One of the nicely looking temp/blower units out there. Love how it’s all one thing. Great product design. The one (yes, one) cook I’ve been able to get all the way through successfully in a year of ownership and THREE units I’ve gone through was a great experience.
But man, each unit did something different. The first just stopped connecting to wifi at all after my first cook. Bought a dedicated 2.4 router for it (why? It’s 2022), did direct connections in a full router DMZ with zero network interference. I know my way around a router. It is not my internet.
The next would just keep the fan on forever after about 20 minutes. Had to unplug and restart the cook every 20 minutes or so.
I’ve never had an IoT device be so finicky with internet connections. Ever.
The final unit, and final straw for iKamand, was a thanksgiving cook that went on “blue light mode” (and showed a connection in my router stats) but did none of the “will go off it’s last known settings” even though the app said it had lost connection. I even tried to turn it to Wi-Fi Direct mode and that failed after about an hour.
I don’t know what cost cutting corners Kamado Joe went through on this device, or what servers Decora is running in someone’s basement instead of renting dynamic demand servers somewhere like every other IoT company out there, but I’ve had enough. I shouldn’t have to cross my fingers, do a special dance, and troubleshoot my entire network connection every time I want to cook something.
Maybe the new ownership of Kamado Joe will result in a reliable product.
