Traeger Silverton 810 at Costco {Better Value than Ironwood!}

The Traeger Costco Roadshow is happening in town this week and people are flooding over to see the massive and somewhat affordably priced Traeger Silverton 810.

If you are wondering what is special about the Silverton 810 and if it is the right grill for you then I hope this post can help you make the best purchasing decision.

Keep reading and we will cover:

• Key Features of the Grill (Both Obvious and Subtle)
• Real Customer Reviews of the Silverton 810 (What they Love, What they Dislike, Videos)
• Other Traeger Grills to Consider and Why

Features of the Traeger Silverton 810

There is a lot going on with the Silverton 810.  It is a massive grill and the Traeger sales rep is going to give you a lot of nonsense gibberish trying to talk you into buying this grill.

Please be nice to the sales rep as he is just trying to do his job.  That being said, don’t pay too much attention to what he is saying because of the four different ones I have dealt with, none of them truly understood the ins and outs of these grills.

Let’s take a minute to look at the primary features of the grill and then we will explore the subtle details that often get missed.

Primary Grill Features

The two primary features that the sales rep will point you towards are:

• Size of the Grill
• Advanced Control Panel

Size of the 810

The most obvious feature of the Silverton 810 is that it is a very large grill.  You get 810 square inches of cooking area with 550 sq inches on the primary grate and 260 sq in on the elevated grate.  This grill is large enough to handle multiple briskets and, unless you are running a commercial catering operation, you will never run out of space.

The downside of having such a large grill is that it simply takes more pellets to maintain temperatures in this grill than if you were working with a smaller Traeger.  The increased fuel usage becomes a larger factor when the grill is run at hotter temperatures.

To put things another way, although this grill has a top temperature of 500F, the increased pellet usage will make you think twice before you fire this grill up just to sear a couple of ribeye steaks.

Advanced Control Panel

The Silverton 810 comes with the D2 Direct Drive System coupled with the WiFire controller. Simply put, this is the best controller Traeger offers and is probably the best controller from any pellet grill manufacturer.

This controller is not a PID but it does utilize an advanced algorithm coupled to a precision DC power supply to enable highly precise temperature control (+/- 5F).

While many grills in the Traeger lineup have a version of this controller many of them, like the Pro 575 and Fremont, have been “throttled back” and do not have all of the available features.

Specifically, the extra features available on the controller for the 810 are:

• SuperSmoke Mode
• Keep Warm Mode
• Timer

These are features you can only get on the Silverton 810 and the upper high end Traegers like the Ironwood and Timberline series.

The WiFire System allow you to monitor and control you grill from your phone and the associated app is loaded with recipes, tips, etc.

Subtle Grill Features

The two big features that most people miss on this grill is the location of the grease drain and the rear mounted smoke exhaust.

Most pellet grills have a traditional side mounted smoke stack that allows the smoke to travel “Up and Out”  The problem with this arrangement is that it is easy for the smoke to exit the cooking chamber with very little interaction with the meat.  This leads to one of the biggest complaints about pellet grills in general, a lack of smoke flavor.

In contrast, the Silverton 810 does not have a smoke stack.  Instead, the smoke exhaust is located at the back of the grill near the same level as the cooking grate.  The rear mounted exhaust forces the smoke to flow “Down and Over” the meat providing more smoke flavor.

The grease drain for the 810 is located inside the enclosed cabinet instead being mounted on the outside of the grill like most models.

Placing the grease drain inside the cabinet is a great idea as it:

• Keeps dogs, racoons, rats, etc from feeding on the grease.
• Prevents you from accidently knocking the pail off when you add/remove the cover.

The downside of having the grease tray inside the grill is that it is out of sight and out of mind so it is easy to forget to take it out and clean it as needed.

Other Features Worth Mentioning

The 810 comes with a 20 pound pellet hopper that has an easy clean out chute for when you want to swap pellets.  You can also buy the pellet hopper sensor from Traeger and utilize it with the WiFire app to let you know when your hopper is low on fuel.

The grill comes with a nice side mounted work table with a couple of tool hooks.  It also has a front mounted tray that is a little too shallow to be of much use.  I have heard rumors of folks installing the front shelf upside down to create a nice condiment tray.

