Far from being wowed by anything you can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes I did a ton of research on grills. Not willing to accept my stepfathers warning that they are all the same and all go bad in a couple years even if they are 400 dollars, I started to find that the construction of better made and more expensive grills keeps them around for a long time. Price does not equal quality mind you but there is a difference, you just have to know what to look for. Better steel to keep from rusting, cast components to make it more sturdy so it doesn't flex like a branch in the wind, insulated hoods, cast parts instead of stamped, etc. Things like burner construction, heat distribution and heat up time can vary wildly between different grills. I'll compare this to a 450 dollar grill my parents picked up from The Great Indoors / Sears (maybe Grill Master or something) It made it about 3 years and started rusting through in Michigan and blew over in a bad storm. Basically it's trashed and they already bought a new one. (cheaper this time thinking that was always going to happen)
Construction:
Theirs : stainless steel hood and shelves painted panels, nut and bolts through flimsy painted black steel panels of the cabinet. Joints were folded ends of the panel. Burners were standard tube style with a 90'd piece of aluminium or the same flimsy steel as the sides. Cast iron grates, what you would expect to find on everyday grills.
The E330: First of all the box and grill weigh 190 pounds. I'll let that sink in for a second. 190 pounds.... The panels are thicker than you would expect. Framing the panels....welded square tube stock. Now THAT is how you make a durable piece of equipment. All through the process you will find welded support pieces attachment points, cast pieces, etc. Very impressed. Just a handful of nuts and bolts and the rest are machine screws into tapped holes. That's right the steel is thick enough to run a tap through and thread the holes for the screws! All my experience with cheap grills over the years, who knew?! Anyway back to assembly. Everything fit VERY well. No bending, forcing, cussing. Follow the instructions and this thing goes together like a precision machine. Burner and hood construction? This impressed me before I even turned it on. Sure the typical tube burners are present but then you also have porcelain coated iron plates that go underneath the burners to reflect the heat up (wow that's new), porcelain coated iron heat distributors or flavor bars I think they call them to go over the burners. Basically just 90 degree folded strips that that run front to back over the burners and even the space where there are no burners. Really? Between the burners? Weird but ok, probably for good reason. The grates, I opted for cast iron. And these suckers are about twice as thick as what you see in other grills. Great for retaining heat and searing food, which I had yet to do on any gas grill to this point. The hood is nice and durable and insulated on the inside very well. When you're done it effortlessly glides around the patio on its castors but if you lock it into place it's solid as a rock. Go ahead try to make it flex, I dare you. Oh yeah and it looks like a million bucks. chrome and stainless trim powder coated panels. My wife who was an extremely hard sell on spending $700 on a grill walked out and said "Wow, that's a NICE grill."
OK on to the good part...cooking: I won't even go into the part about how my parents grill cooks food. If this isn't your first grill you already know how much it's not what it's cracked up to be. Go get a Weber charcoal and spend the extra time to get superb results with cooking steak. By the way my wife told me she wouldn't be upset if I got rid of mine (a gift from her) to which I replied HELL NO I'm not getting rid of that!
So I read somewhere that BTU's don't mean squat. And that makes sense to me now after assembling this sucker. If you don't have correct heat distribution and insulation, the cold air hitting that hood, etc will make it take forever to heat up. Keep in mind this only has 3 burners (left middle and right) and they sneak in one more between the left and middle and call it the "searing burner" or "searing station" and you'll see why in a minute. I haven't officially clocked it but if you turn on the main 3 burners on high this thing is at 500 degrees in the blink of an eye. Which for the purpose of this review we'll concentrate on how well this thing cooks steak since you can technically cook hamburgers and hotdogs on any grill. 500 degrees is roughly where you want to be for the baking part of the process. First you sear then you move to indirect heat and let it cook for a few. OK so back on track...500 degrees in a flash, we're talking 5-7 minutes. Parents grill 20..at LEAST and I have yet to leave sear marks on a steak over there, even letting theirs get up to 800 degrees. (This is where the heat distribution, flavor bars, whatever they call them, come into play. The WHOLE grill is hot, not just over the burners.) With the Weber you now fire up the searing burner on high, turn the right burner to low (equivalent to indirect heat on a charcoal) and slap your steaks on. Listen to them crack and sizzle. Go ahead, spin em at a minute and a half you will already have sear marks, might as well make some more! Flip em after 3 minutes (this is where other grills fail big time) and what do you know they are STILL sizzling on the hot grates! I still think charcoal cooked steak tastes better but I was seriously impressed by this point. I totally expected this thing to run out of steam and the grill to cool down too much to leave any marks on the 2nd side of the steak. And because of the thick cast iron grates you've got some big time sear action on those puppies. Exactly what the mission is with steak. Seal it up so the juices stay inside. So now you turn off the searing burner and throw the steaks off to the right, close the lid and let em cook for just a few minutes at about 500 degrees. I don't even need to tell you how they tasted because you've had a beautifully cooked steak before and you just did it on a gas grill for 700 bucks and 18 minutes of your time from start to finish. Now I'll tell you a funny story about hot dogs. After heating the grill up I put this on medium heat on 2 burners and threw some hot dogs on there. I left expecting to come back in a few minutes to flip them. I came back MAYBE 10 minutes later (rule number 1 don't get distracted from cooking) The hot dogs were beyond done. And I'm not talking about burnt on the bottom. They looked like they survived Hiroshima blast and were equally burnt ALL THE WAY AROUND THEM! You couldn't tell which part was facing own. Anyway funny story but it shows you how fast this cooks and how well it uses that heat under the hood. I screwed up my lunch and was still impressed. Now that's a grill. And burgers a few nights later. Nice thick black sear marks and juicy as all getup, enough said.
Obviously I'm very excited about this purchase because I never write reviews and this is a bit long. haha I found one article that gave this grill a stellar review for its price point and it has not disappointed me yet. I would be weary that other models might have different construction and all Weber grills might not be built the same (they need to have something different among their price ranges) but I can tell you first hand that this Genesis E-330 grill is the real deal and it won't break the bank to do it. I know 700 is 300 more than a sears Kenmore special but I'll happily go up against their $1000+ stainless model too. And I'll be happy to come back in 10 years and tell you how great it still is because there is no doubt in my mind it is built to last and is an impressive piece of cooking appliance. If you need/want a grill and can afford around $700 (Notice I didn't ask if you WANTED to spend $700 because I was skeptical at first too, I asked if you could "afford" it) pull the trigger on this thing. If the cooking space is what you need you will be as ecstatic about the results as I am.