Grilling on an electric grill won’t win a low-and-slow barbecue competition. Still, for people who live in apartments or don’t have easy access to outdoor spaces, several standout grills are worthy of your consideration.
They first became popular when George Foreman hawked his electric grill in the 1990s, and since then, more versions from different brands have hit the market. These alternatives to traditional grills come in indoor, outdoor, and combo models.
In this amazing blog, I will share different kinds of electric grills for your balcony. I will be sure that these Electric grills are more portable than their gas and charcoal counterparts and are easier to set up and clean.
Table of Contents
Things to Consider Before Buying the Best Electric Grill for Apartment Balcony
Before you decide which one is for you, there are several factors to consider. Size impacts how much you can cook at once and how easily you can transport the grill or store it away.
The higher it is, the more likely you’ll get those great sear marks and caramelization. And finally, while electric grills are easy to maintain, dishwasher-safe parts and removable drip pans make cleanup easier.
With all those in mind, we researched the best electric grills for apartments available on the market and sent them to several home cooks to put to the test. They noted how well these grills cooked beef burger patties or meat substitute patties, burger buns, boneless chicken breast, and a batch of vegetables to grill.
What to look for in an Electric Grill
When looking for a good electric grill for your apartment balcony for grilling food, you have to look for the following features we described below. A good electric grill must have the following features.
1: SIZE
Most electric grills are compact when compared to full-size gas and charcoal counterparts. Less than 300 square inches means only a few burgers or veggie kebabs can be cooked at once.
Some of these grills are small enough to use on the countertop while others have stands making them easy to use outside in, let’s say, a parking lot for tailgating, without having to bend over or risk stepping on it.
2: Wattage
When it comes to wattage, the more watts your electric grill has, the more powerful your grill will be. Most electric grills are around 1000 watts and can go up to about 1,700. If your grill is on the lesser end, it’s less likely to give your food those desirable grill lines.
3: Maintenance
Some electric grills have nonstick grill tops making clean-up a breeze. There are also fat drainage systems that help, too. You’ll want to clean your grill when it’s still slightly warm, making it easier to scrape off protein remnants and sticky oils.
Best Electric Grill for Apartment Balcony
Following are our best products:
| Image | Product | Feature | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
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Top Pick
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Best Overall Outdoor: George Foreman 15-Serving Indoor/Outdoor Electric Grill |
Non-Stick Surface Lake of Smoky Flavor Good for Cooking Fatty Meat |
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|
Top Pick
 |
Best Budget: Starfrit the Rock Indoor Smokeless Electric BBQ Grill
|
Adjustable Temperature Range Nonstick Cast-Aluminum Grates Easy to heat |
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|
Best for a Balcony: Weber Q 2400 Electric Grill |
Moveable Grill The grill needs to preheat for about 20 minutes, but once hot; the food cooks fairly quickly |
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|
 |
Best Splurge: Kenyon Floridian Electric Grill |
The drip pan is removable and disposable A good option for cooking chicken Low price |
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 |
Best Portable: Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill |
Easy to assemble and portable Good Quality material for long-term usage Easy to clean |
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 |
Best Indoor: PowerXL PG-1500FDR Smokeless Grill |
Smokeless grilling due to the fan doing a stellar job Suitable price with 90 days of warranty
|
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1: Best Overall Outdoor: George Foreman 15-Serving Indoor/Outdoor Electric Grill
This electric grill uses both indoor and outdoor grilling processes. I used this electric grill in my apartment. I like several good features when grilling my food on the grill and gave me the best apartment electric grill experience.
What we like:
1: Non-Stick Surface
George Foreman grills fill a certain niche for countertop grilling, especially for people concerned about excess fat. This newer model keeps to the plan with its classic nonstick surface and integrated drip pan.
2: Good for Cooking Fatty Meat
Another note is that our home tester is vegetarian, so she cooked several types of veggie burgers, including Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Light life patties, as well as Beyond Brats instead of chicken.
But because plant-based burgers lack the fat content of their meat-based counterparts, there wasn’t much fat for the grill to drain away, which is one of its biggest selling points. This is an amazing feature of this electric grill.
