Weber Original Kettle 22 Review: $149 for 363 Square Inches and the Ash Sweep, Without a Lid Thermometer

Product image supplied by the brand

In this guide

THE SHORT VERSION

The 22-inch Original Kettle is the point where Weber's charcoal line stops being a portable object and becomes yard equipment: $149 in black, part 741001, 363 square inches of grate under an enameled dome, two wheels on one side of a three-legged base. Weber's US store, Amazon's own buy box, Home Depot and Lowe's all listed it at $149 on 2026-09-28, and both of the big-box stores showed it in stock for same-day pickup near Los Angeles.

What that price leaves out is a dial set into the lid. On this model the lid carries a damper instead, and a thermometer starts one rung up Weber's ladder, on the $199 Stealth Edition and on the Premium, $229 at Weber and $219 in Amazon's own buy box. Everything else that makes a kettle behave like one, the enameled bowl, a damper top and bottom, the ash sweep and the ten-year rust-through term, is here, and nothing in Weber's 22-inch range that carries the sweep handle costs less.

Our verdict

Buy it when the kettle stays where you put it and you set heat by hand: 363 square inches, the One-Touch ash sweep and ten-year enamel coverage for $149. Skip it if you grill by lid temperature.

A good fit for: A yard that grills for a crowd and leaves the kettle where it stands: Weber's own figure is thirteen burgers at once, with the dampers doing a dial's work.
We would skip it if: You want grill temperature at a glance, you need the 22-inch grate to travel, or you are shopping for a pork shoulder smoker. Weber sells those as different products.

Reasons to consider it

363 square inches of cooking grate with the One-Touch ash sweep, at $149 from Weber, Amazon, Home Depot and Lowe's alike
The enameled bowl and lid carry a decade of coverage against rust-through and burn-through; the ash system carries five years
Wear parts are published and priced: One-Touch cleaning kit $24.99, wheel $20.99, lid and bowl handle $15.99, leg set $51.99

The compromises

No lid thermometer, and this model's own parts list carries none to add; the dial starts at the $199 Stealth Edition
A three-leg frame with two wheels and 33 pounds assembled by Lowe's count, a figure Weber itself does not publish, so it is a placed grill rather than a carried one
The cooking grate is one fixed plate: adding charcoal mid-cook means lifting it, and the fuel chart expects an hour-by-hour refill on indirect work

What we have not verified: The spec table for part 741001 has no weight row; the 33 pounds here is Lowe's assembled-weight row, 7 pounds more than the 26 Weber gives for the Stealth Edition on the same bowl, and neither number is Weber's own for this model. The $149 held at all four sellers on 2026-09-28, but Home Depot listed the Jumbo Joe Premium at $119, not $99, so that comparison depends on where you buy. Weber publishes no service life for the plated-steel grate; the only figure is the two-year warranty it carries as a remaining part.

The things in this guide

A closer look at the products, who they may suit, and what to check before buying.

The full-size kettle for a yard that has a permanent spot for it

Original Kettle Charcoal Grill 22 in, Black

A 363-square-inch plated-steel grate, the One-Touch ash sweep, two wheels and a ten-year rust-through term on the enameled bowl and lid, at $149 in black.

Before you buy: No lid thermometer and no warming rack. The $199 Stealth Edition adds the dial; the Premium, $229 at Weber and $219 on Amazon, adds it with a grate that hinges up for fuel and an enclosed ash catcher.

$149 at Amazon $149 at Home Depot $149 at Lowe's

Price checked September 28, 2026. Retailer prices can change.

363 square inches, and what each step above it costs

Weber rates this grate at 363 square inches and lists the same number as the total, as the box holds no warming rack; the company's stated fit is thirteen burgers pressed with its burger tool. The 18-inch Original Kettle is 240 square inches at $129, so the extra $20 buys half again as much surface. Above the standard 22, the Premium, the Stealth Edition and the Master-Touch all quote 363 as well. Area stops being the differentiator once you are at 22 inches.

The ladder is about what hangs off the bowl. $199 buys the Stealth Edition, the same grill in matte black with a lid thermometer, sold only through Lowe's, where it was $199 with three in stock at a Los Angeles-area store, and Weber. $229 at Weber, or $219 sold by Amazon, buys the Premium in black; Copper or Green is $249. $289 buys the Master-Touch, which keeps the 363 inches, adds an 80-square-inch warming rack, cuts its grate for Gourmet BBQ System inserts, includes two Char-Rails for banking coal and stands two inches taller. Weber gives no weight for the black 22-inch; the Stealth page puts 26 pounds on the same bowl.

