Is the Ninja Woodfire Grill the Triple-Threat Cooker It’s Supposed to Be?

Here’s how the Ninja Woodfire Grill performed in terms of grilling, smoking, and air-frying.

I can safely say that the Ninja Woodfire is hands down the best electric grill I’ve used.

The best part is that it removes a lot of the guesswork. If you’re a seasoned grill user, you can ignore the thermometer and automatic prompts. But if you need assistance, the ability to select preset doneness levels or temperatures makes it hard to mess up.

The Ninja Woodfire gets really hot for an electric grill, allowing it to sear exceptionally well and form distinct grill marks. When I used it to cook four New York strip steaks (two at a time), I found it seared fast enough that I could still safely pull the steaks while they were medium-rare in the middle. 

It produced asparagus with nicely defined browning that was also tender and crisp, with just enough bite. Because of the grill’s design, none of the spears were lost through the grates.

Shrimp cooked quickly and browned well, too, without drying out or getting rubbery, as sometimes happens from excessive heat or long cooking times. 

But chicken breasts showcased the Ninja Woodfire’s grilling strengths the best. It heated through each piece without burning it, delivering tender, smoky, evenly cooked meat.

While I was impressed with the results, I’d still opt for cooking with charcoal and wood chunks for a true barbecue experience. That said, the Ninja Woodfire absolutely matched—or even beat—most of the barbecue I’ve had from pricier pellet grills, like those from Traeger. 

The Ninja most resembles a pellet grill when it comes to smoking. It uses an electric ignition to light wood pellets, producing smoke in the process. Like a good pellet grill, the Ninja maintained even, steady heat and generated generous plumes of smoke, which flavored ribs and pulled pork beautifully. The pulled pork I made following Ninja’s directions was near-perfect, shredding easily and cooking in about 4 hours (plus a brief preheat). 

Ribs were good, too, though admittedly not as tender as those cooked longer and over lower temperatures in a smoker or on a charcoal grill. Nevertheless, they were respectably moist throughout. The recipe I followed (from Ninja) called for cooking two full racks, each halved, at the same time. But I found that only three of the four half-racks would actually fit on the grill. 

The Ninja requires a half-cup of wood pellets for smoking and, as a result, you can’t control the amount of smoky flavor by using more or fewer pellets, only by choosing different pellet varieties. (Some offer lots of smoky flavor; others, a more subtle flavor.) But for me, even the smokiest mix of pellets wasn’t quite enough to satisfy my fussy, smoke-loving palette. 

As with grilling, the smoking setting removes the potential for errors. The grill is designed to let you load it up, and the manual offers specific recommendations for time and temperature depending on what you’re cooking. The appliance smokes automatically, with no adjustments needed the entire time.

I’ve never seen a product that’s supposed to grill and air-fry, but the appeal here is that if you take the Ninja to a tailgate or campsite, you’re not limited to traditional grilled or barbecued foods. Everything I air-fried emerged crisp and evenly cooked, just as it would from a great stand-alone air fryer. The basket itself is well-designed, with grooves for fat to drip away cleanly.

At peak capacity, my house has five mouths to feed, with a rotating cadre of kids’ friends often in the mix, too. That’s too much for a conventional air fryer to handle. So I appreciated that the Woodfire’s air-frying basket had a generous capacity, which, in my experience, was more than enough to handle 3 to 4 pounds of chicken wings or a regular bag of frozen fries.

As with most air fryers, I found that the cooking times for larger batches needed to be extended and that the food had to be rotated more frequently.

In addition to being a smoker and air fryer, the Ninja Woodfire Grill has several other standout features that differ from other electric grills:

• Digital controls. The Ninja uses a single stereo-style knob and electronic push-button controls to let you select functions and temperatures and set the time. The controls make it easier to clean and simpler to dial in precise times and temperatures.
• A built-in thermometer. In addition to allowing you to select a cooking temperature, the Ninja features a removable wired thermometer that displays the internal temperature of food in real time while providing prompts when it’s time to remove the food. It even lets you select your preferred level of doneness for items like beef. That makes it easier to get great results and offers an added layer of safety because it helps you avoid undercooking meat and fish.
• A griddle plate. Most grill manufacturers sell aftermarket griddles separately. The Ninja Woodfire includes a griddle plate as part of the package.
• A convection fan. Unlike traditional grills, the Ninja has a built-in fan for circulating heat and smoke automatically, which really does seem to help with promoting even cooking and smoking.

I tested the Ninja Woodfire Grill in my backyard, where I cooked more than a dozen meals. As the writer who covers grills for Consumer Reports and an avid barbecuer, I’ve used well over 100 grills and currently own five. I’ve also worked in a professional kitchen.

Over the course of four weeks, I used the Ninja Wood Fire Grill to cook steaks, chicken breasts, shrimp, and asparagus, each one challenging a different aspect of its grilling capabilities.

I also evaluated the grill’s smoking feature on two tough-to-master types of meat: ribs and pulled pork.

Last but not least, I zeroed in on the grill’s air-fryer mode by cooking monster batches of skin-on chicken wings and frozen bagged French fries.

For most of the tests, I ran the Ninja Woodfire with and without the added smoke function and tried out the built-in thermometer. Similar to how CR tests conventional grills in our lab, I also noted how easy the grill was to use and clean, and how long it took to heat up and cook.