3: Lake of Smoky Flavor
Still, the patties and burgers themselves, as well as the zucchini and the burger buns, grilled up fine on high heat, and all got the desired grill marks, though they lacked that smoky flavor you’d get from a gas or charcoal grill.
Part of the reason is that the grilling surface is nonstick. You can affect grill marks on either meat or non-meat products, but they’re mostly cosmetic, and not because the cooking surface seared the food surface at high heat or because the food stuck and developed that necessary ‘burned’ surface that we note.
4: Easy to Clean
Still, this nonstick quality, in addition to the metal grill pan, lifting off easily from the grill base and pedestal, made it relatively easy to clean though it is far too big to fit into a standard sink, so you have to wash it gingerly.
What we don’t like
1: Size
We are sure this grill would be right at home on the porch or patio, or where it would be used frequently, and simply wiping clean is enough. I recommend you use this grill for indoor and outdoor grilling purposes.
As a home appliance, however, even for a larger family who wants to do a bunch of burgers at once, it’s probably still too big and more trouble than it’s worth to use and store indoors.
2: Best Budget: Starfrit the Rock Indoor Smokeless Electric BBQ Grill
Starfrit is a good electric smoker that we used. This electric grill had a lot of amazing features that we love. It had less smoke than other electric grills that used gas and charcoal for grilling BBQ at home.
What we love
1: Area/Size
Starfrit’s Rock Indoor Smokeless Grill is beloved for its ability to grill everything from veggie kebabs to steak to bacon expertly. Weighing only around 5 pounds, it doesn’t take up too much space while offering 160 square inches of cooking area.
2: Nonstick Cast-Aluminum Grates
I like its nonstick cast aluminum grates that greatly help grill the food. Below the nonstick cast aluminum grates is a water-filled drip tray that catches falling oil or grease, reducing any resultant smoke.
3: No Hot Spots
Due to its nonstick grates, there is no tension of having hot spots on the food. The heating element is cast into the grate, so you don’t have to worry about hot or cold spots. It is designed amazingly for grilling.
4: Adjustable Temperature Range
An adjustable dial on the plug controls the temperature, which can get up to 450 degrees. It also has a setting for keeping your food warm. These are amazing features that make it different from other electric grills.
5: Easy to Clean
When you’re all done eating your burgers, veggies, or whatever you choose to grill up, anything that’s removable is safe to put in the dishwasher for easy cleanup. Everyone can easily handle it for cleaning purposes.
What we don’t Love:
Considerable Amount of Smoke
In testing this grill, a fair amount of smoke was produced as our home cook grilled up burger patties, buns, chicken breasts, and sliced zucchini. You’ll want to ensure your kitchen hood exhaust fan is turned on and windows are open when cooking.
Smoke aside, this grill is a solid option for the price. It left nice grill marks on everything we tested, and we didn’t find any hot spots. The grilled chicken breasts were juicy and moist, and the zucchini was tender and had a nice smoky flavor.
We also like that it heats up in just a few minutes and is easy to put together, just four pieces. The fact that most of the pieces are dishwasher-safe is also a plus no need to soak and scrub the grease away.
Why do we recommend it?
For the price, this is a solid option. It heats up in minutes, and while it isn’t as smokeless as it claims to be, I like that it’s lightweight, easy to put together, and doesn’t take up a lot of space.
3: Best for a Balcony: Weber Q 2400 Electric Grill
Weber Q 2400 had a lot of features that make it different from other electric grills we used at home. I used this electric grill on my apartment balcony for grilling amazing food. It cooks food more quickly than other electric grills. It had the following features:
What we like:
1: Area/Size
It’s no surprise that Weber, the king of charcoal grills, also reigns supreme when it comes to electric grills. The 280-square-inch grill has a 6-foot grounded cord that connects to a temperature controller. This helps us a lot in cooking food quickly.
2: Easy to Clean
Inside the cast aluminum lid, you’ll find removable cast iron cooking grates and a removable bowl liner, which helps with cleanup. These pieces do add a little bit of heft. The grill weighs over 40 pounds in total.