The missing dial, priced three ways

The lid on part 741001 carries a damper and no dial. Its specification table has no thermometer row, and the schematic for part 741001 lists no thermometer among the model's numbered parts, so Weber's own parts channel for this grill offers no dial to add. The Premium's schematic sells its lid thermometer as part 60540 for $17.99, with a separate bezel beside it.

Cost the three routes before defaulting to the Premium. This kettle at $149 plus an aftermarket 2-inch dial at $42.95, in stock on Amazon today, comes to $191.95, which is $27.05 under the Premium's $219 on Amazon. The catch is the lid: it has no factory hole, so the dial means drilling the porcelain enamel yourself, and Weber's warranty excludes damage from alteration or modification and from parts that are not genuine Weber parts. The $199 Stealth Edition is the cheapest grill that arrives with a dial fitted; the Premium adds the hinged grate and enclosed high-capacity ash catcher. If you set heat by hand on the two dampers, $149 plus nothing is cheapest.

The ash sweep is the $50 difference over the Jumbo Joe

Weber's $99 Jumbo Joe Premium 22, $98 sold by Amazon, quotes the identical 363 square inches, which makes the $50 gap between it and this grill the real question. The Original Kettle's page leads with the One-Touch system, and the owner's guide explains the mechanism: three blades under the charcoal grate, worked back and forth from a handle on the bowl, push ash out of the bottom of the firebox into a catcher, and the same openings act as the bowl damper. The Jumbo Joe's own feature list names an ash catcher and no sweep handle, and its closed height is 38.6 inches against 39.5 here.

Weber's chart for a 22-inch bowl calls for 40 of its briquettes, or 50 of another brand, for a direct-heat cook; an indirect cook starts at 15 per side and takes 7 more per side for each additional hour, and per the guide a coal load typically burns through in about an hour. Its grilling chart puts a 4 to 5 pound chicken at one to one and a quarter hours indirect and ribs at one and a half to two, so those cooks need lit coal added partway through, and this one-piece grate has to come off to do it. The hinged grate that fixes that is sold for this grill as part 80629, at $39.99.

Assembly, spare parts and the space it takes

Weber's own $99 professional assembly covers only grills priced $399 and up, but Lowe's lists assembly of this kettle as free and Home Depot offers free in-store assembly on pickup orders. Bought from Weber or Amazon, it arrives flat and goes together against the 18.5/22.5-inch Original Kettle assembly guide, document 57880. The schematic for part 741001 prices the wear parts one by one: One-Touch cleaning kit $24.99, wheel $20.99, lid and bowl handle $15.99, triangle leg support $37.99, leg set $51.99. The One-Touch parts carry five years of coverage against the bowl's ten, and the kit that replaces them costs about a sixth of the grill.

Size it against the space before ordering. Closed, it measures 39.5 by 22.5 by 25 inches, height by width by depth. Under the lid, the guide asks for about an inch of clearance between food and lid, and its chart runs up to a 10 to 12 pound whole turkey at 2 to 2½ hours indirect. Free shipping at weber.com starts at $99, so the grill ships free on its own and a $19.99 cover can join the same order. The cover is worth it if the kettle lives outdoors: the warranty counts surface rust as cosmetic wear it does not cover, and the guide names acid rain and salt water as causes.

When a different Weber fits better

Pass on the 22-inch if the grill has to travel. The 14-inch Smokey Joe at $54.99 and the 18-inch Jumbo Joe at $89.99 are Weber's portable answers, and a buyer who can live without the sweep handle and the tool hooks can have this same 363 square inches for $99 from the Jumbo Joe Premium, which stands 38.6 inches to this grill's 39.5 and rolls on the same two wheels. Pass on it if the normal cookout is two people and the grate will sit half empty.

Pass on it a second time if the cook is a five-hour smoke. Weber's own fuel numbers require lit coal added every hour on an indirect cook, and the Smokey Mountain Cooker 18 at $419 is built for that job with a water pan, a fuel door and two stacked grates. The last group is the accessory shopper: this grate is one solid plate with no cut-out center, so a Gourmet BBQ System stone or roaster has nowhere to sit. Weber sells the GBS hinged grate for this grill as a $59.99 part: $149 plus $59.99 is $208.99, and the lid still has no dial. The $289 Master-Touch ships with that grate and the dial already fitted.

How we put this together

Built from the product pages and listings below, without test scores or results we have not measured. Specifications and prices change, so check the original page for the exact model, current price, delivery, and returns.

About our shopping links