It will be interesting to see how things all sort out. I know that more and more people ask me about pellet grills. I rebuilt a Broilmaster gas grill for my pastor in Florida a year and a half ago. Very capable gasser. He went out and bought a Traeger. I see more and more pellet grills, models and pellets for sale in all the big box stores and fewer good gas grills and way fewer charcoal units. Less charcoal, too.
As far as the SmokeFire, I keep trying to warm up to this thing. It obviously can produce wonderful results as we have seen, but it does look to me to have a very "moody" side to it as well, to say the least. My Rec Tec just chugs along cook after cook never complaining or doing any of the odd things people here have reported about their SmokeFires. Still, the SmokeFire has this special appeal - a WEBER pellet grill, and one with some very innovative thinking. They just HAVE to get all these issues worked through!
I've had way too many pellet grills over the past decade and the SmokeFire is definitely moody. Maybe the best description I've heard for it yet. I've had a couple other poopers that were problematic, but they were predictably problematic, one was going to cover everything in ash all the time and the other was likely going to have a grease fire if I cooked anything remotely greasy and guaranteed if I bumped the temp from 225 to 300 towards the end of the cook to try to eat sooner.
If you have a solution you are happy with, you are better to wait, but the Weber also outlooks every pellet grill I've had by a long shot, high and low. Nothing sears and grills anything like it. It's almost as good at grilling as my Spirit E-330 was, but also adds flavor that my gasser did not. The SmokeFire produces more smoke flavor at 275 than all my other poopers would an any temp, meaning I can save a lot of times on cooks versus cooking always at 225 or starting the first couple hours there to get enough smoke before bumping up a Traeger or CampChef.
However, I don't trust it like I did the others. I keep a very close eye on it all the time like having a toddler around. I run my Fireboard in it every LnS cook and even some hot cooks. I've probably wasted at least 2-3 full bags of pellets maybe more just running Fireboard graphing tests the next day watching 4-6 spots in the grill at various temps after running into something quirky. So far I've tolerated it because the end results have been very satisfying and I've only ruined one meal because of issues with the grill. Temps got way off and probes stopped responding on a cook making me think food wasn't done yet and then pork burgers were 200+ when I finally realized the controller must be acting wonky and checked them with my Thermopen. Every time there's a Software or Firmware update I get excited...then usual cringe thinking about what new moods did they introduce and did they really remove any of the moods I'd finally gotten used to.
Weather also seems to be a big variable with the SmokeFire. It's usually always breezy here if not just plain windy. Like 5-10 MPH is what we call a completely wind free day and most days anymore (or at least every time I want to grill) seem to be 15-25 MPH winds. This wind, especially when combined with cold, seem to cause issues with uneven temps and getting to temp. It's not surprising with the leaky lid with the probe ports at the top and the 3 giant vents in the back combined with single wall construction as well as other paths for air to move through the drip try, etc. I have to be very careful to orient my grill the correct way. A couple times I've fired up the grill in a hurry ran back inside to prep food and begin wondering why after 20-30 minutes I'm stuck at 125-150 degrees. Then I usually find the wind is blowing straight into the vents, go out turn the grill 90 degrees and within a few minutes jump right to set temp.
Putting a probe port on the side and flattening the lid to remove that solution for probe wires, adding a lid gasket, making some vent extensions (like ReqTec offers), and offering an insulation cover would probably make this pit a ton more reliable. The vent extensions might also keep the hopper lid from getting so nasty. Users shouldn't have to engineer their products with these solutions though. They're in Chicago, they know what cold and wind are.
I have to admit that lately I've been considering replacing or supplementing the SmokeFire with a MAK that I feel I'll be able to trust without keeping a close eye on. I'll probably keep the SF around for grilling duties because I don't have a gasser anymore and don't know that I'd be able to sell it with the reputation it has. It's an absolutely fabulous cooker, when it's in a good mood.