CES 2025: This New Smart Barbecue Is the Tech I’m Most Excited About

This summer, I tested most of the smart grills on the market, but one rose above the rest: the Brisk It Origin. It turned me from a very occasional griller into a barbecue enthusiast by removing every pain of outdoor cooking. Somehow, Brisk It has topped itself at CES this year, introducing a new grill, the Zelos, which brings the same hardware to the market at a more affordable price. Moreover, the Zelos carries the second generation of the AI engine that makes Brisk It great: Vera 2.0.

Brisk It grills are powered by wood pellets, so they have the ability to smoke your food with exceptional precision, but also cook your food at higher temperatures if you’re looking for more of a true grill experience without as much smoke. You load the grill hopper with pellets, which is a lot like like any other smoker on the market, and an auger inside the hopper feeds the grill. You can operate the grill two ways: manually, from the display on the grill itself, or from the app. You’ll likely end up doing a mixture of both as you get more comfortable with the grill, but I’ll say this: Regardless of which method I used, the Origin has lit every single time I’ve pushed the button this year, easily 50-60 times. I expect the same from the Zelos. There is also a certain amount of giddiness one gets while being able to light a grill from the couch via the app. 

While most AI-powered cooking devices have apps with recipe generation and cook-time suggestions, you’ll actually use the advice that the Brisk It app gives you. It offers an impressively deep recipe bank, so you’re likely to get a hit on any barbecue recipe you’re looking for, and then it tells you precisely how to prep it, and regardless of whether you took that advice or not, will perfectly cook it for you. You choose the recipe, and send it to the grill. The grill will tell you when to put the food on, you insert a temperature probe, and walk away. The grill will execute the perfect smoke or grilling program, raising temperatures when appropriate, injecting higher smoke, and telling you when to flip the food or when to take it off. It will even turn itself off. 

So, how could Brisk It get better? Vera 2.0 allows you to take snapshots of your ingredients on the phone and Vera will identify the ingredients and then suggest recipes, and, of course, the perfect way to cook them. Snap a picture of the contents of your fridge, grocery cart, or pantry. It even claims you can take a picture of cooked food you enjoy, and Vera will try to give you a recipe for it (I’d need to test this to believe it; it feels like the sort of AI promise that often fails). 

Perhaps more importantly, the Zelos is made to be more affordable than the Origin, which, though currently are on sale, are regularly priced at $849 and $1,099. The Zelos promises to be $399, which is dramatically cheaper, but from the looks of it, doesn’t sacrifice much on the build of the grill itself. It still looks solid, and I actually might prefer the placement of the display on the Zelos than on the Origin (it looks to be placed much lower on the hopper). 

I called my Brisk It one of my favorite pieces of smart tech this year—it's one of those unique pieces of hardware technology that lives up to the hype. Whether you are a confident cook or easily intimidated, great tech like the Brisk It can make you more competent at babecuing. 

The Zelos will be available for purchase in the next few months online at Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart, Lowes, and BriskItGrills.com