design is what compensates here, by burning more fuel to hold the number.
What is in the box. The page lists a lump charcoal bundle and a rotisserie kit as paid add-ons and says accessories are sold separately, without itemizing the base contents. Worth confirming before you plan a first cook around an accessory.
One more honest note on the published range: the spec table says 225 to 700°F, while a section of the same page describes “low-and-slow smoking at 250°F.” Those are not in conflict — 250 sits inside the range — but it is a reminder that 225 is the floor of what the controller will hold, not a temperature the copy treats as the normal brisket setting. For what it is worth, our time and temp guide lands in the same place: 250 is the better default on most cookers.
Who should buy it
Buy itif you want charcoal smoke and a cooker that holds its own temperature, and if you cook for more than one table. That combination has very few honest answers, and among them this is the one with the most room. Buy it also if the ability to sear at 700°F on the same machine means you can own one cooker instead of two.
Do not buy itif you need a cooker that is still holding 250°F sixteen hours later with nobody awake. Nothing in this class does that on one hopper, whatever the marketing implies, and the honest options are to top up once or to finish in the oven — which our finishing guide treats as a legitimate technique rather than a confession. Do not buy it either if a power cord on a charcoal cooker is a dealbreaker; a ceramic kamado— where the real decision is 18 inches against 24 — or a barrel offset asks more of you and nothing of the grid. And if the one-year warranty on a machine with a fan, a controller and four probe ports gives you pause, that is a reasonable reaction rather than a timid one.
Whatever you cook on, the rule that outranks every specification on this page: know the grate temperature, not the controller’s opinion of it. A set-and-hold cooker is only as honest as its own probe placement, and the thermometer roundup covers the independent dual-probe setup that catches a stalled fan before it costs you a brisket.