smoke hollow review

Smoke Hollow 205 Grill Review: Crack Grill or Crap?

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You can rake in some serious fun while out tailgating with a good grill. Needless to say, finding the right grill can be daunting. So perhaps you’re going through Smoke Hollow 205 Grill reviews to know whether it’s the right choice for you.

Well, worry no more. We’ll reveal all you must know before buying this grill in our Smoke Hollow 205 Grill review.

About Smoke Hollow Grills

Smoke Hollow found online at Smoke-Hollow.com is an American manufacturer of smoke grills, gas grills, pellet grills, portable grills and accessories. It’s not clear who owns the company, but it appears they’re located at 5032 Milgen Ct. Columbus, GA 31907.

Smoke Hollow 205 TableTop Gas Grill Features

Smoke Hollow claims that the 205 TableTop Gas Grill combines resilience, portability and functionality of an all-round tabletop grill. So what features bring this claim to life? Let’s take a closer look.

305 sq. in. primary stainless steel cooking area – With the Smoke Hollow 205, you’ll get a little over 300 square inches of cooking area, coupled up with an extra 105 square inches chrome-plated warming rack. You want your meat always warm while tailgating, so that’s pretty nifty!

10,000 BTU stainless steel “U” burner – With this model you get 10,000 BTUs, so smoking your burgers and hot dogs wouldn’t be an exercise in patience.

Stainless Steel Construction – They kept things shiny on this one, with the double-layered lid, burner, legs and cookbox all stainless steel. The removable cooking grates are also made of stainless steel wire.

Other Notable Features

  • Temperature gauge on top of the lid
  • Frontal carry handle with locking hood latch
  • 16 oz. disposable propane cylinder (sold separately)
  • Stainless steel drip tray

Smoke Hollow 205 TableTop Gas Grill Cleaning and Maintenance

Cleaning

Cleaning this baby is pretty much straight-forward. To begin with, it’s basically a stainless steel grilling case, so warm water, microfiber towel and a steel/glass cleaner will wash off the grease.

It comes with a drip tray, with most of the stubborn grease draining into the removable tray. The cooking grid is stainless steel, so warm water and a soft cloth will clean the grill right up.

Maintenance

With stainless steel you’re never really sure to what lengths the manufacturers went to ensure that the unit remains rust-free. So in this case, just make sure you store it when completely dry. Preferably, use a grill cover to keep the moisture away. You can get a grill cover on Amazon if you don’t already have one.

Again, it’s important to get handsy with dry paper towel before letting it dry off in open air. Water tends to settle in those hard-to-reach areas along the edges and corners.

Smoke Hollow 205 TableTop Gas Grill Portability

It defeats the purpose to get a tailgating grill that’s not built for portability. The Smoke Hollow 205 measures 32” x 19” x 33.5” high when assembled, and 27″ long x 17″ wide x 12″ high when packed. The legs are foldable, shedding some 20 inches off its height when on the move. Perhaps some of ya’ll may have preferred a stand with wheels but you can always find generic grill stands on Amazon.com.

It’s also considerably lightweight, weighing just 20 pounds.But perhaps that’s what you would expect from a stainless steel tabletop grill. The stainless steel carry front handle wraps up this grill’s portability features.

Smoke Hollow 205 TableTop Gas Grill Warranty

Smoke Hollow claims their products are covered for 1 year against workmanship and construction defects. Rust, mishandling and improper care are not covered under the warranty, but they’ll replace any defective part within the year, as long as you have your proof of purchase. So keep your receipts, folks! You can call them on 866-475-5180 for this service.

Smoke Hollow 205 TableTop Gas Grill Accessories

So you got your grill and you still feel you need extra options? Well here are a couple of things you can buy on Amazon.com.

Some of these accessories are commercially available, not necessarily provided by the manufacturer. They are quite affordable on Amazon compared to elsewhere, where you can take advantage of some of the deals and offers they have like the 1-2 Day Amazon Prime Delivery if you’re a Prime member.

Smoke Hollow 205 Replacement Parts

Smoke Hollow claims you’ll have to refer to your dealer to get any part replaced. If you do so within the warranty period, they’ll replace it for free. Otherwise you’ll have to cover the cost. In any case, they don’t sell replacement parts online apparently due to the “large number of orders and wide product range” they have. But you can get disposable gas cylinder, igniters, adapter hoses and regulator knobs on Amazon.com if calling them up is too much of a hassle.

