I have always enjoyed eating food off of other people’s smokers but I honestly probably never would have bought a kamado-style smoker like a BGE or Kamado Joe with my own money. They were just too expensive for me to even consider it.
So the next best thing happened and I won a Kamado Joe Jr by having longest drive at a charity golf event. It’s a smaller grill, I think the cooking surface is 16 or 18”, but enough to get a full butt or a couple racks of ribs on. Now that I have had one for over a year I understand the hype. My brother-in-law has been talking about buying a BGE for years and when he saw mine he ended up buying a Kamado Joe. In my opinion they are comparble in almost every feature and you can usually end up getting a better deal on the KJs because they come with a lot of the accessories (stand, hand tools, etc.) our of the box that BGE charges big money for after you purchase the grill. I agree the BGE is definitely the standard and I still end up calling mine an “egg” a lot of times. All I’m sayin’ is if you’re considering a BGE purchase I would definitely recommend looking into KJ as well. I have been very happy with mine.