Weber Slate vs LoCo

Buy the LoCo 36 SmartTemp if you want to set a temperature rather than guess at a knob; buy the Weber Slate 36 if you would rather the surface look after itself. These two are the closest pairing on the site: 756 against 738 square inches, 63.5 against 63.0 BTU per square inch. Nothing in the raw specification separates them, which makes the feature argument the whole argument.

Why the spec table is a tie

A 2.4% difference in surface area and a 0.8% difference in heat density are not differences you will ever perceive. Both griddles give you roughly 750 square inches and roughly 63 BTU per square inch, which places them in the same place on the heat-density table: competent recovery, not the fastest here.

The one spec-sheet difference that is real is burner count — Weber’s four against LoCo’s three. On a 36-inch plate, a fourth independently controlled zone is genuinely useful: it is the difference between holding food warm and running two cooking temperatures, or having to pick two of the three. How much that matters depends on how you cook.

LoCo’s argument: a griddle with an actual thermostat

Almost every griddle in this category gives you a knob between low and high and nothing else. You learn what “three quarters” means on your griddle, in your weather, and you re-learn it when the wind changes.

LoCo’s SmartTemp system replaces that with digital displays and a thermostat that holds a set temperature in 25-degree increments. That is a different kind of appliance. It means a repeatable 375 °F for pancakes instead of a knob position that produced 375 °F last Sunday, and it is the feature on this page that most changes day-to-day cooking.

LoCo also publishes something almost nobody else does: cooktop leveling and locking systems. A griddle that is not level pools grease and oil to one side, which is one of the most common complaints about large plates and a genuinely irritating problem to live with.

Weber’s argument: the surface takes care of itself

LoCo’s cooktop is oil-treated steel. That is a pre-seasoned bare plate: it will season beautifully with use and it will rust if you leave it uncovered and unseasoned through bad weather, like any other bare plate.

Weber’s is rust-resistant by alloy as well as pre-seasoned. There is no thermostat and no digital readout; what you get instead is a griddle that forgives the autumn you spent indoors. For an occasional cook storing a griddle on an exposed patio, that is the feature with the larger effect on whether the griddle is still good in year four.

Which is the honest frame for this comparison: LoCo improves every cook you do; Weber protects you from the cooks you do not.

The zone arithmetic, since the plates are the same size

Dividing roughly 750 square inches three ways gives you about 246 square inches per zone; four ways gives you about 189. Neither is a small working area — both are larger than the entire cooktop of a Blackstone 17″.

What the fourth zone buys is not space, it is simultaneity. With three zones you choose two of sear, cook and hold at any moment, or you accept that your holding zone is also your toasting zone. With four you can run all four jobs at once. If you cook staged meals — bacon holding at the back, eggs going on at the front, buns toasting at the end — that is a real difference in how the cook feels, and it is the Weber’s quietest advantage here.

Against that, LoCo’s thermostat makes each of its three zones more precisethan any of Weber’s four. Three repeatable temperatures against four approximate ones is a genuine choice, and which one you want depends almost entirely on whether you cook breakfast or burgers.

Parts, and the thing neither brand publishes

Neither of these is Blackstone, and that is worth saying plainly: neither has the parts and accessory depth that brand has built. Replacement burner assemblies, cooktops, regulators and model-specific covers are easier to find for a Blackstone size than for either griddle on this page.

That does not matter on day one and it matters a great deal in year five, which is the argument in how long a griddle actually lasts. Before buying either, search for a replacement cooktop and a replacement burner for the exact model. If they are not available now, they will not be available when you need them.

If you want both control and recovery

Neither of these is the best-heated griddle at this size. The Traeger Flatrock 3-Zone is: 594 square inches at 47,000 BTU for 79.1 BTU per square inch, with insulated separation between its three zones so a holding zone actually holds instead of slowly drifting hotter.

You give up around 150 square inches against either griddle here, and you get back a 25% heat-density advantage and the best zone discipline in the category. If your cooking is mostly searing and staging rather than spreading out, that is the trade worth making.

Which to buy

For the other LoCo pairings, see Blackstone vs LoCo and Traeger Flatrock vs LoCo.