If you’re in the market for a new pellet grill, we’re about to provide all the information you need to decide whether the RecTeq RT-590 Deck Boss is worth your hard-earned money, including what I wish I knew before I purchased mine!
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The old and the new…
As someone who’s owned both a Gen 1 and Gen 2 RT 590, I’ve got unique insights you’re not going to find anywhere else. You might be wondering why I refer to them as Gen 1 and Gen 2. Actually, the Deck Boss is the second iteration of the RT 590. The first generation was called the Stampede and had an octagon-shaped cooking chamber. I’ve done a full review on the Stampede if you want to check it out. As we go through the review of the Deck Boss, I’ll highlight all the changes that were made between the Stampede and the Deck Boss and give you my personal opinion on those changes. Most of them are positive, but one of them is a little more complicated. Let’s dive in!
Hey, good looking!
We’re all told not to judge a book by its cover, and that’s a load of BS. We buy cars and tech that look cool and pellet grills are no different. I happen to think the Deck Boss is a sexy beast with its mix of black paint and brush stainless steel. It’s got these iconic RecTeq polished Longhorn handles, which are awesome.
It also has these really great super sturdy angled legs. The Stampede had straight, square pipe legs and they were rickety. The round barrel looks way more stout and high-end than the octagon shaped design did that was on the Stampede. Obviously, that octagon barrel was iconic for the Stampede, but this just looks way classier.
The vents are also an improvement over the Stampede. My version of the Stampede had kind of oval-shaped cutouts, which let a lot of water and snow when it rained or snowed here in Minnesota. These louvered designs help protect the inside of the grill a little bit better and I think they just look classier.
Take Control!
On the Stampede, the display was flush with the surface of the grill. On the Deck Boss, it’s angled a little bit. This makes it a lot easier to view when you’re standing and I think this little red accent on the control knob is a really nice touch too. As far as I’ve been able to tell, this is exactly the same controller as it was on the Stampede. The Deck Boss has built-in Wi-Fi. I’ve always had trouble with the Wi-Fi, even on the Stampede. Everybody else I know that owns a Recteq doesn’t have issues with it, so it could be my home network.
The Deck Boss also comes with two meat probes. They plug into the control panel and snake through a little hole in the side of the cooking chamber. The Deck Boss has a 30 lbs. capacity pellet hopper, which is great for a grill in this size and price range. I do wish that companies would standardize on either a 20 lbs. pellet hopper or a 40lbs. pellet hopper because that’s how the pellets are sold (or sell me a 30 lbs. bag).
On the back, another huge improvement over the Stampede is the cord wrap. There was no cord wrap on the Stampede so I ended up wrapping my cord around the side handle. If I’m paying $900+ for a pellet grill, I don’t want the cord just carelessly wrapped around it when it’s in storage. This is actually a really cheap upgrade, but one that makes a big difference.
Check out what’s inside
Now we’re going to run through some of the features of the cooking chamber and cooking area. They’ve moved the grease bucket underneath the grill. It makes the grill look a lot cleaner and it protects the bucket from water and from my dog. One of the advantages I think about the round barrel design is it makes it much easier to get further back into the cooking chamber. You can utilize more of the cooking area in the Deck Boss than you could on the Stampede. Another difference between the Deck Boss and the Stampede is the Deck Boss has one complete grate and they give you a tool to remove this in case the grill is hot. You slide the grate out, but it has these little slots on the side so you can actually pull the grate out and set something on it and it won’t tip out. This is a really nice, heavy duty grate.
A major improvement in the Deck Boss is the cast iron heat deflector. The Stampede had a sheet metal formed heat deflector and the one for the Deck Boss probably weighs 20-25 lbs. It is awesome! It distributes heat really well and it retains heat really well, so once this gets warmed up, your grill is going to maintain temperatures a lot easier just because it has a ton of thermal mass.
It’s Complicated…
Now, this is where we get into some of the things that I don’t personally like about the Deck Boss. I’ve lined my drip tray with aluminum foil on every grill that I own. I ran this grill on the hottest temperature it would go, for probably 45 minutes or an hour. The cooking chamber got up to about 640°F, which is awesome! I seared steaks on this grill and it was a searing beast! However, I didn’t notice until I took the grates out, that it had actually burned my aluminum foil.
Then when I took this apart I noticed that it actually burned paint off inside the grilling chamber. There’s paint flakes and caulk that was burned and destroyed inside. I reached out to Recteq about that issue and they didn’t seem very concerned about it, but I’m not that comfortable cooking in something where there might be paint blowing around and landing on my food. It’s really great that this thing can get up to 600+°F because it can really sear a steak. BUT, I don’t want paint flaking off and blowing on my food. I don’t really use this grill anymore because that’s a problem for me.
One of the other things I know noticed as I was running this grill on high for a sustained period of time is where the grill chamber meets the stand the paint started to like melt and bubble on both the front and the back of the grill.
The Missing Piece
There is one feature that this grill is missing, that many other grills in this price range have. That is a pellet dump feature, so you can swap the pellets that are in the hopper for something else, depending on what you’re cooking. I don’t usually use that that feature, but many other grills in this price range have it.
Besides that and the paint issues, I think that this is a lot of grill for $900. Is the Deck Boss my favorite pellet grill? No, and if you want to know what my favorite grill is and why, check out this video!
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