Philips Smoke-less Indoor Grill HD6371/94 Review

Clean the cooking grates

Sometimes manufacturers try to manage expectation. That didn’t happen here with the Phillips Smoke-less Indoor Grill HD6371/94. Instead, they went in the opposite direction and hyped the model up as nothing short of a revolution in home grilling. They promised fast cook times, no guesswork, less energy use, high heat, a sleek design, less smoke, fewer flare-ups, and perfect food. It’s fair to say they promised the world and they slapped on a price tag of around 300 dollars so they had to deliver. Was it everything they claimed it to be? If you’ve got 300 dollars to play with, should you buy this? The answers are below.

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Pros:

  • No Assembly
  • Grills at a perfect Laboratory tested 446 Fahrenheit
  • Infrared
  • Fast Grill Times
  • Superb Even Cooking
  • No Flare-Ups
  • Must Less Smoke
  • Easy Cleaning

Cons:

  • No room for experimentation

Size/Design

It’s a beautiful shiny black box-shaped design with Grates on top. Full marks for beauty because they’ve put an amazing finish on this, but the first thing you notice is what’s not there. There’s no temperature gauge. There’s not even leveled heat settings as you see on Foremen. So there’s seemingly no way to play around with different temperatures. You simply get three choices: On, Off and Warm. It does look odd. It doesn’t even look like a Grill at first glance but once again it does look stylish and we’ll talk more about the operation of the HD6371/94 in the performance section. All will be explained but for now, you just need to know that I’ve found this to be a well-built, expensive looking design. It has measurements of 21.85×7.48×16.93 inches, so it’s large for a portable indoor Grill. We’ll put that down to good workmanship. I have some issues with this Grill but the design isn’t one of them.

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Performance

Assembly

It got off to a good start with me. There’s no assembly. Just take the plug that comes with it and the power comes on. You’re ready to go.

So why no temperature settings?

Well, Phillips sent this to a laboratory and had their experts look at it. They found out the perfect temperature setting for grilling at home. This temperature was (drum roll please) 446 Fahrenheit. So when you turn this grill on, it’ll immediately start heating up to exactly 446 Fahrenheit. According to Phillips, this is the exact point at which you can sear steaks while still cooking them right through. I’m sure that sounded great inside the Lab. Phillips where clearly blown away by this revelation. But, some people like to play around with their Grill. They enjoy trying different heat settings for different foods. If you’re one of those people then you’re going to be disappointed. There’s no room for maneuver here. It’s a case of turn it on, and cook at 446 Fahrenheit.  The Phillips Smoke-Less is for people who just want to come home from work and quickly cook dinner.

So how quick is it?

It’s quite impressive in terms of speed. In about 6 minutes it’ll reach 446 Fahrenheit and you’ll get a burger cooked at this temperature in 5 minutes. These kind of cooking times are common in Infrared Grills like this one.

What is Infrared?

In a conventional Gas or Charcoal Grill, the flame heats the Grates directly, to cook the food. In an Infrared Grill, you have an Infrared element which disperses heat onto the Grates. It has advantages. You do use less energy as Phillip claimed and there are no possibilities of Flare-Ups because there’s no flame. Although indoor Grill are mainly electric so they’re not known for Flare-Ups. Not exactly a revolutionary thing then that this one doesn’t have flare-ups either. Where Infrared really comes out ahead is in evenness of heat. Infrared heat sources can distribute heat more consistently and faster onto the Grates so you’re guaranteed even cooking. But here they’ve used multiple Infrared heat sources at angles whose heat is then deflected upwards with pinpoint accuracy. So everything cooks evenly and food does taste much better than on most Indoor Grills.

Does it Smoke-Less?

There’s still smoke but not nearly as much as you get on a traditional grill. None the less, don’t expect to fire-up one of these at the office. The American BBQ ran some testing to see how smokeless the Philips truly is.  They mounted a fire detector above the grill and it went off a few minutes into grilling a strip steak. The amount of smoke produced comes down to the amount of fat dripping onto the deflector panels.

Cleaning

It’s average in this department. Anyone who has owned an indoor Grill knows that these days you don’t expect to do much cleaning because of Porcelain-Enamel surfaces. Here the cleaning is no easier and no harder than most other indoor grills on the market. It requires a simple wipe just like most other indoors Grills so the claims that this is easier to clean are slightly exaggerated.

Final Thoughts

I loved this Grill. But, I just couldn’t help thinking that this was invented in a Laboratory by scientists, rather than Grill enthusiasts who love Steaks. Is that an issue? For some, it will be. Some people want to experiment with different heats on different foods. They like tailoring their food to specific requirements. Here, you either cook at 446 Fahrenheit or you don’t cook at all. Having said that, the food tasted amazing with more of the juices kept inside the meat. And those juices that did escape where collected easily so there was less smoke. It’s also exceptionally fast and comes fully assembled. Thank you for reading.