Smoke Hollow 205 Gas Grill Cost

The Smoke Hollow 205 Gas Grill sells for around $103. If you’re looking for the best deals on this unit, check out Amazon.com for all sorts of deals and discounts you can take advantage of. Need it fast? You can use the free 1-2 days shipping option, if you’re a Prime member.

What Do We Like?

As we mentioned at the beginning, you can have mad fun on a full stomach while tailgating only if your grill is backing you up. Well, the Smoke Hollow 205 may not disappoint because:

It has a nice large cooking area

Over 300 square inches of cooking area is enough to grill either 15 hamburgers, 7 or so steaks or over 30 hot dogs at any one time. That’s quite the deal for a $100, 10,000 BTU grill.

It’s easy to clean

With stainless steel everything, you have to admit not much cleaning effort is needed. I know of folks who barely clean their units at all while out and about. Well besides draining the grease tray every now and then, and wiping off steak sauce from the cooking grids, you don’t need to get down and dirty after every use.

It’s truly portable

With a grill the size of a carry-on bag and the weight of a full-sized turkey, which can fit in the trunk of a sedan, we can say that they more or less hit a home run with portability on this one.

Smoke Hollow 205 Gas Grill Complaints

You don’t want to end up buying a piece of junk, that’s why we dug deep to find complaints about this grill to help you decide whether it’s a worthy buy or just crap.

Their customer support is terrible

Some customers say they bought the unit and some parts weren’t working as advertised. Smoke Hollow refused to replace the parts, and it proved impossible to get a refund. Good thing you don’t have to worry about any of that when you order from Amazon.com.

The igniter is crappy

We came across several complaints about the igniter either failing to work right off the box or giving in after a few cookouts. It seems you’ll realize the igniter problem when you find cold spots on the cooking area, even at the highest possible heat setting.

Assembling it can be tough

If you’re doing the assembly yourself not knowing squat about assembling grills, you’re screwed, buddy. You may need a little extra help with the user manual. A good number of customers had trouble getting the burner to light up, attaching the igniter and attaching all the screws into place. One typical case would be the venturi tube (end of burner tube) not extending far enough to engage the regulator valve.

Should you buy the Smoke Hollow 205 Gas Grill?

Yes, it’s definitely a worthy tailgating buy. Perhaps a stand may have come in handy, but it more than makes up for that with all the other portability features. It’s lightweight, can comfortably feed a party of 10 tailgaters and compact enough to carry around. Perhaps you may need to be gentle with the igniter, and get help while assembling the unit, but that’s as far as the downsides go.

Bottom line, with the Smoke Hollow 205, you get a compact and lightweight grill that produces enough heat under the grids for proper tailgating. You can buy it on Amazon.com and get 1-2 day Free shipping if you’re a Prime member. If you have more questions about the product, you can find answers on the product’s Amazon page.

What’s Hot

  • Easy to clean and maintain
  • Compact and lightweight
  • Affordable
  • Decent heat

What’s Not

  • Pain at the ignition
  • Tough assembly procedure
  • Few manufacturer accessories

So that’s about it! Did we miss anything? We would love to hear from you guys, so feel free to share your thoughts about this or any other grill in the comments section below.

Chris

4 thoughts on “Smoke Hollow 205 Grill Review: Crack Grill or Crap?

  1. I have the 205 TableTop gas grill and I love it for tailgating. It cooks everything very well. We made some great burgers on it. Just make sure to have a good cooler too. Do you have any pages about coolers on here? We cooked the onions and peppers on this too. Made some cheese burgers with grilled onions and peppers.  

    Cleaning it is nice and easy. We didn’t have to strain a lot to clean it. Also fits in the car nicely. Would definitely recommend. Thanks!

    1. Thanks for sharing! We always love when others chime in with their experiences with the grills we review. We don’t have reviews on coolers just yet, but they are coming. Stay tuned! Our goal is to provide information and reviews on all the essential tailgating products. Thanks for visiting!

  2. ZERO SUPPORT for their products. No phone number, only an online form that they never actually respond in a personal way and then randomly close the ticket after 2 weeks without actually responding or helping you. I’ve never seen a support organization that is so awful. Just garbage!

    1. Hi T Time:
      Thanks for bringing this to our attention. When you call the phone number we provided in our review, Smoke Hollow advises that all warranty and replacement part purchases must now be done online. It’s unfortunate that you never received a response. We will update our review to reflect this. Thanks again!

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