Spring and summer days are here, and now is the perfect time to start grilling. You can choose from all kinds, including pellet grills, portable grills and traditional charcoal grills. However, the classic gas grill continues to reign supreme when it comes to backyard cooking.
The best gas grills are simple to use, making them perfect for newbies. They ignite fast and heat up quickly. Most have plenty of room to fix a feast for the entire family. If you're worried about limited backyard space, it's not hard to track down a compact model to fuel your outdoor cooking adventures. Some of today's best gas grills also come jam-packed with nifty extras, from side burners to special sear stations to built-in lighting for evening cooking.
So if you're on the hunt for a quality gas grill, you're in luck. We are showing off three of our top picks for summer cookouts here. If you have a specific type of grill in mind, go to CNET and find .
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Best grill overall: Monument Denali 605 six-burner
CNET TAKE: While a giant six-burner grill may not be for everyone, the Monument Denali is the perfect balance of modern thinking, a good price point and quality one would expect from our top pick. Like any smart modern grill, the Denali has temperature probes to accurately cook your food and uses an app to connect the probes to your phone. You can set the app to alert you when your food reaches the correct temperature or after a certain time limit.
The size of the Denali is impressive, giving you room to easily cook for an entire party of guests. We especially like the little slots for hanging your drumsticks to let them cook evenly. All the food we tested was tender, and the probes did a good job of pinpointing the right temperature. The medium-rare steaks were perfectly cooked, and the burger patties were browned evenly across the entire range. The addition of the burner to the side meant we could cook up some delicious barbecue beans at the same time as the meat, and so we didn't need to bounce from inside to out to keep everything cooking.
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Best midrange model: Char-Broil Commercial 3-Burner
CNET TAKE: Char-Broil's three-burner stainless steel model comes in at almost half the price of the Monument model above. At $550, you'll get a liquid propane and natural gas grill that can handle most cooking challenges with ease.
Char-Broil uses what it calls Tru-Infrared, a set of perforated emitter plates that separate food from flame to evenly distribute heat and reduce flare-ups. There were definitely fewer flare-ups compared with other models in our testing, but you won't be able to see the flame when you're lighting the grill or adjusting the temperature, so keep that in mind.
You'll get less power than the Weber at 25,500 BTUs over 420 square inches of primary cooking area space, and there aren't any smart grilling features for remote monitoring. This Char-Broil model does have a side burner as well as tank storage behind two cabinet doors. If you're looking to stay closer to $500, this outdoor grill with stainless steel burners offers the best balance of features and performance among the models we've tested.
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Best compact gas grill: Monument Grills Tabletop Propane Gas Grill
CNET TAKE: When space is limited, finding the right grill to give you the taste you want can be hard. This gas grill from Monument is compact on the outside but surprisingly large on the inside. It's big enough to cook a spatchcocked turkey or several large steaks, and because it's a gas grill, it's ready as soon as you want to use it.
We took it camping with a family of six, and it easily kept everyone well-fed in burgers and hot dogs. It's lightweight and easy to carry and can be set on any picnic table. The drip tray underneath crosses the entire base, making it great at catching debris, but can be a pain to clean. We would have liked it to be a funneled drip pan, but that would have added weight and depth so the compromise is understandable.
If you only have a small outdoor space or a little balcony in your condo, this would be a great addition to make your grilling dreams come true.
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