In this review
Verdict
The appeal is a cook that needs less attention
Attention is the product. You set a number and the controller manages the element, so the cook asks less of you than a live fire. The wood still needs checking, but there are no vents to chase or fuel bed to rebuild.
The word digital is doing heavy lifting in the name. What it buys is a thermostat and a display. That is not a complaint. A thermostat is exactly what a nine-hour pork butt wants, and it is the one thing a firebox will never hand you.
The 710 square inches arrive as four chrome-coated racks stacked in a box 23.6 inches wide. The stacked layout uses little patio, but every piece of food still has to fit on one rack.
Shape is the useful way to read the capacity. Four racks hold ribs and pork shoulders well. They hold nothing wider than one rack. A cabinet is a filing system for meat, and a whole packer brisket may not file without bending or splitting it.
Power, wood chips and cleanup
Power first. The cabinet has to reach an outlet, so measure the run before you pick the spot. If the run is too long, move the smoker. Check the manual before you reach for an extension cord, because makers are specific about that and the manual outranks convenience every time.
Wood second. Electric cabinets make smoke from chips, and chips burn down faster than splits. The fire is automatic. The smoke is not. Plan on walking out there through a long cook, which is far less often than an offset demands and rather more often than the brochure implies.
Then the ordinary tax. Four racks means four racks to scrub, and grease finds the bottom of a vertical box the way water finds a drain. A cover if it lives outside, because an electric cabinet is a box of electronics standing out in whatever the weather is doing. A second thermometer, because a built-in probe is a component, not a referee. None of that is exotic. All of it is money after the sticker.
Storage is easy to plan and harder to lift. Assembled, it stands 23.6 inches wide, 42.1 inches tall and 22.8 inches deep. If the smoker has to go up stairs or into a truck bed, confirm the assembled weight before delivery and plan the route first.
Low and slow is the only job
Nothing you cook in this cabinet comes out with a crust. Chicken skin stays soft. A steak stays grey and mildly disappointed. The number behind all of that is 275°F, the top of a settable range that starts at 100°F. In metric the same range reads 37 to 135°C.
Both ends earn their place. A floor of 100°F is a real number rather than a vague promise of low, and it matters for jerky and for anything that wants heat closer to warm than to cooking. The ceiling carries the whole argument. Ribs, pork shoulder and brisket all live under 275°F, so on a smoking day the limit costs you nothing. It costs you everything the first time the plan changes at four in the afternoon and somebody produces steaks.
One machine that does one thing correctly beats one machine that half-does four. You just have to know which thing you bought.
Door discipline, and the brisket question
An electric element recovers on its own schedule. Every time the door opens, the cabinet dumps heat and the element starts clawing it back, and on a cold windy day that climb is the slowest thing the machine does. The workable habit costs nothing. Spritz less, peek less, and treat the door as the most expensive control on the smoker.
The other planning question is width. 710 square inches arrives as four racks in a cabinet 23.6 inches wide, and no shelf takes anything wider than the box. A whole packer brisket is a measure-first purchase. Measure the meat, measure the rack, and be ready to bend the flat or cut it in half.
Delivery-day checks and the parts that matter
Electric cabinets fail in a short list of ways. The seal goes first, and a cabinet that leaks smoke is leaking heat with it. The control board goes second, and on a machine with no auger, no firepot and no burner, the board and the element are the entire product. There is far less here to break than in a pellet grill. There is also far less to fall back on. When the board dies, the cabinet becomes a locker.
That puts the 1 year warranty in its proper light. One year is one year, and it happens to cover the only two parts that matter. Read Masterbuilt's terms for what each part actually carries, and keep the model number somewhere you can find it when you make the call: MB20070421.
On the day it lands, do three things before any meat goes in. Slide all four racks out and back. Shut the door and look for daylight around the seal. Then run the board up empty and watch it climb and hold. Problems announce themselves on an empty cabinet in an hour. On a loaded one they wait until midnight.
Cross-shop, and when the other machine wins
If smoking is the whole job, this cabinet is easy to recommend exactly as far as that job goes. The interesting cases are the ones where it loses.
No outlet, or the smoking happens at a campsite or a tailgate. The cord ends the argument and propane wins outright. Masterbuilt builds the same cabinet idea around a burner in the 40-inch ThermoTemp, and the electric vs propane comparison shows where each fuel fits.
One machine for everything. Wrong category entirely, and the pellet vs electric vs propane guide is the page to start on.
Smoking and searing, with room for two cookers. Keep the specialist and put heat next to it. The Weber Original Kettle 22 is the obvious partner, and if the second cooker should run on a dial instead of a fire, the Weber Spirit E-325 is the gas answer. The rest of the field is on the pellet grills and smokers page.