Pit Boss Navigator 1600 Review: 1,593 Square Inches for Four Figures

The Pit Boss Navigator 1600 exists to answer one question: how much cooking grate can you buy for about $1,100? The answer is 1,593 square inches across three tiers, which is more usable space than Traeger, Weber or recteq will sell you at twice the money. Pit Boss calls it the Navigator Series 1600 Connected and sells it as model PB1600M (retail SKU 11113), and it sits at the top of the Navigator range above the Navigator 850 we reviewed earlier this year.

This review is research-based, as all of ours are: we work from Pit Boss's published specifications, retailer listings, and the owner feedback that exists on the model so far. We have not cooked on this grill ourselves and we are not going to pretend otherwise — and in this particular case the honest reporting of what owners say is the most useful thing on the page, because the Navigator 1600 is new enough that its reliability record is still being written.

Who It's For

The Navigator 1600 is for the person whose current grill runs out of room, not the person whose current grill runs out of features. If you have ever cooked ribs in two shifts, borrowed a second smoker for Thanksgiving, or caught yourself measuring a brisket against your grate before buying it, this is the fix. Competition cooks, big families, tailgate crews and anyone who feeds 20-plus people regularly are the target.

It is not for most buyers, and that matters. A grill with 1,593 square inches of grate takes 65 inches of patio, weighs 205 pounds assembled, and burns pellets in proportion to the air it has to heat. If you cook for four and host twice a year, the smaller Navigator 850 does the same job with the same controller for less money and less space — and our pellet grill sizing guide walks through how to tell which band you are actually in before you commit.

Key Features

• 1,593 square inches across three tiers — two oven-style cooking grids plus a third upper rack, all in one chamber.
• 180°F to 500°F in 5-degree increments, controlled from a digital touchscreen controller with a readout for grill and probe temperatures.
• Flame Broiler lever — slide the plate and the firepot's flame reaches the food directly. Pit Boss advertises up to 1,000°F at the flame for searing; the controller's ceiling stays at 500°F.
• WiFi and Bluetooth with the Pit Boss Grills app for monitoring and temperature changes away from the grill.
• Two meat probe ports with two probes included — not universal at this price, and welcome on a grill designed to run several cuts at once.
• 30 lb hopper with a pellet cleanout, so you can dump and swap pellet flavors without running the hopper empty first.
• Prep station, folding front shelf and side shelf with tool hooks — the working surface most grills in this tier make you buy separately.
• 5-year limited warranty per Pit Boss and BBQGuys. Assembled dimensions are 65"L x 32"W x 49"H at 205 lb.

Specs: Navigator 1600 vs Navigator 850

The two Navigators share a platform, which makes the comparison unusually clean — almost everything except size is identical.

The spec sheet says it plainly: you are paying roughly $300 for 661 extra square inches and a third rack. Nothing else changes. That is either the best value on the page or money spent on space you will not use, and only your guest list decides which.

Performance: What the Specs and Owners Say

Temperature control. The Navigator line runs the same digital controller across the range, and on the 850 we found the honest assessment to be competent, not premium — it holds a usable average, with wider swings than a Traeger WiFIRE or a recteq PID. Expect the same behavior scaled up here, with one wrinkle: a bigger chamber takes longer to recover after you open the lid, so a cook that involves frequent spritzing will see more variance than the controller readout suggests. If you want to actually see what the meat is doing across three tiers, budget for a wireless meat thermometer with multiple probes — two included probes do not cover a full chamber.

Smoke output. Pit Boss grills are generally well regarded for smoke flavor at low settings, helped by a controller that cycles the auger rather than holding a razor-flat PID line — the same behavior that costs it points on precision earns it some back on flavor. Pellet choice does more work here than the grill does; our wood pellet flavor guide covers which woods suit which cuts.

Searing. This is the Navigator's genuine advantage over the obvious alternatives. A Traeger Woodridge tops out at 500°F through a solid diffuser; the Navigator's Flame Broiler lever opens a direct path to flame. You get real crust over the open section — not across the whole grate, and not at a steakhouse broiler's intensity, but a meaningful difference from "pellet grills cannot sear." Read Pit Boss's 1,000°F marketing as flame temperature at the firepot, because it is not a grate temperature and no controller on the grill will display it. Our best pellet grill for searing roundup puts that capability in context against grills built specifically for the job.

