Camp Chef Flat Top Grill 600

What makes this a real combo

It has genuine grill grates — with gaps, so fat falls through onto heat, vaporizes and comes back up through the food. That is where grilled flavor comes from, and a ridged plate cannot produce it no matter what the marks look like.

Plenty of “combo” griddles are a flat top with a textured surface. This is not one of them, and it is the reason it leads our combo roundup.

Four matched burners

4 × 12,000 BTU for 48,000 total. The “matched” part matters more than it sounds: some multi-burner griddles pair high-output and low-output burners, which means one zone is inherently weaker. Here every zone is identical, so your choice of which zone to use is purely about position rather than capability.

Across 604 square inches that works out at 79.5 BTU per square inch — strong, and comparable to a Blackstone 36. Worth noting this figure only holds with all four burners lit.

The conversion costs 103 square inches

604 as a griddle, 501 as a grill. That is geometry rather than a design failure — a grate assembly has to sit inside a frame, and grates and a solid plate cannot occupy the same space.

The practical consequence is that if you grill more than you griddle, you have bought a large griddle that is a medium-sized grill. Be clear about which mode is your default before buying.

Storage is the unglamorous reality

Whichever surface is not on the unit has to live somewhere, and a steel plate at this size is not a small object to store or a light one to swap.

This is the practical reason plenty of combo owners end up only ever using one mode: swapping is a five-minute job with somewhere to put a heavy, hot steel surface, and after a few times people stop bothering. If you suspect that is you, buy the dedicated appliance for the mode you actually use.

Pre-seasoned cold-rolled steel

The griddle surface arrives pre-seasoned, so it is usable immediately, and it is cold-rolled steel — a real griddle surface rather than a coating. That means the full seasoning and care routine applies over time, with the usual reward: it gets better the more you use it.

Who should buy it

Someone who genuinely switches between grilling and griddling and has room for one appliance rather than two. That is a real use case, it is just narrower than combo marketing implies.

If you already own a gas grill, a steel griddle plate gets you the same flexibility for a fraction of the cost, with a thicker plate — at the price of hot spots that follow your grill’s burner layout.