3: Moveable Grill
So while the grill is movable, you might need help doing so. Underneath is a removable catch pan that holds a disposable aluminum drip pan. It doesn’t come with a stand, though one can be purchased separately.
4: Temperature
We found that the grill needs to preheat for about 20 minutes, but once hot; the food cooks fairly quickly. The temperature controller allows for more precise cooking, and overall the food was cooked evenly and developed those nice classic grill marks.
What we don’t like:
1: Food Stuck into Grates
When cooking food on this electric grill, it is sometimes stuck into its grates. Though cleaning them with a grill brush after worked fine, it helped that the grates themselves were easy to remove and that the grill cooled down pretty quickly.
2: Less Smoky Flavor
During cooking the food, I noted that there wasn’t a strong smoke flavor, but the meat and chicken were very tender, juicy, and flavorful, while the grilled zucchini was succulent.
Why We Recommend It
Overall, if you have a deck where an electric grill is allowed, this is your best bet for the closest thing to a charcoal or gas grill. Plus, it’s relatively portable and easy to store and clean.
The burgers were delicious! Very juicy with a nice char, although the charcoal flavor was missing. The chicken was very tender, juicy, and flavorful, which I was amazed by with such simple seasoning.
4: Best Splurge: Kenyon Floridian Electric Grill
Kenyon Floridian Electric Grill is an amazing electric grill that one of my best friends used on their apartment balcony. As with other electric grills, this electric grill also had some features that make it different from other electric grills, which we like.
What we like:
1: Leaves Nice Sear Marks
The Kenyon Floridian grill is a nice choice for those who know how to utilize hot spots on a traditional grill to their advantage. It can get up to 600 degrees in about 10 minutes, creating several hot spots on the food.
2: Temperatures
There are eight temperature settings, but note that there’s no way to know how hot the grill is getting unless you have an infrared thermometer to take the temperature of the grates.
3: Non-Stick Grates
The nonstick grates sit directly on top of the heating element, which allows the grate to get hot, but there are noticeable hot spots on the grill, particularly in the areas where the heating element turns to make the coil, our home cook found.
4: Easily Cook Burger Patties
The burger patties did not get the desired grill marks before flipping, but once flipped, the grill got hot enough that they did get the grill marks, and she was able to move the patties to the hot spots on the grill. After cooking, the patties turned out juicy.
But there was no distinguishable grill flavor. This was likely due to the addition of water to the drip pan, which steamed the burgers more than grilled them. The burger buns, furthermore, burned easily because they lacked moisture I suggest lightly buttering them before grilling.
What We Don’t Like
1: Weight
It weighs 24 pounds, which is heavier than it sounds because you’re carrying this around your kitchen or back patio to find a spot to put it. It isn’t easy to move into different parts of the apartment easily.
2: Notable Spots
Grilling zucchini presented a unique challenge due to the hot spots. Some parts of the zucchini strips had appealing grill marks, while other parts were more steamed. Thus there are notable hot spots that we found on the food when grilling it.
3: Roasted Flavor
The flavor of the zucchini was more of a roasted flavor versus a char-like flavor from a traditional grill, our home cook explained. One way to ensure even cooking, we advise, would be to cut the zucchini into coins versus strips and move them around the grill often to ensure each piece can get to a hot spot to achieve grill marks.
When dinner is made, you can put the grill rack in the dishwasher, though washing by hand is preferred to ensure the nonstick coating on the grates lasts as long as possible. This will take a long time.
Why we recommend it
The drip pan is removable and disposable, which is nice if you plan on using this grill multiple times a week. The pan is meant to be used several times before it needs to be replaced.
This grill is a good option for cooking chicken if you don’t cook it with a lot of sauces. The chicken did get nice grill marks on both sides and was very juicy. The cooked chicken was tender, though it could go from tender to rubbery.
Suppose the grill user is unaware of the hotspots on the grill and uses them to their advantage. Thus we highly recommend this electric grill for cooking food. It had a low price so everyone could buy it.
