Napoleon BILEX730RBI

Never ever buy a Napoleon BBQ – Never ever buy a Napoleon BBQ! They have the worst after sales service that I have ever experienced in my life! It has been more than 12 months since I bought mine. It still doesn’t work properly and they have outright refused to come and even look at it. After much complaining they finally promised to send someone but then silence for another couple of months until I complained again. Finally they begrudgingly agreed to send someone. I took the day off work and they didn’t show up!

Some great features, let down by poor design and poor support – I bought this BBQ as it fit my existing island within reason. On Paper it sounded great, It has Infrared burner to be used as a sizzle zone. All Stainless Steel design with solid hood and thick stainless burner tubes, Solid roasting hood that folds back far enough so the smoke doesn't go in your face, Infrared burner, SS wave pattern grills, etc. It's party trick is you can add Cast iron trays to use Charcoal for cooking your food, smoking (for flavour), and a quality, heavy duty Rotisserie that easily handles 15KG's of meat (Rated at 25KG or more).

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ISSUE'S: The BBQ sits above the island, as the brackets are not flush with the side. The bit that sit above gets extremely hot and makes burning yourself far too easy. (As well as melting anything on the island that may com in contact.

The Grills are flush with the BBQ deck meaning a sausage or corn will role off with ease onto the floor.

The grills, that look great in the wavy S pattern, are too far apart, and vegetables, chicken, etc easily slide straight through the gaps into the firey hell below.

Control Knobs, are floppy, loose wobbly, (you get the idea) Chrome plated plastic. Not acceptable at this price point.

No Lights internally, (New rotisserie model has a flexi light on it!!)

The backlights in the Knobs use batteries, really, and its dangles under the BBQ, terrible design, cheap and nasty idea.

The red glow when the BBQ is hot is not available on this model, we get just cool blue, (Pro series not available in Australia, pity)

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The SIZZLE Zone Infrared burner is covered in heat proof glass to avoid flare ups in Australian models, US Models are not covered. The problem is, (Same issue for the Grand TURBO BBQ's, but its flat not curved), the heat radiates out the side of the glass for a massive hot spot. (On the Turbo that's the front towards the user and the Back of the BBQ). Solution, remove the glass, place the cast iron hot plate over it and you get great heat for searing. Or carefully sear over the infrared heat.

The Rear Infrared Burner on mine is faulty, once it gets replaced I'll update my review, but at present, its Useless.

UPDATE: After over a year of arguing with Napoleon Grills, the rear Infrared burner is still useless, they cant fix it, and the last repair has rendered the ignition inoperable so I can't light it!

Napoleon Grills support has been terrible. They make requests for me to try and test things, they have mailed me parts to swap out, all to no avail. The Rear UR burner is useless.

I may have to take them to VCAT to get this resolved, NOT HAPPY.

But my other gripe is a lack of consistent heat from the normal SS tube burners, I can't believe how manuy hot and COLD spots this BBQ produces. I now exclusively use the sizzle zone for all meat cooking or Its slow and low for everything else.

Charcoal cooking is great, (have done some fantastic spit), but cleaning the mess it makes inside is a problem.

The fat tray with its raised fat distributing angles, that make the fat flow to the sides of the tray and under thee raised bit seem good in theory, but 2 roast chickens on the rotisserie, had enough sticky fat to catch fire and leave soot everywhere. Dangerous!!!

The Fat tray needs to be Lower away from the heat, More poor design.

Lots of sharp edges inside show a lack of build quality and the Screws protruding in visible site, that get jammed against the grills when hot, are annoying.

This BBQ could be great, I hope Napoleon take my review and improve it.