It's hard to beat the flavor of an offset but as you know they require more tending. The WSM has a real good smoke flavor but for some reason different from a stick burner but is almost hassle free, the pellet popper doesn't have as strong a smoke flavor as most are accustom to so they usually end up using a smoke generator to strengthen the smoke flavor but are stinking easy to use and yes they do require an electrical source how ever it doesn't have to be from a wall outlet, they will run off a 300 watt power inverter or at least a Traeger will. Now you have the fuel costs to deal with. You can find wood almost anywhere for your stick burner and a lot of times it's free, now the WSM can use lump or briquettes both are easy enough to fine and usually can be found on sale at certain times of the year which means you just have to find wood chunks for flavoring which can be purchased at Lowes or Home Depot or you can cut chunks from the free sources stick burners use which leaves us the pellet popper, they will only burn the rabbit food looking pellets and they can sometimes be hard to find and are usually more expensive than charcoal or wood and if you find a cheaper distributor on line you'll more than likely have to pay a shipping cost which can make you wince a little unless you buy , oh lets say, about a ton of them then you may be able to get a brake on shipping. I like all of them, each has a place or purpose depending on my mood.
I can cook a typical KCBS competition on 8 lbs of pellets. 8 lbs costs me about $3. That's running the smoker for 16 hours.