The 810 has double wall insulated construction for better heat retention and comes with a single integrated meat probe.

Customer Reviews of the Silverton 810

The Silverton 810 is only available from Costco and the time most folks buy them is during the Road Shows.  Because of the limited availability there are not a lot of customer reviews for this grill.

That being said, I did pull the existing customer reviews from the Costco website to see what owners actually thought about the 810.  There were 165 reviews and the summary is:

• 75% of owners love the Silverton 810 (Combined 5 and 4 Star Reviews)
• 13% of owners hate the Silverton 810 (Combined 1 and 2 Star Reviews)

I wasn’t excited that a grill costing over $1,400 only has a 75% satisfaction rating so I dug deeper to see what people liked and hated about the grill.

What People Love about the Silverton 810

The general feel of the positive comments were that the grill has excellent performance and has all of he high end features of a Traeger Timberline or Ironwood at a fraction of the cost.

Some of the representative comments are given below:

You can’t beat this grill for the features and cost. It’s like getting the highest end Timberline but for a fraction of the cost! The double wall is great for the cold and wind we sometimes experience in Colorado and it uses way less pellets than my traditional Traegers do (still have my original Texas).

I have been using the grill for 5 weeks now and it has performed very well for all my cooks. To date, I’ve made smoked Prime Rib, Spare Ribs, Baby Back Ribs, Roasted Chicken, Pork Belly, Pulled Pork, and Brisket with Burnt ends, all of it was excellent. The grill operates +/- a few degrees of set temperature 99% of the time. I have not experienced any wild temperature swings.

I’ve had three previous Traeger’s and this one is by and far away the best of them all. It heats up faster. It stays way more consistent as far as temperature goes. The Wi-Fi connection to your phone is awesome. 

What People Dislike about the Silverton 810

There were three general areas of dissatisfaction about this grill:

• Arrived damaged
• Inaccurate temperatures
• WiFi doesn’t work

I am not going to worry about grills arriving damaged as that is going to be a random event that can happen anytime you order a large appliance online and have it shipped.

The inaccurate temperature issue is demonstrated by some of teh following comments:

I have used the grill 5 times. It clearly has and issue with heat distribution. It has 4 hot spots on the right side by the controller and the exhaust.

…multiple third party probs showing the internal temp is 20 – 25 degrees off (e.g. reporting 200 when in actuality it’s 175 or 180 internal grill temp)…

Honestly this issue of temperature differences, etc does not bother me.  This is a massive smoker that has a SINGLE thermocouple mounted on the side of the grill.  You are going to get temperature gradients in this grill depending upon:

• Proximity to the firepot
• Lower grate vs upper grate
• How close to the edge of the heat deflecting grease tray

Figuring out how to manage hot spots and uneven temperature distributions is part of learning any new barbecue pit.  It is unreasonable to expect a grill this massive to have a completely uniform heat distribution.

The last issue about WiFi connectivity is usually the result of two issues.

The first issue is that the grill needs to connect to the 2.45 GHz band of your WiFi router instead of the 5 GHz band.  Figure out how to access the lower frequency band on your router and the grill will easily connect.

The second issue is that after the grill connects to WiFi it needs to do a firmware update.  Get the grill in standby mode, execute the update and you will be good to go.  I am not going to post exact instructions for how to do the firmware update because those steps change…do a Google search.

Video Reviews of the Grill

I recently found a nice video from “BBQ Jones” where he shares his thoughts on the Silverton 810 after one year of heavy use.  It looks like the grill has held up pretty well!

Other Traeger Grills to Consider and Why

For the 2022 Traeger Roadshow the Silverton 810 is priced at $1449 which is no small amount of cash.  The grill looks even more expensive when you consider that the reviews are less than stellar.

If you have already made up your mind that the Silverton 810 is the grill for you then great, go ahead and buy the grill.  I suspect you are going to have a great time smoking up piles of ribs and briskets!

If you are worried that the 810 might not be the best way for you to spend $1449 then there are a few other Traegers that you might want to take a look at depending upon the features you value the most.

If you want a large Traeger grill for less money then check out the Pro 34 or Texas Elite 34.

If you want a Traeger grill with the Wifire Control system for less money and don’t need a huge grill then check out the Traeger Fremont or Traeger Silverton 620.