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Oct 26, 2024

The 3 Best Grill Lights of 2024, Tested and Reviewed

We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. There’s no need to wrap up the barbecue or cook in the dark with these lights. In

We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation.

There’s no need to wrap up the barbecue or cook in the dark with these lights.

In This Article

Food & Wine / Greg Baker

We've tested dozens of grills, from the familiar gas and charcoal to pellet-powered and electric grills. But cooking outdoors doesn't always turn out the way you plan. Sometimes, you get caught up with friends, and the sun has set before you've even started cooking. Maybe you want a late-night cookout, or perhaps you've got something going low and slow on the smoker that will take all night. You don't have to be at the mercy of awkward flashlights or lanterns; there are lots of hands-free lighting options made for grilling.

But with a range of grill light options available, how do you sort through them to find the light or set of lights that’s right for you? I tested four of the leading models to see how they fared and what environments they may or may not be useful for.

This two-light set is easy and intuitive to use and provides excellent coverage for such small lights.

We’d like to see a slightly longer gooseneck, increasing the light’s directional focus.

This two-light set is compact yet powerful. When mounted at each end of the large grill, the lights illuminated all but the middle quarter and lit all of the medium-sized grill. Battery installation was easy and intuitive: I unscrewed the magnetic bottom, and a battery cassette that held three AAA batteries slid out. I popped the batteries in, re-installed the cassette, screwed the bottom back on, and was ready to go.

The magnetic bases stick to most metals but not our grills' stainless steel side tables. The 5.5-inch gooseneck flexed down to the grill and provided excellent general coverage, but a slightly longer neck would allow specific focus. That's not a dealbreaker, however, and I would recommend this affordable set to the average griller.

Mount type: Magnet | Dimensions: 10 x 1 inches | Power: 3 AAA batteries (each)

This light covers a large area with very bright light and is easy to install.

The four D batteries weren’t intuitive to install, and their heft makes the entire unit considerably heavier than the others I tested.

The Brighter BBQ Light is bright, yes, but it’s also quite large at 11 inches wide. The intense light covered about 75 percent of my large grill and the entirety of my medium grill when centered on the handle. It has six columns of LED lights, and if the columns on both ends projected outwards instead of down, the light would have covered the entirety of the large grill.

Installing the batteries isn’t straightforward, unfortunately. The manual states to turn the battery cover and remove it, and that’s where concern set in. Turning the cover release, it stopped in two places, and turning it past those points generates distinct sounds of breaking. But that’s by design — it didn’t actually break. Also, there were no polarity indicators after getting past the not-breaking, so it was trial and error to get the batteries inserted in the proper direction.

It was better to mount the light with the head pointed towards the ground, as unnatural as that might seem. This mounting positioned the light so it shone directly onto the grill after lifting the lid, and the 2-inch screw for the mounting clamp didn’t fit between either grill’s body and handle. The light has an on/off switch and a timer switch that automatically shuts off after six minutes, which makes it convenient for checking your food’s progress.

Mount type: Clamp | Dimensions: 11 x 8.75 x 2 inches | Power: 4 D batteries

Food & Wine / Greg Baker

This single light provided excellent illumination coverage of the whole grill, and the long, flexible gooseneck gave me more focus for detail work.

If the bulb were a bit wider, it could illuminate entire grills.

The LED Concepts light is an exceptional value for the price. First, it was versatile, and you could install it on almost any grill thanks to its dual mounting system. For the easiest scenario, two magnets in the base adhere to metal surfaces. If there isn’t a sufficient metal surface to stick to, like with a kamado grill, a screw-on clamp held the base securely to a wooden handle.

The battery installation was similar to the cassette-type arrangement of the Permasteel set. I mounted the light in the center of the large and medium grill via the magnetic mount and aimed the gooseneck downwards. Bright light covered two-thirds of the large grill and three-quarters of the medium. The gooseneck was notable here because it’s 25.25 inches, which allowed me to focus the light directly on certain areas of the grill.

Mount type: Magnet/clamp | Dimensions: 4.5 x 4.25 x 1.125 inches | Power: 3 AAA batteries

Food & Wine / Greg Baker

I found the Permasteel Magnetic LED Flexible Gooseneck Grill Lights the best option for the price, ease of use, and the amount of grill space covered. If you would like a single, powerful, light that your neighbors can see, the Hammacher Schlemmer Brighter BBQ Light is a solid choice.

