have you seen a monument grill in a big box store and wondered is this a good grill for
the price then you're in the right place hello i am Wanderer001 and this is my review of the
monument grill mesa 400. this grill was provided to me by monument grill for the purposes of
doing an unbiased review so that's what you're gonna get so let's get into the actual review
of the mesa grill here now for those of you who have never actually assembled a grill before
well neither have i and to assemble the mesa 400 it took me and my wife two hours there are
a couple of key areas that i want to make you aware of with the assembly of this that i found
particularly tricky and that mostly is over here with the uh the side burner the actual
assemble of the knob itself and the electronics as well as underneath there the gas hose that you
have to attach in order to actually have it be able to ignite that side burner that particular
area was a bit of a tricky situation for my wife and i again have having never done this before
i'll also admit that the wiring under there could be a little better there's three wires that you
need to pay attention to one is the actual battery pack because well all the knobs there light up
so gotta connect that so the leds work the second is for the actual igniter which has two parts one
hooks up connects to uh the switch there the other part goes up into the the top area there
to actually ignite that could be labeled a little better yes i realize that one of the
wires is red and black and then the other one is stretched straight back but if you've never done
something like this before that could be a little tricky so just keep that in mind those are things
to look for as well as that secondary wire that you have to pull out and plug up you do have to
pull out it's not just dangling out there so food for thought on assembly two hours not too bad i
will say that pretty much it uses two screw sizes for everything the one thing i kind of wondered is
they have a bag of extra parts and part of me is wondering with this over here this is actually our
utensil rack and right there there's only one screw holding that up however if you look in
the spare parts there's two other screws because there's two other holes underneath there so i'm
wondering if it really is spare parts or if it's just um things that you should be using but they
don't necessarily want you to that aside assembly for never having done this before two hours i'm
gonna say it that's not too bad so if you've assembled something like this before it's really
good because most of the screws are actually already screwed in and you just need a phillips
head screwdriver to loosen them up so let's start talking about the grille itself you're looking at
stainless steel construction all around so you're definitely going to get a grill cover for this
because that stainless steel is not going to look pretty once things start hitting it but if we
start coming in and actually taking a tour we will start up here with our lid as you can see one of
the primary features of the mesa 400 that i really like with monument grill because i never actually
really thought about one of these it's glass you can look in there as long as it's bright
enough out to see inside you can keep an eye on your cooking really nice a big big temperature
gauge it's not necessarily something i thought i would need but having it there makes it super
great when we come back to the handle here unlike some other grilles that i've used in past this one
even though it's metal it's far enough away from the actual lid construction here that this does
not get warm to the touch like some others that i've done in fact when we were seasoning the grill
grates in here we left it on max for 30 minutes came back so we're looking at over 700 degrees
this was super cool to the touch didn't have any issues now when we open our lid i'm going
to point out some things that you might not have thought about with something like this and this is
things that monument grill apparently thought of they're nice little touches right here and here on
either side of the grill and if we quickly swing around to the back and kind of take a look right
there there's another one on the other corner those are little rubber stoppers that
make for a actual quiet grill clothes those are little things that you might not have thought
about that are actually really ingenious when we come and take a look inside we are looking
at a primary cook surface of 392 square inches and we're just going to come in a little closer
right here so we can see we've actually got a nice warming grill up here which is coated in something
that i'm not entirely sure i particularly care for on a warming tray but that's besides the point
works perfectly fine coming down we have four individual burners and with those burners we
can control the actual cooking surface so we can do indirect heating by turning on this
burner and this burner and leaving the two in the middle off if we wanted to do that
but since we're talking about the grill surface here why don't we take a quick meat montage break
so
so there you saw nice meat montage we're gonna come in and look at our grill a little closer
so our grilling surface here is porcelain coated cast iron and we have a total of 5 200
btus of cooking temperature now each of these right here 1 2 3 and 4 put out 1 000 btus and
then the side burner which we'll talk about in a moment puts out 1200 btus now since we're talking
about our actual grilling surface here there are a couple of things that i wanted to point out
in that one if you've used other grills we'll say the surface here is kind of channeled down and in
is that bad not necessarily but it means you can't really put food close to the front but you're not
going to want to do that anyway because when i was testing this out the closer you got to the front
here the cooler the temperatures actually were and that's partially due because of the way that the
flavor bars and heating element under there are situated is that bad no but it is a data point for
you that i want you to be aware of one other thing that you might not have considered with something
like this is actually the lid now because of the way that this is particularly mounted
you're not going to be able to get a really really large item in here like you could with some other
grilles however one thing that you don't think about is being able to just grab right here
and pull it down with those other lids that are huge and you can put like a full turkey in there
guess what you have to really reach across your heating elements to do that because
the lid is very high monument grill here the mesa 400 you don't have that problem
