I cleaned the grill last night and decided to fire it up just to see how it was running. There was a good amount of ash and grease to clean. Cleaning will need to be done every 2-3 cooks by the looks of it.
I set the temp to 300 and it started up fine but the temp wasn't rising very quickly, so I bumped the set temp to 500 and it took off. After it hit 400, I set the temp back down to 300 to see how it would adjust. At this time I was also installing the handle light that I removed from my genesis, so the lid was open briefly. I noticed the temps fall pretty quickly, but didn't think much of it as I had the lid up. I close the lid and let it do it's thing. A few minutes pass and I bring up the app and the temp is showing 135. Better go look.
The grill is cooled off. I can hear pellets dropping, but no heat, no flame. I pull the grates, the covers and find a flood of pellets down the slide, covering the burn pot and falling to the bottom of the grill. I put the grill in shutdown mode, but then decided to just turn it off. As I understand it, the system blast heat to burn the remaining pellets during shutdown and I didn't need that. So I cleaned up the pellets and turned it back on.
When it restarted, it had an error for not completing the shutdown process. I started the shutdown process and it just basically ran the auger backwards and said it was complete.
I started it back up and it fired up and ran fine up to 450. Since it was hot, I decided to put some frozen apple tarts in and see how it would handle them. The instructions said 400 for 20 mins. So, I set the temp to 400 and waited for the temp to settle. The temp dropped to 335 and seemed to just hang there. I went out to see if it was still running and it was. It just wouldn't climb in temp, so I set it to 420. It took off and climbed to 420 and stayed. I turned it back down to 400 and it dropped back down to 350 and looked like it wasn't going to recover. So, I adjust back to 420 and it took off to 420 and stayed. Just odd.
I ended up cooking them at 420 and it took 25 mins although it was recommended for 400 for 18-20 mins. I was cooking on the upper level. Maybe that affected the time it took to cook???
Not giving up yet, wish I had more time to cook so that I had a better idea on the quality and performance. With all the negative comments, I wonder why Weber isn't responding.