In this guide
Buy a pellet grill if the smoker also has to be your grill. Buy an electric cabinet if low and slow is the entire job and an outlet is close. Buy propane if the cooking happens where no cord reaches. That is the decision, and it turns on where the machine lives and what else you want out of it. Charcoal sits this one out. Tending a live fire is the exact job all three of these fuels were invented to take off your hands, so if that job is the part you like, you are in the wrong aisle.
Is a pellet grill worth it as your first smoker?
Yes, if it is going to be your grill too. One machine holds a set temperature off a digital controller and feeds its own fire, so a first brisket is mostly an exercise in waiting. You pay for that in money, in patio footprint, and in bags of pellets that need somewhere dry to live.
The Pit Boss FB2 pair puts the argument in one span. Both models run 180 to 500°F on a board that moves in 5°F steps. 180 is smoking. 500 is burgers on a Tuesday. One thermostat covering both ends is the reason people buy pellet at all, and it is a range neither Masterbuilt cabinet goes anywhere near.
Fuel is the catch. A controller holds its set point only while pellets keep arriving at the fire, so hopper size affects how often you need to check it. The 700 FB2 carries 21 pounds. The 500 FB2 carries 5. Neither number arrives with trustworthy hours attached, because burn rate moves with the set point, weather and fuel condition. Years on an older Traeger taught me to check the hopper before a long cook starts, not partway into one. Five pounds gives much less reserve than 21, but neither capacity promises a particular cook time. Learn the grill's consumption while you are awake before planning a long cook around it.
Searing is the standard pellet compromise, and Pit Boss answers it with a lever. The Flame Broiler slides the grates open onto direct flame. The Masterbuilt cabinets do not sear, do not claim to sear, and have made their peace with it. Warranty runs the same direction: 5 years on both FB2s, 1 year on both cabinets. Five years against one is not a rounding difference. It is two companies telling you how confident they are, in the only unit of confidence that costs them money.
Does an electric cabinet make real smoke?
It makes real smoke, with a mechanical reason to expect less of it. An element smolders chips rather than burning a live fire, which is why electric smoke has the mildest reputation of the three. If ribs and chicken with moderate smoke is the picture in your head, that is the format doing exactly the job it was built for. If you want bark you can hear, shop the live-fire fuels.
What electric gives back is a simple route to steady low heat. The Masterbuilt 30-inch Digital Electric has no live fuel fire to build, though it still needs wood chips, food-temperature checks and the supervision required by its manual. Set the controller, monitor the cook, and spend less time tending combustion.
That number has a hard ceiling. The board is settable from 100 to 275°F, and 275 is the honest top of the format. Nothing in a cabinet like this sears, and no accessory is going to talk it into searing. The 100°F floor is the more useful half of that spec, because the low end is where a smoker earns its keep. The propane cabinet's floor, by contrast, is a burner behavior rather than a board setting, and the next section is that trap.
The footprint is the other half of the pitch. 710 square inches across four chrome-coated racks, in a cabinet 42.1 inches tall standing on 23.6 by 22.8 inches. That fits in the corner of a patio where a barrel grill would only be in the way.
Why propane instead of electric?
Because a tank can serve an outdoor cooking spot with no suitable outlet. Electric and pellet smokers need power for the whole cook, so propane can suit a campsite, cabin or tailgate where the appliance is allowed and every required clearance can be maintained.
The 40-inch ThermoTemp is the propane edition of the same vertical idea: four chrome-coated racks sharing 960 square inches of total cooking space. It is a bigger box than the electric at 53 inches tall and 28.7 inches wide, so measure the corner before you commit to it.
Then the number that gets misread. Masterbuilt rates the ThermoTemp up to 375°F. Set that beside the electric's 100 to 275°F and the gas box reads as the hotter, more flexible machine, and that reading is the trap. The two are not the same kind of figure. One is a thermostat range with a floor. The other is a burner ceiling, and a gas cabinet settles its low end wherever the burner will sit without going out, which shifts with wind and with how much is left in the tank.
The classic propane failure is running dry mid-brisket, at the point where the meat is committed and you are not. This format has a built-in answer: a Type 1 regulator with a fuel gauge, so tank level is a needle you read before the cook instead of a fact you find out during it.
What each fuel asks of you after the sticker
An honest per-cook cost cannot be printed for any of these, because burn rate moves with the set point, the weather and how often the lid comes open. What you can compare is the shape of each bill.
Pellets are a bag you buy, haul and keep somewhere dry, and they are the only fuel here stored in a container small enough to empty partway through a cook. That is what hopper capacity is guarding. Electricity is the fuel already in the wall: no trips, no storage, nothing to run out of. Propane is a tank exchange, cheap to keep a spare of and deeply annoying to go fetch on a Sunday morning with the meat already on.
Both cabinets want wood on top of their fuel. Chips or chunks, continuously, because a cabinet with an empty chip tray is an oven with racks in it. Budget for a probe thermometer whichever fuel you pick, since a built-in dial reports one spot near the door and nothing about the rack the food is sitting on. A cover too, if the thing lives outside. Buy the thermometer first and the cover eventually. That is the right order and also the cheap one.
Winter raises fuel use on all three. Cold air and wind increase heat loss, so choose an outdoor position that follows the maker's clearance rules while avoiding the worst wind. Never move a smoker into a garage or other enclosed space to solve a weather problem.
How much cooking space you need, and what each number counts
Four people need less space than anything here offers on paper. The trap is that the four totals are not counted the same way. Pit Boss folds two tiers of racks into one figure: 518 square inches on the 500 FB2, 747 on the 700 FB2. Masterbuilt totals four stacked racks: 710 on the electric, 960 on the ThermoTemp. Every one of those numbers counts every shelf in the box, so measure the shelf that matters once the cabinet is standing. A cooking-area figure on a vertical cabinet measures the furniture, not the cook.
Shape decides more than the total. A vertical cabinet serves its space as shelves in a tall box, which suits racks of ribs and rows of sausage and suits nothing you have to flip. A pellet barrel serves most of its space as one flat grate, which is why it can moonlight as a grill and the cabinets cannot. A bigger cabinet stacks higher. It does not get wider.
If square inches are going to decide the purchase, find out what got counted before you compare them. What size pellet grill do you need works those totals through by class.
The shortlist, and when the other fuel wins
Pellet: the two Pit Boss FB2s share the controller, the 180 to 500°F range and the searing lever, so the hopper is the only real argument between them. The 700FB2 vs 500FB2 comparison settles it against how long your cooks actually run.
Electric or propane: the two Masterbuilt cabinets split on where the heat comes from and on what each temperature figure actually covers. The electric vs propane comparison walks through that call with both bases labeled.
Now the case for the fuel you did not pick. If the patio is small and smoking is the whole ambition, an electric cabinet takes less ground and asks less of you than any pellet grill, and the top of the pellet range buys you a number you will never set. If the smoker never leaves a spot with power in it, propane is a tank you bought the privilege of storing. And if the fire is the part you enjoy, none of these three is for you, because removing the fire is the entire thing you would be paying for. That is a charcoal answer, and nobody here will pretend it is a lesser one.
The pellet grills and smokers page collects every model covered here.