it's it's actually again these are little things that you don't think about that separate this girl
from others that you might have seen now we're going to come down to our knobs right here and
right here we can see indications as to where we are controlling there is an igniter right there
in the middle and again something that you may have to get used to is the fact that for
each of these you have to turn the gas on press the igniter turn the gas on press the igniter
that allows you to do kind of heating control that we were talking about before but if you
come from other grills where you turn the grill on ignite once and then chain chain chain it's going
to be a little bit of a learning curve it's not terrible but just something again to keep in mind
and because the grille itself is all stainless steel you're going to want to definitely pick
up some cleaner eventually because that's going to get kind of gross really quickly we're going
to come along to the side here and show you that there's a little discoloration because of the heat
but that's going to be like that for any type of stainless steel like this that gets really close
to heat so not a problem just be aware of that and then right over here we have a hole for a
rotisserie should we want to use that now the wings are really nice starting with the right
side here because guess what we have an extra burner an extra cooking surface if we want to keep
either sauces warm or cook some beans up while we're cooking whatever we're actually cooking
on the grill it's nice to have this extra surface to do that and just like with the others you turn
the knob and then press the igniter over there to get it started there's another way to turn it
on as well but we'll get into that in a moment coming across to the other wing again very nice
a lot of space to work with here this is actually where our utensil racks go and right here this is
what i was mentioning before where there should be three screws but there's really just the one
in the instructions right there i do like that it's kind of underneath the wing a little bit
so it kind of hides anything that you're hanging there it also means that you can also keep tools
still on here easily if you get a cover for this and then just go back into the spare parts and
screw the rest of that in coming down to the front we've got our two doors you'll notice
that they did save a little money with the mesa 400 by not having an actual handle on the front
to grab it's really just a recess thing right here my suggestion is watch where my hand goes do this
to open these up because i did a number on my thumb kind of reaching up like that so just keep
your thumb out of the way but here we go open them up one and two and here we have the inside
so you've got a nice little channel right there there's a cutout for your propane tank
and actually a little placeholder to help keep the propane tank in place and not moving around on you
right over there you can see the battery pack for the leds which we didn't talk about right up here
all four of our knobs including the side one over there five all have leds which are turned on by
this now a little hard to see right now so i'll flash up on the screen letting you see what that
actually looks like it's more of a novelty or a gimmick because if you need the leds
to see the knobs at night chances are you're not seeing your meat but it's a nice party trick and
it's kind of a cool feature and that is all run off that separate battery pack right back there
over here we have a drip pan now my suggestion is take the drip pan line it with tin foil because
that'll make it easier to clean up but it's very easy to just come over pick it up and pull it out
and put it back into place if you're not trying to do that around a camera right here we also
have our very long match chain i kind of wish that they had it where you could kind of hook
it up to something to get out of the way because it just feels like it's hanging there and it's
really long and that's primarily because guess what if you for whatever reason can't hook up
your side burner you'll have to use the matchstick so the matchstick will have
to reach over so that's why it's really long but i kind of wish they had a better way of
tucking that in you will see that the sides are ventilated but there's a giant cutout in the back
so let's actually swing around the back real quick and show you what i'm talking about so right here
is the back of the mesa 400 you can see there's a giant cutout where your actual propane tank is and
right here there's a little ventilation for where your actual cook box is so you're definitely going
to want to get a grill cover for this monument grill does actually sell quite a few so you're
going to want to get one for this now i bring you around to the back primarily because there's an
extra drip pan that is only accessible through the back and we're going to grab it right here
and pull it out so this is almost like a grease trap and then a drip pan down below again you're
going to want to cover that in tin foil but it's another way to kind of funnel the grease and not
have it just sitting around in your grill this is a nice feature i have i have had this on my
other grill which i've been referencing throughout this video but the main difference is with
monument this one comes out the back with the one i was referencing it comes out the front it's not
terrible but just keep in mind when you're placing this that eventually you will have to come around
the back to empty that out but if we come down and look at our casters our little wheels here there
are locking mechanisms on all four wheels which is something again that other grille does not do it
only does it in the front so having locking wheels i kind of thought was really nice and it makes it
easier when i have to come around the back to pull that drip pan out overall i was very surprised
with the mesa 400 from monument grills i know i've passed them in a lot of the big box stores before
but then again my friends all have a specific brand of grill and talked it up really really
well so i ended up going with that one when monument reached out to me to test this grill i
was apprehensive at first but let me tell you if you are looking for a grill that has a few more
bells and whistle than some of those other grills and hundreds of dollars cheaper than said grill
i highly recommend checking out the monument grill mesa 400 i really think especially if you're
either looking from upgrading from a camping grill or looking for your first grill this is going to
work wonders for you and leave some money in your pocket with that being said i have been
Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the area below
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