Outdoor grills require a backyard, decent weather, and the patience to wait for coals or a gas burner to reach temperature. The Ninja Foodi Smart XL does the same job indoors, on a countertop, in any weather with a smart thermometer that tells you exactly when to stop cooking. For Prime Day it just dropped to $199, off its $279 list price and within a few dollars of its all-time low, which was only reached once during last year’s Black Friday. This deal is open to all Amazon customers with no Prime membership required.
500°F cyclonic air, char-grill marks, smoke control system
The headline feature of the Foodi Smart XL is its Cyclonic Grilling Technology, which circulates air at 500°F around the grill grate to char food evenly and produce genuine sear marks on the surface. The result looks and tastes closer to outdoor grilling than most indoor grill alternatives, which rely on contact heat from ridged plates rather than circulating superheated air. A splatter shield, a cool-air zone around the perimeter, and a temperature-controlled grill grate work together to keep smoke minimal, which is the functional requirement for apartment cooking and any indoor setup where setting off a smoke alarm ends the session prematurely.
The XL grill grate fits up to six steaks or 24 hot dogs simultaneously, which covers a family dinner or a group gathering without the batching that smaller indoor grills force. The included 4-quart crisper basket and cooking pot expand the cooking surface for mains and sides at the same time, removing the coordination problem of keeping everything hot while waiting for different components to finish.
4 proteins, 9 doneness levels, 6 cooking modes
The Foodi Smart Thermometer is the feature that separates the FG551 from a standard indoor grill. Four protein presets cover beef, pork, chicken, and fish, and nine doneness levels from rare to well done let you dial in the exact result rather than guessing based on time or touch. The thermometer probes the food continuously and alerts when the target temperature is reached, removing the overcooking that happens when attention drifts during cooking. For anyone who has ruined an expensive steak by pulling it at the wrong moment, that feedback loop is worth the price difference over a basic grill.
Beyond grilling, the six cooking modes cover air frying, roasting, baking, broiling, and dehydrating, which consolidates multiple appliances into a single countertop unit. The air frying basket uses 75% less fat than traditional frying tested against hand-cut deep-fried fries, and the roasting and baking modes handle the full range of oven tasks that the grill function does not cover. All cooking components are dishwasher safe, and a cleaning brush and 15-recipe book are included in the box.
The 4.7-star average across over 15,000 reviews and consistent top-ranking in the indoor grill category reflect a product that has been validated across years of real-world use rather than just a recent launch window. At $199, within a few dollars of the lowest price it has ever reached on Amazon, the Ninja Foodi Smart XL is the indoor grilling setup that makes the argument for keeping an outdoor grill considerably harder than it used to be.