Well I am very much contemplating buying at least 1. And giving it a run on my Member's Mark. And if it works how I would like I may upgrade the Z (even though it has BT/WIFI) the controller on the Z leaves a lot to be desired. In daylight it's pretty useless but at night it's pretty decent. The screen just does not have enough contrast to work well in daylight. It's also quite "iffy" in re, to it's control capability and reliability.
Another thing I think holds the Z back is it's nearly impossible to use in cold weather. As it "errors out" too quickly. IOW, say it's 20F. You fire it up, but the controller is programmed to error out if it does not see XXF of temp rise in XX time period. So, it forces you to re-start.
It also does not maintain heat well in cold and or wind. I think it's programmed for economy of operation over full performance in hard conditions. I honestly think it simply does not send enough "fuel" into the pot to burn. So if you need to say call for heat over 300 it struggles badly and takes (depending on ambient conditions) 30-60 minutes to go from say 235 to 350 and up. Forget about getting it over 350. You can set it to max (500) and if you wait for say an hour it MIGHT get to 360. I simply think the fuel "curve" is not there. Example: If I lay on the prime button force feeding it pellets. It will climb to loftier temps.
Another thing I thought I'd try would be a higher speed auger motor. Since I THINK the PID is programmed to run the motor by time not direct temp feedback, it simply cannot keep up.
In temperate weather (45 and up little wind), it will get tight up there.
What I am hoping is the fuel feed plot is programmed more for temp feedback with the Fireboard.
But I see people with other large grills, which have the same size fire pot and same overall size of grill not having this issue. So the only thing I can deduce is the fuel curve is not set up to feed enough fuel to boost temps in the cold
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