jetfxr27
is one Smokin' Farker
This is a review of the wGrill V2 from the BBQ Brethren member woodpelletsmoker @ allchinas.com. I have reviewed some of Wang's other items and this review will be the same. Open and honest.
Here we go!!
Full disclosure: woodpelletsmoker gave me this item as a demo to review based off the number of hits on my last review of my Golden-Lion ATC. :blah::blah:
As always the item arrived to the middle of america all the way from middle of China in less than two weeks. I used the wGrill on 4 different occasions. Below are pictures and notes from different times. I also compared the wGrill to its main competitor, iGrill. iGrill is bluetooth vs. wGrill which is wifi. Wifi gives you greater range. I did notice on both devices that commiting my wifi or bluetooth to either device was bothersome. Mainly because I use them both for other things around the house while cooking, ie. surfing the web (wifi) or music (bluetooth).
The iGrill feels much more like a finished product. From the branding to the actual unit itself. The wGrill has all the features and then some, however its could stand some polishing. Having said that the price is substantially lower. Overall I like the more features the wGrill adds for the price.
A view of the packaging. Looks like left overs from the packing room floor were just tossed in. Oh well, still arrived in perfect shape.
Here it all is unpacked minus the antenna. It was in the box I just missed it for this photo. I beleive the v2 which I have is a much higher quality build. The buttons have nice feedback and the design is well laid out.
Up close and personal with wGrill.
The business side. All hook ups are on one side which make it convenient.
First power up. Fired right up. Default is Celsius and the alarm sounds :wacko:LOUD :wacko: by default on power up, although easily silenced. I also notice the probes temp bounces around a little with any movement. This was rectified by pushing them in all the way. The probes are high quality. They are also pretty substantial, enough that they tend to push the unit around when plugged in as the unit itself is fairly light.
First shot in action on the grill. Fired up the XL BGE to run some tests. I had a spare cell phone battery bank that worked perfectly here. The power for this thing comes from a mini USB (5 volts). This is very convenient as these powerbanks are fairly low cost and last long enough for a full cook. An option for Alkalines here would be nice, however would add size.
First attempt to get a signal to my iPhone. No real instructions on how to make it work. I first tried to go to the ip address directly. Nothing. I checked out my wifi settings on my iPhone and saw "Hi Link" network show up. Clicked it and typed in 192.168.0.1 into the safari browser. Boom, the page comes right up and its showing a moving map of my probes temps. Pretty darn simple. First screen shows current temp graph and second shows history. A third hidden screen is the setup screen.
My intent was to have it setup so it could be viewed externally from anywhere in the world. However that is going to take some more tinkering. Wang says its possible, which I know other brethren have got it to work, however its not as straight forward as using it at home on your local network. When I get that feature figured out I will post the link here for everyone to view.
Here's a view of the temp page. You can see it can be a bit difficult to see on an iPhone. You can pinch and zoom but if you're in the graph area it doesn't zoom well. Also the Celsius Fahrenheit button to switch defaults to Celsius and has odd characters. This needs a lot of work to make the user experience better. Also when page refreshing it goes back to Celsius.
The display can be difficult to read in much sunlight. Also the LED's on the front are extremely bright.
Another shot of the whole setup.
Here is a shot next to the iGrill which this item is competing directly against.
Close up of the super high quality ( almost too high quality) temp probes. I say almost to high because the probes are built so much better than the device the probes and probe wires are so much stronger that the device is pushed around by the probe and probe wires.
Here is a shot of the iGrill and wGrill side by side
Here is another side by side. The iGrill uses 4 AA batteries and I have the wGrill being powered by a cell phone batery booster. Neither batteries were an issue for this short cook (chicken).
Here is a graph of the history of my cook. You can see the smoothing logic in work here.The big drop is when I put the meat on. You can see the blue line stayed low. That was my meat probe.
Pros:
Price, Price , Price
Feature rich
Heavy duty sealed probes with steel braided wires and heat shrinked sealed ends
Quick shipping
Good range
Simple web interface
Cons:
Over all User experience
Unit doesnt feel as high a quality as the iGrill
No Option for alkaline batteries
No manual or real instructions
Can't read in sunlight
Thanks for reading along.