Food & Wine / Greg Baker

At Food & Wine, we design our tests to emulate the consumer experience after purchase. For these tests, I first installed the batteries per the instructions, judging them on the ease of the task and the clarity of instructions.

I used two gas grills for the subsequent tests, one larger, with a 35 x 19-inch grilling area, and a more medium-sized grill with a 28 x 16-inch grilling area. Grill number one had a 2-inch diameter handle, while the other had a 1-inch.

I tested the best mounting positions for the various attachment types: magnetic, screw-on clamp, or pressure-mounted collar. In this test, I rated the lights on the ease of attachment and how close I got the lights to the cooking area.

Finally, I tested the lights in the dark, evaluating the surface area of each light or set of lights illuminated as the final, practical test. In this test, I considered the illumination power, different intensity settings (if applicable), and any additional features, like timers.

To provide hands-free illumination, a grill light has to attach to something, whether the grill itself or the person cooking on it (such as a headlamp). Magnetic mounts are common, as they can stick to the steel body of most grills. Just be careful with stainless steel, as some types are only weakly magnetic and can't hold onto a light very firmly. There are also grill-mounted lights that attach to the handle using a round clamp, or to the lid or side using a flat clamp. Person-mounted lights are more mobile and can clip to clothing like a belt, shirt, or hat, or can attach to a headband.

The brighter the light, the more area it can illuminate. But a brighter light will also consume more power and go through batteries faster. If you already have some ambient light near your grill from outdoor fixtures, you may not need a powerful light to help see detail, while if your grill is in a very dark corner, you'll want to light it up like Las Vegas.

Grill lights are generally battery-operated; some include rechargeable batteries while others use standard disposable batteries. LED lights can burn through batteries pretty quickly, so this has an appreciable effect on cost: You're better off paying a little more for a rechargeable light you'll use often than saving on the light but having to continually buy new batteries.

Of course. Doing anything in low light, however, has some safety risks. You just don't want to have a burn hazard you can't see, potentially surrounded by trip hazards you also can't see. It's a good idea to have both the grill and the area around it illuminated.

Low light also makes it difficult to see how your food is cooked. It's hard to tell raw red from medium-rare pink or caramelized brown from charred black in the dark. Lighting matters as much as a good meat thermometer.

White lights are the best grill lights. A bulb with a yellow or blue tint will distort how food looks and interfere with your ability to judge doneness and freshness. You should stay away from fluorescents and stick to white LEDs. White lights will let you see the food at the closest to its actual color.

Luckily, there is nothing permanent to installing most grill lights. Most don’t require special mounting brackets or altering your grill in any way. Magnetic lights are the simplest, as they stick to most metals used in grill construction. Notably, they do not attach to stainless steel side tables and the like, so the firebox or lid are your best mounting points.

Clamps are the next common method, which is excellent for mounting on wooden or non-magnetic surfaces. Simply tighten the clamp onto an available handle or the edge of a flat surface.

Compression collars get a little trickier because they’re not as easy to remove for storage. Typically, these are a two-piece attachment, with the collar mounting around the handle and the light sliding onto the collar. Depending on the model and design, this arrangement can cause difficulty in quickly mounting or removing the lights.

Weber Grill ‘n Go Light ($40 at Amazon)Weber tailored this light to its gas grills, which limits its versatility. It fits round handles for Spirit, Genesis, and Summit gas grill models made after 2007. The new Summit FS38, however, has a wider handle, which the mounting clamp doesn’t fit. If the handle is 1-⅛ inches, you’re in business. Otherwise, there was no practical way to make it fit a larger or smaller handle.

The pictographic instructions for this two-piece assembly left a little to be desired, and I found myself using the tip of a screwdriver to pry loose the first of two covers for the battery compartment. The process got easier on a second attempt, but the first try was rather frustrating. The light set consists of a mounting collar that attaches to the grill handle and the light slides onto the molded plastic frame. Sliding the light on is fairly straightforward, but removing it took patience and a little tapping, which isn’t great for a battery-powered fixture. The light is bright, though, and covered about two-thirds of the medium grill and half the large grill, although the sides where the light didn’t cover were still somewhat illuminated.

Food & Wine / Greg Baker

Greg Baker is a six-time James Beard Award nominee who spent 36 years working as a chef, including as owner of Fodder & Shine and The Refinery in Tampa, Florida. He retired from professional cooking in 2019 and has been a frequent Food & Wine contributor since.