We have a Masterbuilt with a digital thermostat/timer. I think we paid less than $150 for it and have been really happy with it. I'm not a serious smoker, but I smoke our bacon and an occasional turkey, ribs, brisket etc. Next weekend I'm going to smoke the other half of the brisket I corned for St. Pat's Day.

DH has a cabinet shop so I use an assortment of shavings and small chunks. All seem to work fine.

We are now using a Bradley 4 rack, as Elery wanted something bigger. Today he smoked a 12 pound ham for dinner, turned out very well, but we aren't crazy about the "briquettes" that must be purchased specially for use with the thing and it cost somewhat more than $150.00.

We had an electric Masterbuilt and it worked fine, until the electronic controls went kaput. For a couple of years, though, it got some steady use and performed well.

Annie

i have a CharBroil digital electric with 4 shelves. It is really wonderful but I would not have bought it at full price of $249. CharBroil has a new WiFi enabled electric that's pretty neat for less than half price on their website $120. I don't need another smoker and I don't have a smart phone but you might be interested.

Char Broil Simple Smoker w Smart Chef

I always thought the LilltleChief was the one to have. I see them in high end kitchens all over NYC. Compact and easy to use but reviews are not so great. The newer models are very thin compared to the ol'classics. I would not hesitate picking one up at a yard sale as the elements can be easily replaced.

Supposedly the packaging is not enough to prevent denting during shipping.

Restaurants mostly use them for partial smoking, not full cooking. I also prefer a mild smoke and use my offset smoker as a grill then can add a bit of smoke for an hour or two at the beginning or end of the cooking process.

If you live in a colder area, just make sure that your electric smoker is heavily insulated. Otherwise you will have it useful not too often.

dcarch

Yes, the Big and Little Chief is so thin now they sell an insulated cover for it. Why not just make it insulated from the get-go?.

Not sure what the OP meant by "only uses a few of woods to smoke the cook," but for very small quantities of smoked food, you can use tea-bags or sawdust/chips, a coil-burner-hot-plate (for using it outside), and one of these Cameron stove top units. If you already have a hot plate, the Cameron smoker will set you back about $50 at the likes of BB&B.

Never seen the Little Chief models, so I can't comment on them beyond
noting that Amazon has them on sale now for less than $100. Might be a
good deal.

For larger capacities, the cheapskate old timers around here used to DIY smokers by combining a coil burner hot plate, a cast iron skillet (to hold the woodshavings/sawdust for smoke), and a corded probe thermometer in one of those old steel fridges from the 50's that had steel racks. They fabricated (punched) venting through the top. of the fridge and used bricks over the holes to regulate the smoke outflow.

Those old steel fridges seem to be very hard to find these days, though, and may be much larger and more cumbersome that what the OP is looking for.

So, for capacities larger than the Cameron thing but in a more manageable size, I can second KatieC's recommendation of a Masterbuilt Electric model.

One of my old-timer friends bought Masterbuilt's "30-inch Analog Electric" model few years ago when he could no longer find a decommissioned steel fridge. Apparently, Home Depot has them priced currently at $145. (A link is here but there are plenty of other places that seem to carry them these days, though some charge a lot more.) My friend has been well pleased with his purchase which he uses mainly for smoking fish and small-batches of sausages. His daughter has used it to make beer-butt/vertically roasted chicken, too. Seems to take a while to reach proper heat but also seemed to be well enough insulated to work here even on days when the winter temps were not much above 0° F.

What I would recommend against is one of the less expensive Masterbuilt "Electric Bullet Smoker" models. Home Depot seems to be selling new ones for about $80 these days, but my friend found one at a thrift store for $5 and decided to try it out. Our conclusions on that model: did not seem to work very well even on warm days; the usable capacity was smaller that my friend wanted; the heat levels shown on the external thermometer's face were way off; the unit very quickly lost a lot of heat and smoke whenever opened to check anything; and the unit seemed somewhat unstable in breezy conditions.

Another, younger friend found one of these Masterbuilt "Portable Electric" picnic-table-top models at a yard sale. He has been happily smoking one or two fillets of salmon and steelhead with it. It does not do cold-smoking like my Bradley but not everybody cares about cold smoking and the results for his small batches of hot-smoked salmonids are good.

Of course, for the really seriously frugal and/or chronic old farts, there is always Alton Brown's improvised (jury-rigged?) ceramic-flower-pot kludge of which there are youtube videos such as this one. If memory serves, AB had an even cheaper version which used tinfoil, a cardboard box, and a table-top fan. and a hot plate and skillet. Worth searching out just for the entertainment value, if nothing else.

In 1975 I worked for Lure Jensen in Hood River Oregon who makes the Big and Little Chief smokers (my two were like $35 each employee discount). They came with cardboard boxes that were the "insulators". Just two years ago I recycled them - insulator boxes long gone, didn't need them anymore anyway here in the hot South, but little electric pans no longer wanted to do their thing. Don't know if they come with cardboard boxes now, but mine worked very well and had smoked tons of trout and salmon over alder chips for 30 years. I bought the digital electric Char Broil and here in the South, with no trout or salmon in the middle of NC, they smoke pork butt, turkey, and ribs.

We bought this Masterbuilt Smoker from HD, and it is listed at $146. We've had it for several years, and it has worked fine for us, but we had to get a nylon cover for it, as we store it outdoors, since we use it all year, except when it is raining. My brother does most of the outdoor cooking, but I do the prep work. I use it mostly to smoke boneless turkey breast that I use for sandwiches. It does cool off rapidly when the door is opened - that is my one complaint about it. I generally smoke sausage when I smoke a turkey breast - it is not good for vegetables, from my experience, and we use the BGE (ceramic grill) much more often - generally two or three times a month - and this is much better for vegetables.