Pit Boss Pro Series 4 V2 PBV4PS2

jdunk54nl

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Hey all
Purchased a pitboss pro series 4 v2 with wifi, bluetooth, and pid control. I was so excited for this because I was waiting for the brunswick forever to be available.

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Well, I exchanged the first one because I thought it was defective only to have the same issue with the second.

It takes forever to heat up. Here are some timers pictures showing how long it takes.

Please tell me my mind isn't crazy and it should not take this long? Tech support is trying to help but I am not very confident that will be fixed prior to my 30 day return window (Bought on 1/6/21).


This was with ambient temp of 45 degrees Fahrenheit. This was just hitting power and turning up the temp to 350 once I closed the door.
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Upon talking with tech support, they suggested instantly turning it to 200 right when I turn it on and let it hit that first before increasing to higher. Well after 43 minutes it wouldn't get above 180 so I shut it down to not waste more pellets. Ambient temp in mid 50's at this point.
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Finally this was the instantly setting the temp to 350 upon power on. Fastest but still nearly an hour to reach 350. Ambient temp in the mid 60's.

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it looks like that has the same controller as the new 1150 series that is having issues. Go here and watch this video and give Pit Boss a call and see what they can do. https://www.pitbossforum.com/threads/new-firmware-for-pit-boss-pro-1150.834/

Looks like a nice smoker and I like the placement of the controller on the side. My series 3 vertical has the controller on the bottom and every time I take meat out it drips all over the controller.
 
It definitely checked all of my boxes from a technical stand point and from a looks standpoint. It really does look really nice and well built. I was really hoping to use it as a smoker and as an outdoor oven since it got up to 450.

Hopefully tech support will email me telling this will fix it, otherwise I will be returning it this weekend and might re-buy later or save up for the camp chef vertical that checks a few less boxes (doesn't get as hot) or switch to a charcoal vertical or offset.
 
Here was the engineering departments response about the issue. This doesn't fix the issue. Even pre-heating it at 350 still takes an hour. I have already done basically 3 burn offs trying to figure this issue out. This isn't the "set it and forget" smoker either. If I have to do this much work to get it going, I am going with a different style.

I ended up returning it yesterday. I will look again at these if they fix the issues and still don't have a different one (the couple that were also on my list are back ordered still).



"With our new PID technology, the controllers are programmed to create an accurate average temperature across the grill grate, but also to prevent the grill from overshooting the set temperature. To help their grill achieve lower set temperatures more rapidly, preheat the grill to 350°, then reduce the set temperature in increments to wherever they desire. Preheating will allow your PID controller to compensate and achieve set temperature more quickly.

Have the customer complete:

3 Burn Offs at 350 degrees for 40 minutes

Then on normal start up he starts the grill at 350 degrees.

After 20 minutes in preheat he back down the set the temperature of the grill first to 300 then 250, then 225."
 
I got one the same date. The time to almost 350 temp was 67min @ 305deg. Pellets ran out. Am disappointed in the inability to shut off or control the smoke system. Called cust svc today. I was told that the "P" setting is for the smoke. with discussion, P settings are for the stages of the cook. They also explained that the smoke will run the entirety of the cook, and supposedly decrease with temp and programmed settings. ..... they are sending a new temp probe and bag of pellets. We'll see what happens next. this thing has the weight of a tank... My masterbuilt electric is about the same size yet 1/2 the weight.....
 
Good to know mine wasn't the only two with this issue and not just my local ones, although NM is semi close still, but I doubt they would be from the same shipment.

I really did have such high hopes for this, but to heat up to 305 after 67 minutes is ridiculous. It seems like pitboss rushed all of these new pid/wifi controllers for lowes models. I don't see the brunswick or the other platinum series at walmart having these issues, at least not reported anyway. They just have stock issues.
 
When I clicked the link to view it said 2 reviews. Then page refreshed automatically and said 1. Just do it again. Write the review and save it then copy and paste. I've had the same thing happen to me at the Walmart website. I kept doing it over and over for the same product (a Mr. Coffee coffee maker) that didn't work out of the box. Eventually they sent me a label to return and sent me a new one. I told them I wasn't sending them anything until I had a new one. So they sent out a new coffee maker and then I sent back the defective one.

Now I realize this is a cheap $30 coffee maker but the point is I kept hammering them on the reviews.
 
I just bought one of these yesterday and did the first burn in last night. It was about 50 deg. and took almost an hour to get to 350. I’m going to do another burn in today and time it. I switched from propane so I expected it to take longer but I’m not sure what normal is for this unit.

I’m still trying to figure out the controls and how to increase/reduce smoke. Am I the only one that finds this controller confusing?
 
I just did another burn off. It’s 50 deg and breezy. Mine got to 350 in 32 minutes. I hit the power button, waited about a minute then set the temp to 400.
 
I got one the same date. The time to almost 350 temp was 67min @ 305deg. Pellets ran out. Am disappointed in the inability to shut off or control the smoke system. Called cust svc today. I was told that the "P" setting is for the smoke. with discussion, P settings are for the stages of the cook. They also explained that the smoke will run the entirety of the cook, and supposedly decrease with temp and programmed settings. ..... they are sending a new temp probe and bag of pellets. We'll see what happens next. this thing has the weight of a tank... My masterbuilt electric is about the same size yet 1/2 the weight.....
got the pellets and rub (indtead of the probe...minor mix-up. Called them and are sending the probe out tomorrow. Cooked a pork tenderloin... smoker temp was compared to my new thermworks 2-port SMOKE thermoneter, 55deg (+/-) off high for the whole cook. It did get up to 295 air temp when set to 350. The meat probe was also off but around 12 high...
 
