Weber 14516001 Master-Touch Deep Ocean Blue review

What the maker puts in writing

• “Holds up to 13 burgers made with a Weber burger press”
• “Slide the lid into the tuck-away lid holder on the side of the grill to avoid placing it on the ground”
• “Cooking grate is compatible with GBS inserts and is hinged for easily adding charcoal while grilling”
• “Tool hooks for hanging grilling tools, such as a spatula and tongs”
• “Built-in lid thermometer displays your grilled internal temperature”
• “Equipped with a tuck-away lid holder for convenient lid placement, taller legs, & char-basket fuel holders for easily arranging briquettes”

Twenty dollars, and two things the black page does not mention

The two Master-Touch listings on this shelf are $289 in black and $309 in Deep Ocean Blue, and the obvious reading is that you are paying twenty dollars for a color.

Except that this description adds taller legs and char-basket fuel holders, and the black listing names neither.

Char-baskets matter. They are two wire baskets that hold the briquettes in a defined pile instead of letting them spread across the whole bowl floor — which is how you build a two-zone fire: hot coals on one side, nothing on the other, so you can sear over the first and finish over the second without the lid blowing the temperature around. It is the single most useful thing you can do on a kettle, and doing it without baskets means pushing hot coals with a poker.

Taller legs raise the working height, which on a 42-inch kettle is already the tallest on this shelf.

So either this version genuinely has two features the black one lacks, or the two pages describe the same grill unequally. On a $309 purchase that is worth asking before buying.

What the page leaves out

Five one-line bullets here, against six detailed ones on the black Master-Touch.

Missing from this page but published on that one: “3 air vents which are regulated by 3 arched, swiveling damper blades” — the only airflow figure anywhere on this shelf; the One-Touch cleaning system with its high-capacity removable ash catcher; the warming rack; and “two premium, eight inch, rubber-molded wheels”.

The grill is almost certainly the same in all those respects. The page simply does not say so. Read the black listing for the specification and this one for its two extras.

The color, on the merits

Porcelain enamel is glass fused to steel at high temperature, and the pigment sits in the glass rather than on it. That is why Weber can say across this shelf that the finish will resist rust and won’t peel — there is no paint layer to come off.

So a blue kettle is the same object as a black one, built the same way.

The only practical difference: a chip shows bare gray steel either way, and either way it wants touching up before wet ash gets to the metal. Wet ash is alkaline and eats steel — it is what holes a cheap kettle from the inside.

And the capacity, unchanged

Holds up to 13 burgers made with a Weber burger press.

The same figure Weber prints on the $98 Jumbo Joe, the $149 Original Kettle, the $219 Premium and the $289 Master-Touch.

Five listings, one capacity, a $211 spread. The money buys mechanisms.

What is not published

No weight, where the black Master-Touch is 16,896 g. Warranty in the table only. The Amazon.com table lists: 10 Year Limited Warranty. No vent count. No cooking area in square inches.

Availability

On sale at around $310 on the American Amazon store at the time of checking.

Prices and availability are what Keepa reported on the date this page was updated; both move.