Traeger Timberline Pellet Grill Expert Review

The Skinny:

• The original wood-fired pellet grill brand
• WiFIRE Technology allows you to control grill from your smartphone
• Double-walled insulation retains heat
• Pill-shaped barrel gives you more cooking space
• TRU Convection creates powerful smoke vortex of flavor
• Extra-large capacity hopper with low-pellet sensor

Things We Love:

As the original pellet grill brand, Traeger is a true pellet pioneer and is the most popular name in the pellet grill industry. That's why it's no surprise that Traeger continues to push the envelope of pellet grill innovation with the Timberline series, the most advanced Traeger grill to date.

WiFIRE

The Timberline series offers innovative WiFIRE Technology, which uses your wifi network to connect your smartphone to the grill. The Traeger app allows you to set and monitor grill temperature, set custom cook cycles to maintain consistency every time you cook, and gives you access to thousands of Traeger recipes. It also gives you access to GrillGuide, where you can download recipes to your WiFIRE enabled controller. GrillGuide programs the whole cooking cycle from start to finish by changing temperature, smoke, and air circulation automatically as the recipe progresses. The Timberline also includes a handy meat probe, allowing you to monitor the temperature of your food on your smartphone to ensure doneness. Simply put, WiFIRE lets you entertain with friends and family or relax while you cook, instead of hovering over the grill.

TurboTemp

With a temperature range of 165 – 500 degrees Fahrenheit, the Timberline offers the widest temperature range of any Traeger grill. It also maintains your set temperature within an incredible 5 degree range. The Timberline offers Traeger’s Turbotemp system, making ignition and preheat time faster than ever before. The grill is built with 16 gauge steel, which is thicker than other Traeger grills. The professional grade lid gasket and double-walled 304 stainless steel insulation helps the grill achieve ultra-precise temperature consistency. Using a set of thermocouples, we were able to put the Timberline to the test, and found that it produces amazingly consistent temperatures across the entire volume of the barrel.

D2 Controller

The beauty of the Timberline design is its innovative D2 controller. The D2 is a PID controller, the most accurate and stable controller type available for regulating temperature. The D2 allows the fan to utilize variable speed functionality, meaning it will speed up or slow down as necessary to properly control temperature and air flow. Traeger has combined this feature with their patented downdraft exhaust to create TRU Convection, a powerful vortex of smoke moving inside the Timberline’s barrel. The downdraft exhaust port is located at the bottom of the Timberline’s pill shaped barrel and is oriented in a way that smoke is only allowed to leave the grill after circulating around the inside of the barrel, coating your food in delicious smoky flavor.

Brushless DC Motor

The Timberline’s auger is the industry’s first brushless DC motor. This innovative feature achieves higher torque at a lower RPM, meaning the auger is more powerful, efficient, and far less likely to get obstructed. Since brushless motors have fewer moving parts, the auger’s motor is much more resilient than a brushed motor, and will work for longer without requiring much maintenance. The efficiency of the brushless motor allows the auger to move the same number of pellets with less power than earlier models.

Sizes

The Traeger Timberline comes in 2 sizes, the Timberline 850 and the Timberline 1300, which indicates the total square inches of cooking space that the grills offer. To maximize the cooking space inside the barrel, Traeger gave the Timberline a pill-shaped design which makes the barrel taller than other pellet grills, providing 3 fully adjustable cooking grates. The main cooking grate can even be lowered closer to the fire pot for searing steaks, or raised to be further away from the fire pot for smoking.

SuperSmoke

The Timberline also offers a couple new features that aren’t found on other Traeger grills. With the push of a button, Super Smoke mode drops the temperature of your grill to its lowest setting and shuts off the fan. This lets you craft the ultimate smoke profiles by blasting your food with a high dosage of smoke. The Keep-Warm mode keeps your food warm on the grill for long periods of time, which is great for entertaining.

Hopper

The Timberline offers the largest hopper capacity of any Traeger grill. You can store up to 24 pounds of pellets, which is large enough to hold an entire bag of Traeger pellets, plus more. Traeger grills have a burn rate of 2 pounds of pellets per hour at the highest temperature setting, and only half a pound of pellets per hour at the lowest setting. A built-in pellet sensor warns you when pellets are low. The pellet cleanout shoot has a magnetic door so you can easily switch pellet flavors on the fly.

Design

Like Traeger Pro Series models, the Timberline also features a saw-horse design and all terrain wheels, which adds durability and toughness to the grill. The grease management system channels grease into the disposable concealed grease pan for easy clean up. The grill also includes a handy stainless steel front shelf and side shelf, along with a magnetic cutting board for convenient food prep.

Accessories

Traeger offers several useful grilling tools that will give your grill even more cooking versatility. Some of the most popular Traeger accessories are bottom shelves, a digital thermometer, chicken throne, and grill racks.

Things To Consider:

While the Timberline does an amazing job at retaining heat while cooking, we noticed that the temperature drops quickly when you open the lid, and can take a while to get back to your set temperature. It’s also important to remember to prime the auger when you first use the Timberline, or when you run out of pellets, as it may cause the auger to seize.