The Traeger Trailhead at Costco is the newest portable pellet grill in the Traeger product line. The Trailhead comes as a bundle with a couple of other accessories and costs $400.
We have been playing around with the Traeger Trailhead for a while now and wanted to share our hands on grill review. The short version of this review is:
We love the Trailhead but really, really wish we had bought the Traeger Ranger or a Pit Boss instead.
This review will cover the key features of the grill, how it performs, portability and the registration process.
What Comes in the Costco Bundle
The Costco bundle comes with the grill, a carry case and a power inverter.
The Grill
The Trailhead has a curved handle and that is the only visible external difference from the Traeger Ranger. Apparently this model was developed to replace the Traeger Scout which was an absolute piece of junk.
The grill is small with overall dimensions of 21″W x 13″H x 20″D and weighs in at around 45 pounds. This is the perfect sized grill to stick in your RV. It is also great for when you are just cooking for a couple of folks and don’t feel like firing up a massive grill.
Assembly is a breeze and can be completed in under 20 minutes.
The lid has two latches on the front to keep it closed when moving it and to make a tighter seal when cooking. I never close the latch on the right side of the grill because it gets super hot when the grill is in use.
The Carry Case
The Carry Case is attractive and serves two purposes. It keeps your vehicle clean when you are transporting the grill and it makes the grill easier to carry.
The trick about the Carry Case is that it only makes the grill easier to carry if you have two people with each person taking one strap and carrying the grill in between them.
If you try using the Carry Case alone the long straps will frustrate you as they actually make the process harder for an individual person.
The Power Inverter
The Power Inverter is well intentioned but we will never use it.
The Inverter is designed to be hooked directly to your vehicles battery terminals and then it will covert the DC power from the battery into AC power for the grill.
The two problems with this setup are:
- We want to use the grill far away from where my truck is parked.
- The leads are so short that, unless you want to fire up a grill directly in front of your truck, you are going to have to use an extension cord.
It is much simpler to use a portable power supply like a Jackery to power the grill than it is to mess around with this inverter.
Overall I think the grill is great but we do not get any value from the accessories.
Key Features of the Trailhead
The Trailhead comes with the same Digital Arc Controller that is on the Traeger Ranger, Tailgater and Fremont. The controller gives the grill a temperature range of 215F-450F that is adjustable in five degree increments.
This controller does NOT have any WiFi capabilities or SuperSmoke mode but does have an input for the included meat probe.
The Controller Sucks
The controller has an input for an included meat probe as well as a “Keep Warm” button that drops the temperature of the grill to 215F.
The Keep Warm function on the Trailhead is a massive disappointment.
On the other three Traegers that come with the Digital Arc Controller the Keep Warm function drops the temperature of the grill to 165F, a full 50 degrees lower than what you can do with the Trailhead.
The 165F setting on the other grills is great for doing things like Smoked Cream Cheese or laying down a layer of extra smoke flavor on your ribs for an hour before you take them up to cooking temperature.
I can only think of two reasons why Traeger would set the Keep Warm temperature so much higher on this grill than the Ranger.
- The first is that it was an intentional act to make the more expensive Ranger grill a preferred option.
- The second is that there is something about the fan/motor in these repurposed Scout grill that prevents them from having precision low temperature control.
Either way, the controller is a disappointment.
Inside the Grill
The heat deflector is welded to the grease tray to make a one piece unit.
The welds look pretty decent and it is an overall nice design.
The cooking grate is a standard coated steel rod setup.
The total cooking area on the grate is confusing and misleading. The box says there are 184 square inches on cooking space which they get from the fact that the grate has dimensions of 11.5×16 inches.
In reality you really don’t want to use the full area as much of the grate extends past the grease tray. The areas that extend past the grease tray are much hotter and will allow grease to drip down to the firepot which could lead to grease fires.
If you keep your food directly over the grease tray (13.5×10.5 inches) like you should then you are going to have 141 square inches of grilling area.
The pellet hopper is inside the grill and holds four pounds of pellets. This is one of the main differences between the Trailhead and the Ranger as the Ranger’s hopper holds eight pounds of pellets.
The small hopper size doesn’t bother me as this grill doesn’t use many pellets due to its small size.
Performance Review
The short version is that the Trailhead performs like most Traegers in that it is an excellent smoker and a horrible grill.
We smoked up some St Louis style pork ribs and the Trailhead did great. We set the temperature to 250F and the grill settled in at the 240F-245F range. At one point the grill got up to 259F but overall the temperature control was pretty solid.
We got great color and a nice smoke flavor on the ribs.
We started with a full hopper of pellets and had plenty left over when the cook was done.
We tried searing a sirloin steak on the Trailhead and, as expected, it was a bit of a bust.
We set the temperature of the grill to 450F and it took about 20 minutes to get to temperature. We then let it preheat for another 30 minutes. The temperature actually got up to 504F by the time we put the steak on.
We really wanted to get some nice grill marks so we let the steak grill completely untouched for 7 minutes per side. The steak got some nice smoke color and flavor but absolutely nothing that resembled a sear.
The pellet hopper appears to be well designed. There is some channeling in the hopper but the pellets slide pretty well towards the auger. I still open the hopper every two hours to give the pellets a stir but I am not sure that is needed.
The one performance issue to be aware of is that the base of the grill fills up with sawdust and ash pretty quickly. This is a small grill so it doesn’t take much to look like a lot.
I would suggest using you shop vac to clean the ashes out much more frequently than you would for a full sized pellet grill. Fortunately the Trailhead is pretty easy to clean.
Portability of the Trailhead
When it comes to portability the question is, “How portable is it?”
The grill weighs almost 50 pounds when the hopper is full and while I can carry it I really don’t want to. The Carry Case isn’t helpful when I move the grill by myself and there are no side handles on the grill to make carrying easy.
We have converted our old garden wagon into a BBQ Wagon and use that to haul the grill around. We load up the BBQ Wagon with the Jackery portable power supply, extra pellets and a cooler of supplies and off we go!
Warranty and Registration
You will want to register the grill to activate the warranty. Here is the link to Traeger’s registration page.
When you register the grill you will need the serial number. The serial number for our grill was printed beside a QR code on the outside of the box.
You will also need to select the Grill Model from a drop down menu on the registration page. There is no option to select “Trailhead” from the dropdown menu. Instead you must select Model Number TFT18KLH which is found on the underside of the pellet hopper lid.
The warranty for the different components is as follows:
- Body, Hopper Cover = 7 years
- Grate = 3 years
- Fan, Auger, Motor, Controller = 3 years
- Hooves = 3 years
- Hot Rod, Cord, RTD, Thermocouple = 1 year
- Grease Drip Tray = 1 year
- Lid Gasket = 1 year
- Meat Probe = 1 year
We Should Have Bought Something Different
We are really enjoying the Trailhead but after using it for a while we realized that the Traeger Ranger is the better grill.
The bottom line is that the Ranger:
- Has a Bigger Hopper
- Comes with Better Accessories
- Performs Better at Low Temperature
Given the minor price difference between the two models it really makes more sense to get the Ranger.
If you have a bigger budget and want to get something really nice then check out the Traeger Fremont or the rather deluxe Traeger Redland, both of which are Costco exclusives.
We bought the Costco Trailhead package. For cooking burgers, steaks and other grilling it is great with our fifth wheel. As we have another Traeger at home, we assumed this would smoke meat. Just found out on a camping trip that it doesn’t. Very disappointing and something that should be identified clearly on the packaging.