11 best portable BBQs for summer-long sizzling

Like your trusty old barbecue at home, just more compact, Blackstone’s griddle is a great quality investment that will suit keen chefs. This griddle was one of the largest and heaviest we tested, so is best used on your patios and packed in the car for long camping weekends and summer holidays, rather than a quick night away in your tent.

Once you do set it up, this tabletop grill looks and feels like the business. The non-stick steel top heats up in just a minute or two, cooks meat, fish and veg evenly and quickly and is also quick to wipe clean. We also liked the removable grease tray, which makes cleaning up a doddle. While this griddle is expensive, you could easily use it all summer at home, as a standalone barbecue, so, if you love to cook outdoors all summer, it’s worth the spend.

A great little portable barbecue for less than £20? Argos knocks it out of the park with this cherry-red charcoal grill. Described as ‘ideal for barbecues or for grilling on the go’, this should make a great companion for weekend camping trips with mates or gathering at home for patio feasts.

This is a much more sustainable alternative to disposable barbecues, too, as you can use it again and again. It’s a little fiddly to put this grill together from its flat-pack kit, but it’s well worth it for a simple but effective charcoal burner with a grill on top. Let the al fresco suppers commence.

This rather attractive portable barbecue was designed by chef Heston Blumenthal, king of cooking innovation, and there are definitely some fresh ideas inside this hexahedron. Unpack the cube and there’s a storage tray for stashing your ingredients, a sturdy bamboo chopping board for food prep and the firebox itself, ready to get cooking. When you’re done, you can pack it all together for easy transportation. The handles of the cube stay cool, so you can haul it to the beach or move it mid-fry-up if needed. Setup is quick and the whole thing looks very stylish.

Vango’s induction cooker is the perfect balance of camping hob and portable barbecue, helping you sizzle up a storm.

At just 1.42kg, this model is very lightweight and features five levels of heat, making it easy to cook low and slow or really blast your supper. There’s no open flame, which is safer for families with young children. Simply pop pans onto the wide flat cooking surface, on which it is also easy to spread ingredients out and to wipe clean when you’re finished. Both single and double versions are available.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This clean-lined, fuss-free portable barbecue is pleasingly quick and easy to assemble and use – just unfold it and you’re cooking on gas (well, coals). Pop charcoal into the V-shaped cavity and cook over the grill on top – it’s got limited space, so it is best used to whip up a feast for two.

Fold the portable barbecue flat again when you’re heading home – there are nifty carry handles for toting this barbecue to and fro, and its thin shape makes it easy to pop in small car boots and store in a cupboard.

Weber’s portable barbecue has clocked up hundreds of fans. Charcoal and gas versions are available, and both come with a sturdy steel frame and foldable legs that elevate the grill off the ground, plus a lid to pop on top, with a damper vent to make cooking at even temperature easier.

The charcoal burner is super-efficient, and the gas version is quick and mess-free to use. Easy to assemble and quick to fold up, this is a nice portable barbecue for a family of four.

Small but perfectly formed, Campingaz’s party grill comes in a portable package but unfolds into a versatile stove with five surfaces that enable you to grill, griddle and fry to your heart’s content. It’s ideal for weekends when you don’t want to take a huge barbecue away with you, but still want to get creative with your campsite suppers.

Despite having the capacity to work as a full-blown barbecue grill, the 400 is designed to be portable and is light enough (4.9kg) to carry with ease. All those different surfaces, plus the legs, pack down easily inside the stove, and the wok pops on top and clips into place as a lid. Very nifty.

With no assembly required, this smartly designed, well-thought-out portable is up and running as soon as your charcoal turns white, and it gave us really juicy burgers and some nicely charred veggie sides. What we really liked about this model was that it’s fit for purpose as the grate sits nicely underneath the porcelain enamel firebox so you don’t have to worry about wind whipping up the ash and cooling your food. The bamboo lid doubles as a pGrep board and the chrome handles mean you can move the barbecue around, even during cooking. Simple to clean once cooled, this is a very competitively priced portable that will keep you well fed all summer long. 

A funky table top model that comes in three different colours and is ideally suited for a campsite cookout. The citi chef boasted a really good, compact design and sturdy, rubberised legs that meant it wasn’t going anywhere once you’d placed it on your camping table. The cooking was even and the heat distribution across the ceramic-coated aluminium grill took any stress out of an alfresco meal.

The fact that the domed lid hooks behind the grill was a really nice touch, as it doubles as a windshield and also means that you never have to look for a lost lid during cooking. The built-in thermometer was accurate and the modular design meant that the barbecue was easy to take apart, scrub down and rinse.

The Q series has been around for a long time now but we still rate its evolution as a portable. It’s a real tardis griller that looks from the outside like it won’t be able to fit much more than a pork sausage and a veggie kebab, but open it up and you’ll be amazed how much grill space you have to play with.

This means that it’s very compact to travel, with side tables that fold down and a gas canister which is incorporated into the Q’s body and adds to the overall portability. The stainless-steel burner was efficient and heated the whole grilling area uniformly, so we knew exactly how well everything was cooking, even when the grill was loaded up with the maximum amount of burgers (a whopping 13).

Thanks to the porcelain enameled iron grates we didn’t end up losing half our meat to the grill when turning or serving and the whole unit was sturdy and stable, even when we plonked it on the sand. The Q 2000 also held its heat well so we didn’t have to keep fiddling with the controls and could just concentrate on the cookery. Cleaning was straightforward with a removable grease tray, but you need to supply this yourself.

We always enjoy cooking on the big Char Broil grills that incorporate their TRU infrared cooking tech, because it’s a sure-fire way of getting really good heat distribution across the grill surface. It retains the TRU infrared system of its beefier cousins with a grate made up of strips of triangular stainless steel, which we found stopped the burgers from sticking, reduced flare-ups and provided even heat so that our burgers seared super quickly and tasted amazing. There are also two sturdy carry handles on either side and a hooded lid that has enough room to store a couple of tanks of gas inside when the barbecue is fastened down for transport too.

There are three different sizes of LotusGrill to choose from, but we liked the biggest in the range because it’s still very portable yet still makes maximum use out of the fan-assisted barbecue base, which blows air over the coals so that the grill was ready for its first burger in around five minutes.

The grill itself is surrounded by a handy double ridge to stop you from losing food over the side and there’s good control over the heat because you can just turn the fans on or off, depending on whether you’re searing or low and slow grilling. The burn was quick and because the fans are battery-operated you can take this barbecue anywhere and even move it mid-cook as it’s constructed in such a way that the outer bowl never gets hot, even when the charcoal is lit inside.