So after a little researching it turns out that he may have saved me from having a wobbling rusted out grill in a few years. You will never find someone post a few years later how much they love there Home Depot special, its always the same..."sick of owning cheap sub par grills for a few years till they die, just want to get a Weber this time". I just couldn't believe that after my old grill lasted for 21
* years some of these grills would not even make it thru a few seasons comfortably? But I guess the grill industry sums up the evolution of the American marketplace in the last 20 years+. That old Sunbeam was made in 1991 in USA and after 21 years the igniter finally failed and the main burner eventually rusted thru. That is ABSOLUTELY unheard of today unless you get a Weber, AND you are still not even guaranteed that longevity. Unreal. Everything is just mass produced low cost cheap flimsy sheet metal garbage goods made in China.
The difference in quality between the Webers and the "made in China" grills are very easy to tell. The Webers are built like tanks in comparison to the cheap flimsy sheet metal Charbroils, Nexgrills etc...Without a question you get what you pay for applies here. If someone really wanted to they could rip apart the grill lid from the box and completely destroy these cheap grills in just minutes. This would be impossible with the Weber, even with a sledgehammer! (I think that's my new baseline when shopping from now on) However, the main thing I did not like with the Weber Spirit was that the gas knobs were up on the side storage tray for some ridiculous reason and not directly in the front of the grill. I always used both of these trays on my old grill, what a waste of valuable space.
As soon as I saw this in the store, way before reading countless other reviews how people hated having the knobs inconveniently up on the side tray, I knew this was a
Potential Situation
Deal Breaker
Aside from the constant aggravations of balancing plates unevenly on these knobs I could instantly foresee the following happening one day...cell phone on my shoulder shrugged to my ear, beer in right hand, spatula in left and without looking putting my beer down right on one of the knobs. Meanwhile my now free right hand is attempting to grab the phone off my neck while the beer is toppling over and heading for the ground. I abort the phone call as the spatula hits the ground being the least important item to save. I make a flailing dash at the beer, resulting in the dropping of my cell phone in the exact location where the beer will splash half its contents on right next to a dirty spatula. I don't need that crap on what is supposed to be a nice pleasant summer day. In all honesty the fact that I so vividly played that scenario out would most likely result in it never actually happening, but ultimately I ruled this as a total deal breaker anyways.
The fact that I have to now be careful of how I place things each time on that shelf is bull$h@t, especially when I am dropping $500. I am much to important and sophisticated to have to deal with that type of inconvenience on my day off. In addition I was now convinced this was some weird marketing tactic by Weber to force you to upgrade to the next model up, the much bigger sized Weber Genesis. This model magically has the knobs on the front of the grill like any other grill would.