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Vision Grills Classic B Ceramic Charcoal Cooker
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This is our first ever smart phone steath product review. We stumbled across this Vision Grills Classic B kamado-style ceramic charcoal cooker in our local Sam's Club store. It struck us that we could use our smart phone to photograph the cooker, and perhaps with a little help from our friends, put together a useful mini-review of the cooker. We weren't quite sure how Sam's Club would feel about us photographing merchandise, so we kept a low profile.
We'd also like to thank Mike Z. who happens to live quite close to us and is the proud owner of one of these cookers. He graciously allowed us access to his cooker in order to perform our temperature testing. He also provided some of the photos you will see in this review. Mike also happens to own the New World Coffee House in Raleigh, NC. The least we can do to thank him is give him a plug here. We really enjoyed our visit and our cup of coffee! -- TNW
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Introduction
We don't know precisely when Vision Grills entered the kamado-style cooker market, but we notice that their Facebook page was founded in July of 2011, so they have been around for at least 3 years. The Vision Grills cookers are sold in discount warehouses and big box stores, and we recently were surprised to see one on display in our local Sam's Club. (We also saw lump charcoal there for the first time ever. Our particular Sam's Club has never carried anything interesting in the outdoor cooker arena until now.) We took lots of photos with our smart phone in the store, and have been lucky enough to find a Vision Grills owner nearby in our town, so we thought we'd put together as much information as we could in this mini-review. The cooker being examined here is the Vision Grills Classic B model, and is but one of 5 different "series" on their website.
Features and Points of Interest
The Vision Grills kamado-style cookers look a lot like other brands of kamado-style charcoal cookers. No surprise there.
Here is a list of features from the Vision Grills website:
- Color: Glossy Charcoal Grey
- Construction: Heavy duty ceramic exterior body and fire bowl
- 2-Tiered Cooking Grates: 602 square inch stainless steel dual flip grates with handles for ease of adding charcoal and smoking wood chunks
- Grill/Smoker Fuel Type: Charcoal — lump charcoal always recommended
- Heat Thermometer: Ergonomic easy-to-read thermometer with cooking temperature zones
- Bottom Draft Vent: Calibrated stainless steel with safety spark screen
- Top Draft Vent: Calibrated windmill draft vent (available in stainless steel from Costco and aluminum alloy from Sam’s)
- Cover: Heavy vinyl cape style cover with easy Velcro closure (included)
- Assembled Depth (in.): 28.8 in
- Assembled Height (in.): 47.0 in
- Assembled Width (in.): 22.5 in (50.5 in. with side shelves extended)
- Weight: 196 lbs (89 kgs)
- Assembly Required: 15-20 minutes (All assembly tools included)
- Manufacturer Warranty: lifetime for all ceramic parts, five (5) years for all metal parts, 90-days for side shelves, 90-days for temperature gauge and 1-year for cover. This Warranty is not transferable to subsequent owners.
Here are some more items of interest from our observations:
- Spring-assist hinge mechanism
- 100-700°F dome thermometer with "Warm", "Smoke", "Grill" and "Sear" ranges marked.
- Two locking casters on the cart
- Top vent has spring clips to hold it in place
- Optional lava cooking stone/heat deflector available
Packaging and Assembly
We were able to sneak a few meaningful photos of the packaging in the store:
A cooker in the box on the sales floor at Sams Club. |
The box is quite sturdy. |
There are two boxes inside the box. |
The cooker appears to be well protected in the box. This is as much as we could gain access to on the store floor:
The top of the cooker is protected by a cardboard pad. |
The cooker is wrapped in plastic and there is sturdy corner packing. |
Obviously, we can't comment on the assembly process. The Vision Grills information indicates that assembly should take 15-20 minutes, and that all tools are supplied with the cooker. Here is a copy of the Vision Grills Classic B cooker assembly manual, as of the date of this review: PDF Version. For what it is worth, the model on display at Sams Club appeared to have been adequately assembled, so it can't be too hard to do.
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