I bought this smoker several months back and waited to give it a review until I got a chance to use it for a while. This smoker has its pros and cons, overall I am happy with the purchase, but with a few caveats.

First, the positive aspects.

- This is definitely a much easier cooking process than the traditional two barrel BBQ unit. Load the meat, load the chips and let the magic happen. In most cases, getting started early in the morning gives you enough time for a tasty dinner. Ribs and chicken came out perfect, turkey and Boston butt were great too, but with some additional work (as explained below)

- Customer service is exceptional. A live person answered the phone every time during the official calling time. I had to replace some parts and they were shipped FedEx the next day with Saturday delivery. Moreover, I had trouble with the cooking temperature and they have people on the phone who are experienced cooks and had some recommendations for the cooking process.

Now, not so good aspects.

- In my opinion (which is shared by some folks on the Bradley forums), the unit is underpowered to be a true BBQ machine. Small loads (one chicken, one or two racks of ribs) worked great. A large load (two boston butts, 15lb total) or a medium size turkey (12-15lb) will bring the temperature down of a pre-heated smoker to less than 150F and it would take over two hours to get it back to 210F. And it would never go above 220F. Bradley support recommended trying opening the vent, but it did not help much. Pretty much every time I made large quantities of pulled pork, I had to finish it in the oven. The same with turkey, although when it was cut up in pieces instead of whole, it worked better.

- The overall quality did not live up to my expectations. I may just had a bad unit. Within one month of purchase, the plastic box housing the temperature control cracked. A few months later, the door started to crack and the rubber seal on it corroded. Bradley is fast to replace the parts while the smoker is within one year warranty. But I wonder how long the unit will last after the warranty expires.

So, overall a good product. I would recommend it, especially to a novice BBQ cook. If the next models up the wattage on the heating element and addresses the overall quality, it would be a superb unit.

Having prepared a 6 lb brisket according to the directions and recipe provided
by Bradley and enjoying it to the extent that it easily matched any brisket I've eaten, I am going against the instinct which would have me use the product for a few months before commenting on it.
Smoking purists will have their comments about the Bradley and they may
point to costs, no smoke rings, no outer char, but:

Basically, the smoker works in almost auto pilot mode. You set the smoker up, plug it in, set the SS waterbowl in place, set ( or take a stab at ) sliding the temperature control lever to a setting which will get the box to the proper temperature, add the flavored pucks to their silo, hit the advance button and
let the smoker do its magic.
We have used the smoker three times in the two weeks we've had it. Small issues:you will have to bend to slide the temperature control, you will worry that some nightmarish "I love Lucy" nutty thing can happen with the puck advance and pucks will be advancing--or not.You will smoke up your clothes when you open the door to see what's happening. You will have to clean the trays and racks. But the food tastes so good.
And it's almost sinful that you don't have to expend great effort to get a great result. We put the brisket in at 8:00 AM. The set up, beyond preparing the rub,
took minutes. We checked the water level twice during a ten hour cook. Modulated the temperature slide a couple of times. And enjoyed a great meal.
By the way, my wife, an attractive model type adverse to the outdoors, did the monitoring while I went into the city with one of my sons for a literary outing.
When we got back she was eager to show us the brisket's progress. She smelled a bit smoky but we agreed that the smoke added to her allure....

I bought one of the "can" style units from the big discount house and would use it on occassion and got decent results, but a lot of it came out too dry. A friend bought a Bradley and kept saying how great it was ... I assumed he was trying to convince himself that the price he paid for it was worth it!! Then I had dinner at their house for ribs ... hmmm ....... MUCH better than mine. Oddly enough my "el cheapo" smoker died a week later. I found a "forum" for Bradley smokers online and read everything I could about which model, recipes, troubleshooting ......... and ordered it from amazon.com along with a few boxes of bisquettes. Now it seems I'm smoking up something almost every week. It makes the VERY best ribs, briskets, and salmon. But don't miss the Bradley Smoker Forum either ..... it's almost as good as the smoker itself!!! And for bisquettes, experiment for your own tastes but watch amazon carefully for the 4 for 3 deal AND free shipping ....... it proves to be the best price around on bisquettes.

This thing is great. It's easy to use, takes a little time to get the temp set but then you are good to go. Pulled pork tastes better then the BBQ place, ribs fall off the bone. Preheat(electric) put in some flavor pucks for smoke, ad your meat and let it go. Add a Maverick ET-73 remote thermometer with dual probes for meat and oven temps to make it even easier to use. You don't have to keep adding wood like a regular smoker, you just put in enough flavor pucks(20 minutes each) to flavor the meat, never more than 3 hours of actual smoke, usually 1/2 that.Pucks advance automatically.

I got this smoker about a month ago and have now used it 4 times. Each time has been an incredible success.

I began my research right on the [...] site. At this site there is a forum where very friendly users are more than happy to answer your questions.

I was undecided whether to get the Original Smoker or the newer digital model. The features of the newer digital models did not, in my opinion, justify the additional price. Instead, I got the Original Smoker with an external unit, not sold by Bradley or here on Amazon, that will control the temperature. In addition, this unit will permit up to 6 programming steps (different temperatures at different times). You can learn more about these external units on the forums I just mentioned.

The wood pucks that generate the smoke burn for about 20 minutes each. Someone on the Bradley forum site estimated that it costs about $1 an hour to smoke the meat. I had a small problem with the feeder when I first got the unit. The wood pucks were not always being fed every 20 minutes. When I asked about on the forum, one of the Bradley representatives called me (imagine, representatives taking the initiative and calling). They had me make a small adjustment and all worked perfectly after that.

This weekend I am going to try my first brisket. In the Fall, when the weather is cooler, I am going to try Cold Smoking (Salmon and maybe some cheese). For ribs, this is the only way to go.

If you want to get serious about smoking, this is the way to go. Checkout the forum on the Bradley site and then get this. You will not be disappointed.