Oh, Ninja… you try so hard, but we’re just not sure about you…

(OK, we’ll admit it—the Ninja CREAMi ice cream maker is pretty damn badass…)

Well, here we are again. A mere two months after our deep dive on the Ninja Woodfire, we’re back to talking about the brand that insists on making everything electric.

Thanks to Serious Eats (you legends), we now know a lot more about the Ninja FlexFlame, for better or worse.

Let’s do our best to break down this grill-item-toaster-thing.

The Good

Well, it grills. Apparently, once you get it going, the FlexFire hits good high temps and can grill up any of your standard grilling fare.

It can also handle a pizza stone and a griddle, which is great for variety. (Pizza stone and griddle not included, by the way.)

But then again, so can most grills that DON’T cost $1,000…

The Bad

The whole grill runs on a convection system. Good for heat, bad for the backyard vibes. Supposedly, this thing sounds like “an airplane taking off” when the hood’s down.

The point of said fan is to circulate wood pellet smoke from the small pellet hopper. Though, according to SE, the tiny hopper can completely catch on fire and emit acrid smoke instead of burning low and slow like it should.

The Downright Ugly

It’s electric, and not the easy kind. You’ll need to run an extension cord to the FlexFlame’s 7” power cord.

And as anyone who’s ever worked with a grill rotisserie before knows, electricity plus grilling is a pain. Heat, rain, you name it.

The Whole Package

We freely admit it: we were WAY more objective and open-minded while reviewing the tiny Ninja WoodFire. But that grill seemed like it solved a very specific problem for apartment dwellers and others who need a compact grilling solution.

The FlexFlame is a tougher sell. Its performance for the Serious Eats testers is hard to hear.

We love the idea that technology can make cooking dead meat even more delicious, but is this the technology we want? It doesn’t seem like it…

Disagree with us? Good! It’s a free country. Send us a message if you want to defend the Ninja FlexFlame.