Electric Grills Reviews

Electric grills are a good way to cook vegetables, burgers and sandwiches without turning on your larger oven. They're typically used indoors, although in reviews and on consumer sites they're sometimes lumped together with outdoor tabletop and portable grills that use gas or charcoal.

We found the best professional reviews overall in cooking magazines. In addition to fairly well-documented tests at Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country, Prevention magazine has a good article rating four electric grills, and a review in The Wall Street Journal includes testing of five indoor grills. Slate.com pits an older George Foreman grill against several portable gas and charcoal models. About.com lists ten top indoor grills with brief rundowns of features of each model. Consumer Reports does not report test results for electric grills, but has some general buying advice. We also consulted owner-written reviews at Amazon.com, Epinions and Cooking.com, which are useful for spotting long-term durability issues.

According to the reviews we read, you may want to consider whether to buy an electric grill at all, as some reviewers contend that a heavy skillet works just as well for cooking burgers, grilled chicken and making panini-style sandwiches. There is little if any difference between the fat content of foods grilled on indoor grills versus those grilled on traditional grills, so justifying an electric grill as a health-improving cooking method is probably not reasonable.

One of the most highly rated grills in professional tests is the Krups Universal Grill and Panini Maker (*est. $80) . Despite its achieving near perfection in performance in Cook's Country's tests and earning a "best looking" recommendation at Prevention magazine, we found several user reviews claiming that this model suffers an unusually high rate of failure within several months of use. Out of more than 100 owner reviews at Amazon.com, the Krups grill earns an average rating of just 3 out of 5 stars -- a very low rating among electric grills.  ... Continued

Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
All The Reviews Reviewed chart.

We found recommendations for several different grills. The Sanyo Smokeless Indoor Electric Grill, an open grill, is a simple appliance that just works well, according to experts and owners. The DeLonghi BG24 also earns high marks in reviews.

The Cuisinart Griddler is more expensive, but it is also the most flexible. It can be used to press foods, but it can also be opened flat to double grilling space. Plus, the plates can be flipped to convert it to a flat griddle for eggs or pancakes. The Krups Universal Grill and Panini Maker also did very well in testing, but frequent owner complaints about its reliability push it into second place.