Napoleon PRO22 Kettle Review: Clever, but It Takes Practice

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Overview

Napoleon’s PRO22 keeps the 22-inch kettle shape and reworks three of its fussier parts. The lid swings off to one side on an offset hinge, so there’s never a hot dome to find a home for. The cast iron grids drop into any of three heights, low over the coals for searing or high for gentler cooking. Two sections of the grid lift on hinges, which lets you feed the fire mid-cook with the food left in place. It’s aimed at the backyard cook who wants one charcoal grill that can sear, roast and smoke, and who doesn’t mind learning how its vents behave.

Napoleon is a Canadian, family-owned company based in Barrie, Ontario. Its Barrie plants build barbecues, including its Prestige gas grills, but the PRO22 isn’t on Napoleon’s list of Made-in-Canada products; the company says everything it sells is designed and engineered in Canada, wherever it’s built. On October 3, 2026, Amazon.ca’s listing for this model had no new stock, so the price here is Napoleon Canada’s list price of $399 CAD, and the buy button goes to that Amazon.ca listing for when stock returns. Independent testers split on it, and their tests covered the earlier PRO22K-LEG-2, the cart version or an unstated version rather than today’s PRO22K-LEG-3, so read the results below as describing the same basic design.

Key Specifications

Napoleon PRO22 Charcoal Kettle Grill Heat Control and Cooking Results

The three grid heights are the feature that changes how you cook. In the bottom slot the food cooks just over the coals, which is where you sear; in the top slot it sits well clear of them, for a roast, a slow smoke or a tray of vegetables. Extra height under the lid is the other gain from the stainless ring. Of the six kettles The Barbecue Lab compared, the PRO22 was the one with room for a beer can chicken. A perforated stainless diffuser sits in the middle of the coal grate to spread heat outward from the center of the fire.

The evenness results are solid rather than standout. Consumer Reports, testing the PRO22K-LEG-2, rated its heating evenness good at both high and low temperatures, but its indirect cooking only fair. Homes & Gardens, cooking on the cart version, noticed the center running hottest, so a batch of burgers didn’t all finish together; once the grill had settled, its chicken skewers cooked fairly evenly.

Beyond that, testers disagree. Food Fire Friends’ reviewer, who has cooked on one for about two years, scored its performance 10 out of 10 and now picks it over their own Weber kettles for straight grilling. CNN Underscored’s results were the weakest. The grill was slow to come up to heat, its chicken ended up less seared and less crisp than on every rival in that test, and four minutes a side left its burgers rare. Fuel use splits the same way. Three of the tests found it hungry for charcoal, needing either a larger load than same-size rivals or top-ups partway through a multi-course or long cook; Food Fire Friends, by contrast, found consumption about the same as its Weber kettles, with fewer half-burnt coals left over. Heat-up was slow on the cart version too: Homes & Gardens waited close to an hour for it to reach its target temperature.

Expect a learning curve. The top vent turns freely and the bottom one clicks through five set positions, and it takes some practice to learn which settings give which temperature. The testers part ways on beginners: CNN, going by its cooking results, doesn’t recommend it for someone new to charcoal, while Food Fire Friends calls it suitable for both newcomers and experienced cooks.

Lid, Grates and Build

The offset hinge is the most practical change. The lid swings back and to the side, so you can reach the whole grate without your arm passing over the fire, and there’s no hot lid to set on the patio. It took The Barbecue Lab’s tester a few cooks to get used to the sideways swing.

Most of the tests found the cast iron grids sear hard and leave pronounced grill marks; CNN, with its under-seared chicken, was the exception. The trade-off is weight: by The Barbecue Lab’s account they weigh several times what the grates on the other five kettles in its roundup do. Food Fire Friends still found the grid easy to move between heights. Their WAVE shape also stops thin food like asparagus from dropping into the coals.

The rest of the build is good with a few gaps. It stands on four legs rather than a tripod, with a wire shelf between them. Two testers noticed some wobble in the stand, though Food Fire Friends doesn’t see it ever tipping over. There are no tool hooks: Napoleon sells a hook bracket that hangs from the bowl’s rim, while Weber’s two kettles in the table below have two hooks built into the bowl handle. The stainless ring is ready for an optional rotisserie kit, with doors that close over the spit ports, and there are separate doors for running temperature probe wires inside.

Cleanup and Ash Handling

Ash goes into a removable catcher under the bowl, which you drop out with the same handle that sets the bottom vent. Consumer Reports judged ash removal on the PRO22K-LEG-2 very good. The Barbecue Lab points out that, unlike Weber’s kettles, there are no sweeping blades in the bowl, so you brush the ash toward the opening yourself; it still scored cleanup 3 out of 5, ahead of the Webers’ 2, because their blades leave patches of ash behind.

The grids are the harder job. Food Fire Friends finds the wavy bars slower to clean than straight ones, since a flat wooden scraper can’t follow the curves, and recommends a stiff nylon brush instead. If you prefer lump charcoal, note the wide gaps in the charcoal grate: in Homes & Gardens’ test of the cart version, the small bits at the bottom of the bag dropped straight through, and the testers “got the sense that this grill was designed more for briquettes.”

How Does It Stack Up Against the Competition?

Weber’s two 22-inch kettles are the PRO22’s direct rivals; the Akorn is here for buyers who mainly want to smoke, since its insulated kamado body is built to hold heat for long cooks. Specs are each maker’s figures.

Is the Napoleon PRO22 Charcoal Kettle Grill Worth It?

The value picture in Canada is different from the US one. At Napoleon Canada’s $399 CAD list price, the PRO22 came in below the $459.99 Amazon.ca asked for Weber’s Original Kettle Premium on October 3, 2026, and about $39 above the Master-Touch’s $359.99, so its three grid heights, offset lid, deep rotisserie-ready ring and hinged refuelling sections cost little or nothing extra over a Weber kettle here. Buy it if you’ll use them: searing low one night, roasting a whole chicken high the next. Give yourself a few cooks to learn the vents, and use a probe thermometer at grate level, since the lid gauge only gives a rough idea of the heat where the food sits.

Look elsewhere if you mostly grill burgers and sausages over one heat. The Weber Original Kettle Premium is the simpler tool: CNN Underscored found it the easiest of its test grills to control, and its One-Touch lever sweeps ash into the catcher where the PRO22 needs a brush. The Weber Master-Touch keeps that sweep and the tool hooks and adds a lid holder, a warming rack and a grate that takes Weber’s Gourmet BBQ System inserts. And if low-and-slow smoking is the main goal, consider a kamado: Char-Griller builds the Akorn’s triple-walled body for heat retention and long burns, though it was $579.99 on Amazon.ca on October 3, 2026, and Food Fire Friends found smoking on the PRO22 possible but harder than on a dedicated smoker.

GuideWeber Original Kettle vs Napoleon PRO22: Weber Wins on ValueRead the Guide →

Napoleon PRO22 Kettle

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Sarah MitchellSenior Editor 𝕏 Ⓟ

Sarah has spent more than a few decades — she's not saying how many — in home design, with a sharp eye for products that deliver real quality without the inflated price tag. Her passion is finding the hidden gem that makes everyday life genuinely better.

How this was made: Researched and written with AI from manufacturer specs, independent tests and published reviews, then checked by automated quality checks. We haven’t tested this product ourselves. How we review →