Here we go!!
Full disclosure: woodpelletsmoker gave me this item as a demo to review based off the number of hits on my last review of my Golden-Lion ATC. :blah::blah:
As always the item arrived to the middle of america all the way from middle of China in less than two weeks. I used the wGrill on 4 different occasions. Below are pictures and notes from different times. I also compared the wGrill to its main competitor, iGrill. iGrill is bluetooth vs. wGrill which is wifi. Wifi gives you greater range. I did notice on both devices that commiting my wifi or bluetooth to either device was bothersome. Mainly because I use them both for other things around the house while cooking, ie. surfing the web (wifi) or music (bluetooth).
The iGrill feels much more like a finished product. From the branding to the actual unit itself. The wGrill has all the features and then some, however its could stand some polishing. Having said that the price is substantially lower. Overall I like the more features the wGrill adds for the price.
A view of the packaging. Looks like left overs from the packing room floor were just tossed in. Oh well, still arrived in perfect shape.
Here it all is unpacked minus the antenna. It was in the box I just missed it for this photo. I beleive the v2 which I have is a much higher quality build. The buttons have nice feedback and the design is well laid out.
Up close and personal with wGrill.
The business side. All hook ups are on one side which make it convenient.
First power up. Fired right up. Default is Celsius and the alarm sounds :wacko:LOUD :wacko: by default on power up, although easily silenced. I also notice the probes temp bounces around a little with any movement. This was rectified by pushing them in all the way. The probes are high quality. They are also pretty substantial, enough that they tend to push the unit around when plugged in as the unit itself is fairly light.
First shot in action on the grill. Fired up the XL BGE to run some tests. I had a spare cell phone battery bank that worked perfectly here. The power for this thing comes from a mini USB (5 volts). This is very convenient as these powerbanks are fairly low cost and last long enough for a full cook. An option for Alkalines here would be nice, however would add size.
First attempt to get a signal to my iPhone. No real instructions on how to make it work. I first tried to go to the ip address directly. Nothing. I checked out my wifi settings on my iPhone and saw "Hi Link" network show up. Clicked it and typed in 192.168.0.1 into the safari browser. Boom, the page comes right up and its showing a moving map of my probes temps. Pretty darn simple. First screen shows current temp graph and second shows history. A third hidden screen is the setup screen.
My intent was to have it setup so it could be viewed externally from anywhere in the world. However that is going to take some more tinkering. Wang says its possible, which I know other brethren have got it to work, however its not as straight forward as using it at home on your local network. When I get that feature figured out I will post the link here for everyone to view.
Here's a view of the temp page. You can see it can be a bit difficult to see on an iPhone. You can pinch and zoom but if you're in the graph area it doesn't zoom well. Also the Celsius Fahrenheit button to switch defaults to Celsius and has odd characters. This needs a lot of work to make the user experience better. Also when page refreshing it goes back to Celsius.
The display can be difficult to read in much sunlight. Also the LED's on the front are extremely bright.
Another shot of the whole setup.
Here is a shot next to the iGrill which this item is competing directly against.
Close up of the super high quality ( almost too high quality) temp probes. I say almost to high because the probes are built so much better than the device the probes and probe wires are so much stronger that the device is pushed around by the probe and probe wires.
Here is a shot of the iGrill and wGrill side by side
Here is another side by side. The iGrill uses 4 AA batteries and I have the wGrill being powered by a cell phone batery booster. Neither batteries were an issue for this short cook (chicken).
Here is a graph of the history of my cook. You can see the smoothing logic in work here.The big drop is when I put the meat on. You can see the blue line stayed low. That was my meat probe.
Pros:
Price, Price , Price
Feature rich
Heavy duty sealed probes with steel braided wires and heat shrinked sealed ends
Quick shipping
Good range
Simple web interface
Cons:
Over all User experience
Unit doesnt feel as high a quality as the iGrill
No Option for alkaline batteries
No manual or real instructions
Can't read in sunlight
Thanks for reading along.
