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Two numbers. That's all you need when shopping for a gas grill—and they aren't the numbers the manufacturers are touting. First consider your budget and then the number of people usually gathered around the table. Then look to Consumer Reports' updated Ratings of dozens of gas grills.
Despite the claims on the boxes and the exclamation points in ads, you want a grill with a cooking surface that matches the amount of food you typically cook. Our testers group grills based on our measurements of the main cooking area but manufacturers often count warming racks and searing burners in their claims. And while you'd expect that larger grills have bigger cooking surfaces, there are exceptions. Take the Brinkmann Vertex Sear 810-3885-S, above, for example. It's nearly six feet wide yet its cooking area fits just 20 burgers.
There's one more number that manufacturers boast about that can be confusing. Btu, or British thermal units/hour, indicate how much gas a grill uses and the heat it can create, but our gas grill tests have found that a higher Btu doesn't guarantee faster preheating or better cooking.
—Kimberly Janeway
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