Cold weather. The chamber is single-wall. A box this large loses heat across a lot of surface area, and the pellet bill in January reflects it. If winter smoking is your main use case, an insulated cabinet is the better tool — our best vertical pellet smoker guide covers the double-walled options, and the cold-weather pellet grilling guide covers how to get the most out of a single-wall grill if you buy one anyway.

Reliability: The Part Worth Reading Twice

The Navigator 1600 is recent, and its owner-review base is small. That is the single most important fact about buying one.

What exists is mixed. Walmart shows a 4.4-star average from 28 reviews at the time of writing — a positive signal, but a thin one. On BBQGuys, where reviews are fewer still, one buyer reports repeated control-board and heating-element failures while another reports a trouble-free first cook. Neither pattern is established enough to call a defect rate, and we are not going to inflate two reviews into a verdict. But a handful of early reports of electrical failures on a $1,100 grill is a reason to buy from a retailer with a painless returns process and to register the warranty the day you assemble it.

Retailer listings also disagree on two details we could not resolve. Pit Boss's own product page describes the two main grids as porcelain-coated steel, while AJ Madison and BBQGuys list porcelain-coated cast iron — a real difference in how the grates hold heat and how long they last. And while Pit Boss and BBQGuys both state a 5-year warranty, North 40 Outfitters lists 2 years. Ask before you pay, in writing if the grill is a special order.

Ownership Notes

• Measure first. 65 inches wide and 205 pounds assembled means this does not tuck into a corner, and it does not move easily once it is together. Check your gate width before delivery, not after.
• Assembly is a two-person job. The boxed unit is heavier than the assembled one (Pit Boss lists 230 lb boxed), and lifting a chamber this size onto its cart alone is how people bend things.
• Use the pellet cleanout. It is the feature that makes flavor swapping practical on a 30 lb hopper, and it keeps old pellets from sitting through a damp month. Store the bags properly — our guide on how to store wood pellets explains why that matters more on pellet grills than people expect.
• Clean on a schedule, not on a feeling. A three-tier chamber accumulates grease in three places, and grease is the one maintenance item with a real failure mode. Our pellet grill grease fire guide covers the stakes, and a maintenance schedule is worth copying even for a non-Traeger.
• Expect a learning curve on load-up. Three tiers of grate have three different heat profiles. The upper rack is for things that want gentler, more indirect heat; the bottom grid is where the Flame Broiler lever does its work.

Price and Where to Buy

Pricing on this model is unusually spread out. When we checked retailer listings in October 2026 the same SKU ranged from roughly $979 at Walmart to $1,139-$1,199 at BBQGuys and $1,199.99 at BBQ Galore — a $200-plus spread, which makes it worth checking more than one retailer before you order. Those figures move; treat them as evidence that shopping around pays, not as today's price. The button below goes to Amazon, the only retailer we link, and carries the live tracked price rather than a number typed into this page.

For context on where that lands against the rest of the market, the Navigator 1600 is one of the picks in our best pellet grills under $1,500 roundup, where its space-per-dollar number is the best on the page by a wide margin.

Verdict

The Pit Boss Navigator 1600 earns a 4.1 out of 5 from us, and the score is a split decision rather than a hedge. On capacity-per-dollar it is the most grill you can buy near $1,100 and nothing from Traeger, Weber or recteq comes close on that one metric — add a working sear lever, a 30 lb hopper, two probes and a prep station, and the value case writes itself. What holds it back is everything a spec sheet does not show: a controller that is competent rather than precise, a single-wall chamber that drinks pellets in winter, and an owner-review record too thin and too mixed to call proven.

So buy it for the reason it exists. If you cook for crowds and the grate is the constraint on your cooking, the Navigator 1600 solves that problem more cheaply than anything else on the market, and you should buy it from a retailer who will take it back. If you cook for a family and you are shopping on features, a Traeger Woodridge or a Weber Searwood 600 will give you a better-controlled, better-documented grill for similar money — see our Searwood 600 vs Woodridge comparison for that matchup — and you will not miss the 661 square inches you never filled.

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