5: Best Portable: Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill
We purchased the Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill; for those that live in apartments or condos where charcoal or gas grilling isn’t allowed, electric grills may be the only option for outdoor cooking.
Electric grills have come a long way, even rivaling their gas and charcoal counterparts for ease and cleanup. To see how an electric grill performed in our urban setting, we cooked up a warm-weather feast on the Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill, which is praised as being perfect for small spaces.
We were interested in the design, heating capacity, ease of cleaning, and course, how great our food tasted. Please read the article to see what we thought about this electric grill and what its different features are that make it different.
What We Like
1: Performance
This is an outdoor-only electric grill that creates a fair amount of smoke; it’s unsafe to use inside the home. We placed it on our patio in Brooklyn, New York, and put it to work preparing veggie shish kebabs, hanger steak, and marinated chicken breast for a BBQ party.
We were pleased with the outcome of our meal. One major positive is the cast iron cooking grates, which gave us drool-worthy sear marks on everything we grilled. The food tasted great, but we did miss the true smoky flavor that comes from a charcoal grill.
We also loved that Weber included a grilling guide detailing the total time and heat level recommended for different types of food. This was a really helpful reference to make sure we weren’t over- or undercooking any of our meats.
One thing we did learn in cooking is not to open the lid too much during grilling, as heat escaped and affected our grilling process. We were super pleased with these grates, as they gave us drool-worthy sear marks during different grill sessions.
2: Design
The Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill has a modern, sleek design featuring two sturdy handles for easy carrying. The domed hood was also a plus, giving us more space to experiment with cooking different foods. A 6-foot grounded cord reaches outlets with ease.
Below the cook boxes is a disposable drip pan that catches grease when grilling. It was super easy to pull in and out when preparing our meals. At the same time, we were mostly pleased with the design. We did have a few complaints:
One is that the grill doesn’t come with a stand, so you will need to place it on a table when cooking. Not a huge deal if you’re looking for easy storage, but if you do need a stand, Weber sells a portable cart separately.
3: Setup Process
For an outdoor grill, we were very pleased with the small amount of assembly required. All we needed to do was attach the handle, insert the temperature gauge, place the cast iron grates over the heating element, and slide in the catch pan.
4: Material
This grill is superior when it comes to material. Included are a cast aluminum lid and body, aluminum heat retention liners, and porcelain-enameled cast iron cooking grates. This is a solid grill that will last for multiple seasons.
5: Heating Capacity
The Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill features a 1,560-watt electric heating element for its 189 square-inch total cooking area. The temperature controller allowed us to adjust the heat from low to high depending on what we were grilling.
6: Cleaning
One major plus with an electric grill is the cleanup process. There are just a few parts that are super easy to remove and clean. We were able to remove stuck-on foods from the cast iron cooking grates with a grill brush; warm soapy water worked for the rest.
To clean the disposable drip pan, we removed grease with a spatula and then washed it with soap and water. The grill only comes with one drip pan; at first, we considered simply lining the pan with aluminum foil to eliminate the need for ever buying more.
What we don’t like
1: Price
At a low price, the Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill is one of the more expensive electric grills on the market. This is a thing that we don’t like about this product. But it had different features that made it good.
2: Don’t Display the Temperature
One of the major defects that we found in this electric grill is that there is no screen to display the temperature on the electric grill. So we face difficulty in measuring the temperature when cooking the food. We have no idea how much temperature is required.
3: Long Preheat Time
It takes a long time to cook food on the grill. We have to preheat the food for a long time before grilling its food which is a fault of this electric grill. It takes 20 minutes to preheat the grill before using it, a fairly long time given the size of the grilling space.
Why we recommend it
Overall, we were very pleased with the Weber Q 1400 Electric Grill. It was easy to assemble and portable; plus, it grilled food to perfection and cleaned up easily. Yes, there are a few areas for improvement, but none were deal breakers.
The cast iron grates alone made this one a winner, and we’d recommend it to anyone who can’t have a gas grill at home. Thus you can buy it for grilling your food amazingly at home.