I just bought one on Saturday from Lowes. I was having the exact same issues. Brought it home, assembled it, primed the auger per directions. It fired up but wouldn't get hot, just warm. I thought maybe I didn't prime the auger enough so I forced fed it some more pellets by holding the prime button down a few more times throughout the heating up process. After a very, very, long time it finally got up to 350 and I left it there for about 45-60 minutes.

The next morning I tried again as I was planning on smoking a chicken on it for dinner. I had same issue on start-up. I messed around with it a couple of times an had to force feed it pellets again to get it up to temp. It would start up, reach about 130 degrees and then just fall on its face. It stayed around 130 for about an hour! Finally forced it up to temp by pressing the prime button a few times again and I did cook my chicken. Once it's was up to temp it would hold. Scratched my head a bit and slept on it. Decided today I would try once more to let it do the start-up per the manual and if it didn't work I would try one more thing. Well it didn't work. Same deal, it fired up, started warming up slowly and once it reached about 130 it just hung up there and then started losing temp dropping back to 119 before I gave up on that and powered it down. The auger was clear of debris and filled up with pellets and things seemed proper and functioning okay but it just seemed it would not drop pellets often enough to get the fire going strong enough to reach temp. On one start-up I even "hand primed" it by putting a handful of pellets directly in the fire pot before I powered it up. Didn't seem to matter much.

Only had one idea left up my sleeve and that was to fire it up per the manual but once the smoke cleared, let it run for about a minute with the door open and get to a roaring fire then close door and turn it up to HIGH. After letting it cool from the initial try this morning, unplugging it and plugging it back in that is exactly what I did. I fired it up and once the fire was roaring for about a minute I turned it up to HIGH and left it there until it hit 300. It was about 36 degree ambient temp and it hit 300 in about 30 minutes. Once it got it to temp it maintained well. In fact I was very impressed with how well it maintained temp even in some pretty windy conditions. I let it run for a few hours adjusting the temp down from 300, 250, 200, and finally 175. At each setting it held it's temp well. I powered it down, let it cool and did it once more. Same drill, fire up, run until fire gets a roar, then close door and turn up to HIGH. It worked again. It was about 30 mins from power on to 300 degrees in an ambient temp of about 50 or 55.

I couldn't care less if it goes above 300 frankly as I want to smoke not bake. I do wish it had a 275 setting though. That's where I like to do chicken but I can live with 250 as long as it will hold the temp. So, for those of you having issues with these things getting up to temp in the typical start-up mode you might try this procedure yourself. It seems to be working for me. When it's set to high the auger runs a lot which is what it needs to get a strong fire going in order to get hot. If I have any other issues later I'll post back here. Jury is still out on this one as far as I'm concerned. Yesterday I was ready to return it to Lowe's and had already started researching others but I'll give it a chance at this point. Hope this helps someone else. Seems the control panels on these things needs the firmware update Pit Boss is promising. A download through the app would be great but it doesn't sound like that is going to happen. They need to come up with a solution though and they also need to respond to posts on their website. COVID is not a legit excuse when they can respond VIA a laptop from just about anywhere.
 
The manual also says the default preheat setting is 350 but unless I forced mine over to the high setting I will be waiting until next week for it to hit 350. My interpretation of the manual is they intend for you to open the door, start-up, get a roaring fire in fire pot, close door, just let it warm up and if you don't touch the dial it will go to 350 as a default. Are you saying you interrupt differently?
 
Maybe that is where I went wrong all along. I have been blaming it on the machine and it might have been me. I suspect others will make this mistake too because of the way the manual is worded. That makes a person feel like an idiot. I'm usually fairly sharp with things like this and pretty skilled at figuring things out even if the directions are poor. I've never used a pellet grill before but I'm very familiar with pellet burning fireplace units. My parents have had once since I was in my teens and my wife and I have had one for over 15 years. So I fully understand the concept of how they work and these smokers use the same basic concept. Thus, the reason I was standing there watching and listening to this thing telling myself there's no way it's dropping enough pellets to reach 350 (the default setting for start-up). Hence why I hit the prime button a few more times urging it along. Since getting involved in this conversation I went to Youtube and saw a start-up video done by PB and they clearly state this in regard to a previous none PID model but no videos for this one and no reference to that in the manual. The note about the start-up mode being 350 default is what threw me off.

When I power mine up it just shows the actual temp inside the unit unless I press the knob. Of course it indicates when the auger is running and that the ignitor is on along with the fan. If I press the knob I get the "S". I thought that was just some control board notation frankly. I wasn't sure if it was an S or a 5 at first but I later assumed it was an S for start-up. The only notation I see in the manual about an S on the panel is for setting up the recipe mode and it's referring to something different than SMOKE mode. I guess if a person owned one of these prior they might know that but a newbie won't unless it's noted somewhere. Pit Boss may have created a customer service headache with their manual on this one.
 
I agree too about the PID taking forever to catch up. The unit will mostly hold a very close temp to your setting but when it does drop by 20 or 25 degrees it takes a long time to catch back up if you don't intervene. Mine seems to stay very close to the selected temp once it stabilizes though. So close at times in fact that I was sure the app had frozen, but it had not. I had it set at 250 and it didn't budge off of it for probably close to an hour. I also find it doesn't overshoot the temp when it does come back up from a loss. I would assume on a long cook with a big brisket or pork butt you might want to err on the high side of your desired temp range and not the low side. I saw the temp drop as low as 223 one time when I had it set on 250 but I only saw it overshoot a temp by one or two degrees anytime it was recovering from a loss on any setting. I think it would be fairly safe to say that if you set at 250 you might see some time in the 225 to 240 range but you wouldn't see anything more than 255 on the high side unless the temp of the ambient environment increased drastically. Of course this is just an initial observation in temps from 30 to about 60. That might be a little different in 90-100 degree summer weather.
 

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