The Breville Smart Grill [ Breville Smart Grill Pro Model BGR820XL ] is for culinary people who are serious about owning an electric grill that will get a lot of use. This is an awesome grill.
If you are a serious home cook and serious about sandwich making then this is the perfect sandwich maker grill for you. We recommend you get one and start enjoying some of the best sandwich maker features in this smart grill for the home.
It’s an excellent product and one that we really enjoyed testing in the Kitchen Authority kitchens. We’ll be adding this product to our next version of the Kitchen Authority Guide to The Best Sandwich Makers.
Let’s take a close look at the Breville Smart Grill features we loved and then talk about a few minor flaws which just stop this from becoming an all-time favorite.
The Features Of The Breville Smart Grill Reviewed
When you start examining the Breville BGR820XL it soon becomes clear why it has such a high price tag:
- Element IQ: Element IQ is Breville’s patented smart heating technology. It’s used in several of their devices and not just the BGR820XL and it’s there to ensure that heat is always consistently distributed over the surface of whatever you are cooking. It’s built to make sure that you get the meal you want every time.
- Heating Coils: The heating coils are actually embedded into the grill plates. That’s a great idea which ensures that you don’t need to spend as much time pre-heating the device before you start cooking and it saves a few minutes when you’re in a rush. We loved this when cooking a meal on a school day for our kids.
- Variable Heating Controls: You can pick one of three settings using the LCD readout and they are Low, Panini and Sear. This is more than hot enough to sear meat and to cook whatever you want without worrying about whether it will be properly heated through.
- The Timer Controls: We liked the easy to rotate dial that allowed for instant control over how long cooking would take. There’s also a built in power off function if the display isn’t touched for an hour which is important to ensure that you don’t accidentally set fire to your kitchen. The alarm function is loud enough to catch your attention without driving you crazy.
- The BBQ Function: You don’t have to use this grill as a press. You can flip it all the way open and set the lid flat and then you can cook BBQ on the exposed flat surface. There’s 260 square inches of space available to do your BBQ on and that’s more than enough to cook for the whole family.
- Adjustable height settings: You can avoid having your food crushed flat by using these settings to ensure a different pressure on chicken than you’d use on bread, for example. We thought this was really important and it makes the Breville Smart Grill really easy to get great results from.
- Removable drip tray: This makes for much easier cleaning and that’s something we always like to see on a smart device. We don’t want to find that once the cooking is done we’re going to be spending 2 hours slaving over the kitchen sink getting it clean. Features like this recognize that your time is valuable, and we like it a lot.
Breville® Limited Product Warranty
All Breville® products have at least a one-year limited product warranty, valid from the date of purchase. Should your Breville® product have a defect in product material or workmanship within the Warranty period, Breville® will arrange to have your original product returned to us, and either deliver an identical or comparable replacement to you, free of charge or apply such other remedy as described below. Some models may have longer warranty periods on the product or specific components so please consult the individual product warranty for complete terms and conditions.
The Minor Flaws Of The BGR820XL Disclosed
As much as we really like the BGR820XL we did find some minor flaws with the Breville Smart Grill too and it would be remiss of us to fail to mention them:
- No Truly Low Temperature: The variable temperature control works brilliantly but the lowest setting is 320 degrees Fahrenheit and we’d have preferred something a bit lower for really gently cooking or warming food that has already been cooked.
- Additional grill plates should be included: You can buy additional grill plates to give extra functionality to the Breville Smart Grill but we really feel that at this price; they ought to be included in the box as standard. We don’t think you ought to have to lay out even more money to get the most from a purchase.
- No cleaning tool in the box: We don’t get this. Nearly every grill that you buy comes with a cleaning tool included now – we’re not sure why this one doesn’t. It’s not hard to clean, mind you but it could be easier with a specialist tool.
Overall: The Breville Smart Grill Review
This is an impressive grill system that cooks brilliantly. We were also impressed with how much oil it seems to extract from meats that other grills don’t. That should lead to healthier meals as well.
Our complaints were minor so we do recommend this product with the caveat that you make sure that it’s exactly right for your family before you shell out the fairly hefty purchase price for it.
It’s definitely worth it!
