The Gravity Series 800 sits at an interesting point in the smoker market: it is a charcoal smoker that behaves like an appliance. Charcoal fills a tall vertical hopper, gravity feeds the coals down as they burn, and a thermostat-controlled fan decides how much air reaches the fire. Set a temperature and it holds it, using real fuel.
For brisket — the cook where you most want both heavy smoke and twelve unattended hours — that is close to the ideal architecture. The rest of this review is about where the architecture bites back.
We haven’t run this unit in a lab and don’t claim to; see how we pick. The specs below are Masterbuilt’s published figures, weighed against what a brisket actually needs.
#1Best gravity smoker for brisket
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800 Digital Charcoal Smoker
The best of both worlds if you want real charcoal-and-wood flavor without babysitting a fire: a gravity-fed hopper drops charcoal automatically while a digital fan holds your set temperature. It gives you stick-burner flavor with pellet-grill convenience, and it can sear too.
Strengths
- +Gravity-fed charcoal + digital fan = real smoke, held temps
- +Reaches 225°F for brisket and 700°F for searing
- +WiFi/Bluetooth control and a wood chamber for smoke wood
Trade-offs
- −More moving parts (fan, hopper) than a manual smoker
- −Depends on power; charcoal cost per cook is higher than pellets
| Fuel / power | Charcoal + wood (gravity-fed) |
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| Fuel | Lump/briquette charcoal + wood |
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| Total cooking area | 800 sq in |
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| Temperature control | Digital fan + hopper (WiFi/BT) |
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| Temp range | 225-700°F (stated) |
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| Connectivity | Wi-Fi + Bluetooth |
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Specs read from the manufacturer listing, on July 22, 2026. “Not published” means the maker does not state that figure.
What the gravity hopper buys you
A conventional charcoal smoker gives you one fuel load and a set of vents. You control temperature by restricting oxygen, which works, but the fire changes character over twelve hours as the coal bed burns down — so you adjust, and adjust again. A gravity hopper decouples fuel supply from fire size. Fresh charcoal is always waiting directly above the burn zone, so the fire never gets smaller than the fan wants it to be; the controller simply feeds it more or less air.
The practical result is that your set temperature stays set through the night, through the stall, and through a cold snap, without you touching a vent. That is exactly what pellet grill owners enjoy, and here it happens while burning charcoal and wood.
Masterbuilt states 225 to 700°F, which means the same machine that ran your brisket overnight will sear at genuinely high heat the following evening. No pellet grill does both nearly as well, and it is a real point in this category’s favor if you only have room for one cooker.
The hopper is also the limitation
Everything good about this design depends on there being charcoal in the hopper. Across the Gravity range, Masterbuilt’s published burn times run from around eight hours to around eighteen depending on model and temperature, and they do not scale with price — larger chambers lose more heat and burn more fuel per hour to hold the same number.
For a brisket, treat the hopper as something to manage rather than ignore. Fill it completely before you start, run 250°F rather than 225°F to shorten the cook, and check it before you go to bed. Topping up mid-cook takes a minute; discovering an empty hopper at 4 a.m. costs you the brisket’s schedule and possibly its quality.
Cold weather makes this worse in the way it makes everything worse. If you are cooking in winter, assume the published figure is optimistic and plan an extra check.
Ash, and why it matters more here
Charcoal produces far more ash than pellets, and in a gravity system that ash lands in a pan directly beneath a fire that depends on airflow. Let it build and the fan has to work harder to deliver the same oxygen; eventually the controller cannot hold the set point and the cook drifts.
Clearing the pan before every long cook is a five-minute job and it is the single most important piece of maintenance on this machine. It is also worth saying plainly: this is a real ongoing chore that a pellet grill largely does not have. If the appeal of automation is that you want to think about the cooker as little as possible, that is a point for pellets.
Getting the most smoke out of it
Add wood chunks early. Smoke deposition is heaviest in the first few hours while the meat surface is cool and damp, and it stops entirely once you wrap. Two or three fist-sized post oak or hickory chunks at the start does more than a steady trickle of wood across the whole cook.
Choose your charcoal deliberately, too. Lump burns hotter and cleaner with less ash and gives a more neutral flavor; briquettes burn more evenly for longer but produce substantially more ash, which matters here more than on other smokers. Our lump versus briquettes comparison covers the trade in full.
And do not trust the built-in probe as your only reading. Every controller measures at one fixed point that is not where your brisket is. Clip an independent probe at grate height; if the two disagree significantly, believe the one next to the meat.
Who should buy it
Buy the Gravity 800 if you want charcoal flavor without charcoal labor, if you value a machine that both smokes low and sears hot, and if clearing an ash pan before a cook sounds like a fair price for that. For a lot of brisket cooks it is the most sensible smoker on the market, and 800 square inches is comfortably enough for a whole packer with room around it.
Look elsewhere if you want the absolute deepest smoke — that is an offset, and it will cost you your sleep instead of your money — or if minimum fuss and minimum running cost are the priority, in which case a pellet grill does the automation with less ash and cheaper fuel. And if your power is unreliable, buy something that doesn’t need it.