Last year, we tested out the Lynx Smart Grill. It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was nearly $7,000. And while we were impressed with the cooking, the grill’s voice activation left something to be desired. Maybe Lynx listened, because its new Sonoma Smoker ditches the voice commands for a touchscreen. The smoker cooks with gas, but there’s also a box for wood chips to enhance the smoky flavor.
Lynx had the smoker on display at the KBIS 2017 kitchen and bath show this week. It sits on a countertop (if you have a fancy outdoor kitchen) or a cart and looks more like a grill than some of the safe-resembling smokers we’ve seen. The accompanying app — yes, the smoker is Wi-Fi-enabled — comes with 40 recipes. When you choose the salmon recipe and insert the probe, you can get feedback on both the smoker’s interior temp and the fish’s. “We have an executive chef who tests, in our test kitchen, all the recipes,” Daniel Chin, director of marketing at Lynx, told Digital Trends. Essentially, all you have to do is click a button, and leave the rest up to the smoker.
Should your Wi-Fi go out, the smoker will still have its instructions and won’t suddenly stop eight hours into the process. You can also use the smoker’s touchscreen to set things up, either based on the smoker’s temperature or the internal temperature of the food.
“It’s meant to be accessible, but it’s also meant to educate, so the user can learn from what they did and improve upon it,” said Chin. Lynx knows smoking is a hobby for many, but there can be a steep learning curve for newcomers. Once you’ve mastered the smoker and started branching out from the included recipes, however, you can share your creations in the community database.
“This is our second run at a smart product, and we’ve done so much in terms of improving our efficiencies,” said Chin. “We took all those learnings and said, ‘Ah, yeah, that’s how we can improve upon that.’”
Lynx is looking at other smart-home integrations, including adding voice back in via Alexa. The Sonoma is expected out in spring of this year and will cost $2,499. That’s far more expensive than competitors’ connected products, so we’ll have to see if the extra cash makes for a better brisket.