6: Best Indoor: PowerXL PG-1500FDR Smokeless Grill
We purchased the PowerXL Smokeless Grill so our reviewer could put it to the test in her kitchen. In this article, you will learn about all the features of this amazing electric grill. We have a habit of setting off our smoke detectors.
So we were curious about the PowerXL Smokeless Grill’s ability to grill foods without scaring the neighborhood squirrels. We stocked up on the grill table and made sure the smoke detector batteries were charged. Many meals later, we’ve got opinions.
What we like
1: Setup Process
Yes, of course, we washed the parts before use, but there still was a strong scoff end burning-off manufacturing residue when we heated the grill for the first time. It didn’t last long, and on the second warm-up, it didn’t return.
To assemble, the plastic water tray sits at the bottom of the base unit, and instructions said to fill it with 2 cups of water. We did that on first use but found that it was awkward to carry it after cooking without spilling.
Also, for foods that are going to drip juices or fats, the tray would be even fuller. We decided that 1 cup was enough. The aluminum collection tray fits next. This collects drippings and funnels them down to the drip tray.
We noticed there were triangular arrow marks on one side of the tray and searched the manual for information. We found that the arrows should be lined up, but both the arrows and the instructions could be easy to miss.
The heating element, which also includes the control panel, is next, then either the grill pan or griddle plate, followed by the lid. Once plugged in, we pressed the power button and the fan button to turn them on.
The heat control has temperatures marked at 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, and 450 degrees. The temperatures are set by pressing the – and + buttons and aren’t adjustable for fine increments. There is no timer option, so the cook needs to set a separate timer.
2: Performance
This grill’s main boast is its smokeless grilling, and it certainly lived up to that boast. The fan did a stellar job removing smoke and steam, and the lid sealed surprisingly well, so the smoke didn’t have a chance to escape.
We fired up the grill to cook a steak, and there wasn’t even a wisp of visible smoke, much to the disappointment of the smoke detector. Bacon was similarly smoke-free, and since we did much of the cooking with the lid on, we had very little mess outside the grill.
3: Design
This grill/griddle has a lot of pieces. There’s a base unit that holds all the components, a heating unit, a water pan, a collection tray, a grill plate, a griddle plate, a power cord, and a lid. They all fit together for storage, fortunately
4: Price
Neither expensive nor cheap, this grill is middle-of-the-road for kitchen appliances. Our one quibble is that the warranty is only 90 days. So you can buy this electric grill easily.
What we don’t like
1: A Lot to Clean
There are a lot of parts to clean, and the grill plate, in particular, is annoying to clean by hand because of its many nooks and edges. The good news is that all of the parts, aside from the base and heating unit, are supposed to be dishwasher-safe.
The bad news is that they take up quite a bit of space in the dishwasher. The other bad news is that after a few runs through the dishwasher, the coating on our collection tray started to feel like it was degrading, so we suggested washing it by hand.
2: No Timer
There is no display of a timer on this electric grill which creates difficulty in cooking for us. You had to note the time on the other watch or stopwatch. This will take a lot of time, and the food will be cooked late.
Why do we recommend it?
A good tool for a specific market. As we used the PowerXL Smokeless Grill, we appreciated that it lived up to its promise of smokeless grilling, which is great for apartment dwellers and for cooks who are averse to any amount of cooking smoke.
FAQs-Best Electric Grill for Apartment Balcony
Can You Grill on Your Apartment Balcony?
Yes, but they mustn’t smoke. You can cook with an electric grill indoors if it is smokeless. Electric grills can be used indoors as long as you set them up in a well-ventilated area and are prepared to clean the setup area afterward.
Final Remarks
In this amazing blog, we will discuss all the basic features of a good electric grill for an apartment balcony. We recommend that when heating and truly nonstick plates make the multiuse Breville, the Smart Grill is your best bet indoors.
But if you want something portable that can work both indoors and outside, the George Foreman 15-Serving Indoor/Outdoor Electric grill will not disappoint you. Thus you can choose the best electric grill for apartment balcony.